Matt Hurter - Groen velde van my jeug
260 views · Published 4 September 2018 · 2:33 · Indexed 28 September 2026
Channel: keurspel (Leon Rossouw) · 2018 · Music
Very popular South African country music artist, affectionately known as “Big Matt Hurter”, due to his height (6’4″ in his stocking feet). He was born in 1944 and educated in Durban, and first became known as a singer in 1969 when he had a South African Top 20 hit with a song he wrote himself, “Bicycle Bill” (it reached #17 and charted for 2 weeks), and which earned him a mini-SARI award in that year. He issued a number of albums from 1970 onwards, and again had a major radio hit with “Ride Safe” in 1980, a song he wrote to motivate motorists to pick up young National Servicemen who had to hitch a ride home during their weekend pass. True to his status as a country legend in South Africa, Matt has been on every South African TV show featuring Country music, including “Gentle on my Mind”, “Kyk-Net Country”, “Sing Country”, and he also hosted the show “Sounds Country.” In the early 1980s he bought a piece of ground and created the “Music Farm” where he built a Cowboy Saloon and established the South African Country Music Association (CMA – of which he was President for many years). At the Music Farm it was live music only (no backing tracks), thereby creating work for fellow musicians and a platform for lesser known artists to promote their music. After running the Music Farm successfully for 15 years, he settled down in the small Western Cape town of Pearly Beach. He sadly passed away on 3 September 2018 after a long battle with cancer. This song is off the album "Treffer Bundel", released in 1970. It's a translation of "Green, Green Grass of Home", first recorded by Johnny Darrell in 1965, but popularized by Porter Wagoner later that year. Tom Jones had a worldwide #1 hit with it in 1966.
