The 2007 Trailblazer Award recipient is Roy Harper, “without a doubt one of the few remaining artists that performs traditional country music” in the purest style. Born in 1925 in Coffee County, Tennessee, Roy Harper is a traditional, old-time music artist to the core. Even as a child, he was interested in this unique, bluesy sounding old-time music. At age 19, he began a job at the railroad as a brakeman, and when he retired, he had worked in seventeen states. Harper said about his music style, “I stayed with the old traditional stuff of Jimmie Rodgers…of the 1920s and ‘30s. Me being a rebel, a non-conformist, I never did change. Today the type music that I do is a novelty thing. It won’t die out completely because it’s kind of like a museum.” He has released over 20 albums of music, has received over 12 awards from universities and arts commissions, and still performs 50-60 concerts a year. He can be found in his home playing his guitar amid his own beautiful paintings of trains and landscapes. As a member of the Traditional Country Music Hall of Fame, Roy Harper is a true trailblazer of old-time music.