Rick was born on the afternoon of Good Friday, March 26, As he was being born into this world his home area was hit by a Tornado, his mom always said he came in like a storm. While that was Rick’s first experience with a Tornado it did not prepare him for his meeting with Australia’s Tornadoes over four decades later.
Rick always loved music and dance and making people happy, as well as the play toys he has collected.
He has said many times that he is only twelve old at heart, but responsible. Rick’s favorite saying he made up is that “life is a bunch of experiences strung together by time. As you finish one experience God gives you the choice to choose the direction of your next experience”.
Rick also feels that we never really own anything in the world, we just get to take care of it for a while and hopefully we will leave those things to other people in as good a shape as when we got them, including the world we live in. Rick has a passion for play toys and owns one of the first patriot missiles ever made. To have fun with it he mounted it on a trailer complete with its own launching mechanism that raises and lowers it into launch position.
If you are ever in Southwestern Indiana just across the river from Kentucky, stop in at his home, his campground called www.WeatherRockCampground.com and check out all the play toys, including the world famous Weather Rock that forecasts the immediate weather 100% correctly all the time.
“Think Outside The Box!” Don’t tell me something cant be done, tell me how it can be done and how much it will cost?
Rick started dancing as a baby in his families basement. Started doing some line dances in the seventies, which lead into DJing events, teaching dances and finally choreographing. In the early days if Rick saw a dance being done somewhere while traveling he would write it down on a place mat, even drawing arrows for directions, then go back home and try to learn and or teach it to others.
As Line Dance built in America, the country music scene quickly embraced it and changed it to Country Dance or Country Line dance to sell their music. Line Dance represented the first thing he had seen that had a positive effect on the lives of Americans. Parents and children would learn and dance together,
Pretty soon his market was the number one per capita country music market in the world, the record labels worked with Hillbilly Rick on supplying music to the Line Dancers. In 1994 Rick helped to create the marketing for the first four shows of the Garth Brooks tour, which included live prime time on Friday night TV and radio simulcast at Evansville’s big stadium.
Soon Rick was told ‘Baby Likes to Rock it’ was nominated as one of the top dances in the world. Rick was hired to play music and promote several world championship dance events. Then the phone call came from Graceland and in 1995 the most prestigious event of Rick’s career, it was Elvis Wild and Country with Hillbilly Rick as the opening event for Elvis Week. Rick says he was so blessed to be chosen.
Next came requests to travel, one of the requests was from Cindy Truelove from Perth, Australia to help with her first big country event. From there it became a whirlwind of travel to countries all over the world, helping to spread line dance and the lifestyle it represented. Many times Rick would teach in the schools during the days free of charge.
Fund Raisers also became a big part of Rick’s life. Hundreds of fund raisers, and never a fee for doing them. St Jude’s Dance for a Child was one of his favorites in Lima, Ohio. One summer night Rick was listening to ‘Baby Likes to Rock it’ before his dance class, his feet started doing a dance, he taught it fifteen minutes later and the rest was history!
Bill Bader
Hong Kong December 2012, 12,168
According to the current (Sep.2003) Guinness World Records website…
“A gathering of 12,168 line dancers took place at the Happy Valley Recreation Ground, Hong Kong on 29 December 2002. The attempt was organized by The Community Chest of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Dance Federation, the Home Affairs Department, Leisure and Cultural Services Department and Television Broadcasts Limited. They danced to ‘Baby Likes To Rock It’ for 7 min 40 sec.”
Oddly, Guinness failed to mention the name of the line dance used, but I asked the right person in Hong Kong and I found out that the line dance used was “Baby Likes To Rock It” by Hillbilly Rick.
*Baby Likes To Rock It! (aka “Rock It”) Perhaps Rick’s most popular dance (Over 12,000 dancers in 2003 according to Guinness World Records), and over 20,000 dancers at one time in China a couple of years later!
As Rick’s career continued he became interested in helping create music for line dancers and formed strong friendships with both Ronnie Beard and Australia’s Tornadoes. Rick toured many countries with Ronnie Beard including trips to many events in the USA. Rick’s friendships with Australia’s Tornadoes led to the release of many of their joint songs, Ghost Riders, Waltzing Matilda, Ghost Train, Crocodile Roll, Storm Warning and more to come.
Max Perry was once asked why does “Hillbilly” Rick get booked so much? Max said he is the “King” of Fun!
Always teaching in bib overalls and red long johns, shoes with no toes and wearing no socks, he created and taught things like The Macarena Partner Dance, Sex On The Beach, Old Time Rock and Roll, Wild Stallion using stick horses for the dancers to ride on. At one event in the Pocono’s the place was so fancy one of the event directors had a pair of tuxedo bib overalls made for him to wear.
We’re guessing Rick has taught hundreds of thousands of different dancers a dance, and that millions have danced to the music he has helped produce.
Yeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, (always spelled with more letter a’s than letter e’s)
and “Keep It Fun!!”
Check out Facebook Hillbilly Rick
YouTube HillbillyRick1 for his videos
Music on iTunes, Amazon, and CDBaby
Ebay type in search Hillbilly Rick for old CDs and some of his collectibles as he clears out room for newer items!
Hugs to All!
