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When Carlton Haney of Reidsville, N.C., talks about bluegrass, he gets choked up, pausing as he rattles off the lyrics of songs made famous by the likes of Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt.

At age 77, Haney's voice fluctuates as he drop names and recalls the glory days of country singers Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Don Reno, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Conway Twitty.

Haney, who lived in Roanoke in the mid-1960s, will give a sentimental walk down the bluegrass memory lane Saturday during the Fincastle Bluegrass Festival at the Cahoon Farm, two miles north of Fincastle.

Haney is credited with envisioning and producing the first weekend-long bluegrass music festival in 1965, when he organized a festival at a Fincastle farm.

He's been in the music business since the early 1950s and admits he's no singer.

But he knows lyrics and once played the mandolin. He put down that instrument, he says, after receiving a rave review after playing a tune with his idol, the late Monroe.

He didn't want anyone to think he was trying to upstage his idol, Haney said in a telephone interview from his home.

"The thing about music is I can just hear it and feel it. I just don't play it," Haney said.

Throughout his career, Haney promoted other festivals and workshops and was an agent for a few singers.

He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Museum Hall of Honor in 1998. The museum's Web site's description of Haney's 1965 festival reads, "The event proved to be a prototype and precursor that initiated the festival movement in America and ultimately in other countries, bringing incalculable economic benefits to the industry and creating a larger and more diverse audience for the music."

Haney moved the third festival to Berryville after a new property owner raised the rent on the Fincastle farm. He later bought 165 acres in Camp Springs, N.C., and ran festivals for 25 years until he retired from producing the events.

Last year, the Fincastle festival returned to Botetourt County for its 40th anniversary, but it was held at a new location, the Cahoon Farm.

Haney said the Fincastle festival "is the only one I do." Bluegrass festivals now are held across the United States and in Japan. One also is being planned for Africa, Haney said.

During Saturday's festival, Haney will give brief bluegrass history lessons -- some emotional, some comical -- between band performances and conduct a longer session after the dinner break.

Historic Fincastle Inc. and the Botetourt Kiwanis Club received proceeds from the 2005 festival, which attracted an estimated 1,200 bluegrass fans, said Peggy Crosson, executive director of HFI.

HFI used its proceeds toward opening the Fincastle Museum in the James Matten Early Cabin; to offset printing costs for a revision of "Fincastle, 1772," by Fincastle historian and HFI board member Dottie Kessler; and to fund its annual history scholarship, Crosson said.

The Kiwanis Club supplemented its foundation scholarship, back-to-school and Christmas shopping projects and its Adopt a Highway project, said Tim Alderman, president-elect.