Hayley Benton

hbenton@citizen-times.com

On Tuesday, beloved local bluegrass matriarch Nelia Hyatt, 99, died due to complications from pneumonia. Hyatt would have turned 100 in June.

For more than 35 years, Hyatt's home at 627 Brevard Road served as a makeshift stage and music house, her garage a gathering place for mountain musicians to chat and jam every Thursday evening. The wooden letters above the door made it official: "Mrs. Hyatt's Operahouse," it read.

In 2012, the Citizen-Times reported that Nelia and her late husband, Wayne, had first started inviting friends to play music at the home after church in the 1950s. But when the impromptu jam's popularity grew too large for the living room, the Hyatts built the iconic music house and turned the event public in 1976. Wayne died eight years later, in 1984, but Nelia continued the tradition into the 21st century.

Asheville’s Nelia Hyatt honored on her 97th birthday

There was never a stage — or a spotlight — but that didn't stop bluegrass and folk legends from trekking up the steep driveway to perform in the space for nearly four decades. Experienced players would sit in the center circle and take turns, and the less experienced performers sit to the outside. Even in her mid-90s, Hyatt continued to attend the jams, seated in her wheelchair toward the outer circle, greeting visitors to the operahouse.

When Hyatt broke her hip in 2011, she moved into a Candler nursing home — and by September of 2012, her house was on the brink of demolition, sold to new development, despite fundraising jam sessions to save the house.

The home was built by the Hyatts in 1947, 12 years after the couple's 1935 marriage.

It was demolished in late 2012, but the weekly jam — and Hyatt's — legacy lived on, first at jam sessions at a business down the road and then through JamFest, held at the WNC Agricultural Center on Hyatt's birthday.

The Citizen-Times' own mountain music musician and writer Carol Rifkin even modeled her own weekly 6 p.m. Wednesday jam session at Bold Rock Cidery after Hyatt's in-home shows.

"Mountain sessions are how the music got carried on and how people learned (the traditions)," Rifkin explained. "I learned it from her. She was the best — just a quiet little lady who could dance with the best and knew the words to every song but cast a long shadow."

In a 2012 article, the Citizen-Times quoted Hyatt on her love of the music that inspires her: "It kind of makes you happy," the then-94-year-old said. "It gives you a happy feeling. Somebody who doesn't like music is missing something."

The funeral service for Nelia Hyatt will be at 1 p.m. Feb. 18 in the Sanctuary of Grassy Branch Baptist Church. Following the service, she will be buried next to her husband at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Candler. Visitation for friends and family is at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 17, and following visitation, the family will host a musical celebration of Hyatt's life in the gymnasium of Grassy Branch Church.

Just as Hyatt enjoyed her music house jams each week for most of her life, the gathering after visitation will be an open jam, filled with musicians, friends, food and refreshments.