In 1963, a young fellow from Winston-Salem had been in the music business a few years after making a record -- there were records then -- that had put him on traveling shows with "teen idols" that included the late Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers. George Hamilton IV had been a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill when he recorded "A Rose and a Baby Ruth" in a studio at Old Swain Hall in 1957.

He became a notable rock 'n' roller, a big-timer with a hit record. But he wanted to follow his heart, and it took him to country music and Nashville. Fortune smiled in that year of 1963 with "Abilene," a tune co-written by the writer of "A Rose ...", a fellow from Durham named John D. Loudermilk. The chorus was catchy, the lyrics simple: "Abilene, Abilene, prettiest town that I've ever seen, women there don't treat you mean in Abilene."

Hamilton was No. 1 on the country charts for a month. He became a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and remains so today. As of our conversation Monday, he was a couple of weeks past his 71st birthday, having carved out a career as a world-traveling troubadour. He plays mostly small venues but has a loyal following and a Web site maintained by his fans.

And while he might be a bit advanced in career, shall we say, to become a protest singer, he has done it. It seems unlikely, given that Hamilton is a tall, wholesome-looking grandfather who generally wears a tie when he appears on the Opry and always has. The late Patsy Cline, with whom Hamilton once toured in his youth, once eyeballed his sport coat, white pants and white buck shoes and asked, "So, Hoss, you tryin' to be Pat Boone or something?"

So anyway, Hamilton's son Peyton, who's a horse trainer in Fort Mill, S.C., called a while ago and said he had a neighbor, Scott Thoen, who had written some new lyrics to the tune of "Abilene."

"I liked it a lot," Hamilton said, hours after returning to the United States from a country music festival in Poland. "Then George V [another son and musician] put a few more words to it. He wrote a second verse. I guess you could say it's a protest song, if you said it with tongue in cheek."

Herewith some of the lyrics:

"Gasoline, gasoline

Highest prices I've ever seen

What on Earth is going on

with gasoline?

Oh, gasoline ...

Filled my tank just the other night

watched that meter just spin out of sight

Don't I wish they would lower the price

of gasoline

Oh, gasoline."

Hamilton has been singing the song a lot in churches, where he often performs -- especially during the Christmas season -- and on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

"Usually about the second verse, people start singing along," he said. "It's gone over pretty well at the Opry. The thing is, it's not the kind of song that makes people angry. It makes them laugh. And George V and I just got back from Poland, and I did it over there after I did 'Abilene,' and they knew what we were talking about. They said they knew about gasoline, even though they have another term for it, because they watch a lot of American movies."

The line that gets the biggest reaction, Hamilton said, comes in a verse that for him is rather salty: "Gasoline, gasoline, aren't we tired of getting reamed, by gasoline ..."

"You know, I didn't even think about that at the time," he said, "but like I say, I've been playing it in churches, and none of the preachers have said anything yet. I think people react because they believe that somewhere, somebody is manipulating something in the system."

Songwriter Thoen, who has worked in NASCAR, is burning a few CDs of the song and sending it to radio stations and media outlets. "He's pretty excited about his song," Hamilton said. "He's enjoying this."

So is the veteran troubadour, although he's quick to say that the passion of the protest against high gas prices was tempered a little bit on his recent trip overseas. "The people there," he said, "told us we ought to be grateful. Gasoline in Poland was $10 a gallon. In Great Britain, it was $11 a gallon. So we're not the only ones suffering."

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