In 1973, George Hedges’ father, James, asked if he wanted to run a music store. After opening in 1974, Shiloh Music Center in Mt. Juliet is celebrating 50 years of business, and George Hedges is celebrating a lifetime of music.
“It was me, my brother, my dad and a friend whose name was Rusty Henson,” George Hedges said. “He was one of my good friends, and he wanted to be part of it. So, we said ‘Sure.’ The four of us found Shiloh Music in 1974 in Shiloh Plaza, on Lebanon Road over there.”
The quartet started selling instruments and working on guitars in a shop in the back of the space.
“I think we had Alvarez guitars, and then we had Gibson guitars, and it just grew,” George Hedges said. “I think the community needed something like that.”
Shortly after opening, George met Karen, who was finishing up her freshman year of college and looking for a summer job. She left when he told her they weren’t hiring but came back after going to a James Taylor concert in May.
“I wanted a songbook to learn to play some of his music,” Karen Hedges said. “I went into my local music store and said, ‘Do you have a copy of a James Taylor songbook? This same guy -who’s a cute guy — behind the counter said ‘No, we don’t have one in stock, but I’ll be happy to order one for you.’ He wrote my name and phone number down on a little slip of paper, called me out and asked me on a date day. The rest is history. We were married in October of 1974.”
Now, George and Karen Hedges are still the “mom and pop” behind the mom-and-pop music store.
“He’s a luthier by trade, which is an instrument repairer and builder,” Karen Hedges said. “He does that. I teach piano. I don’t tell him how to fix a guitar, and he doesn’t tell me how to teach. We have our own aspects of the business that we do.”
While running the business, Karen and George Hedges raised two sons, Paul and James Hedges, who now help run the store, which has moved to its current location on North Mt. Juliet Road.
“When the boys were tall enough and their eyes were up to (the level of a workbench), they used to come and look on the work bench and say, ‘What are you doing, dad?’ ” George Hedges said. “They were interested in what I was doing with all these guitars, so they basically grew up learning how to do things like that. As they grew up, they both got interested in music and they’re still interested in it.”
In the store’s nine studios, music teachers give music lessons to over 500 students a week, ranging from piano, guitar, ukulele, banjo, voice, violin, bass, drums and fiddle.
“You gotta like what you’re doing, and we both love music,” George Hedges said.
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