(This is the cast from season two. All of the photos from season one seem to be lost.)
Most things have a beginning. And we
seldom know when we are there until the beginning is long past.
At
the start of the 1970s, I was lucky to be part of the beginning of
the entertainment colossus that is Branson. Branson was a sleepier
town then. It had a couple of hillbilly themed tourist attractions,
but the point of them was mostly to give the wives something to do
while their husbands fished on Lake Taneycomo and Lake Table Rock,
and to give the whole family some entertainment in the evening after
a day of sun, boating, and water. And the scenery was very nice.
Branson was a pure joy before it became the mutated child of Las
Vegas and Nashville, and the “or bust” target for buses full of
blue haired fans in search of used-to-be country music stars.
You gave motorists directions in
Branson then by saying something like, “You go to the 4 way
stop....” There was only one; at the junction of the two lane
highway 65 with the two lane East/West highway 76. Out 76 there were
then only about 4 home-grown music shows on the way to the Shepherd
of the Hills Farm, and Silver Dollar City. There was the Baldknobbers
Hillbillly Jamboree, the Presley Family Music Show (no relation to
Elvis), Jim Weatherly, and the Foggy River Boys. The Baldknobbers was
the closest to real mountain music, and the Foggy River Boys the
slickest, and musically best. But that's because the Foggy River Boys
were actually someone else. The group was mostly comprised of the
Jordanaires, a gospel quartet that sang backup for Elvis, Carl
Perkins, Cash, and others at Sam Phillip's Sun Records in Memphis,
and in numerous sessions for other stars in Nashville. They were
tight, slick, and had the best voices and arrangements on the
“strip.” Other D and C level national stars were eying the area,
and beginning to move in. For instance, Boxcar Willie.
There
was also the Corn Crib Theater. Corn Crib was a rustic outdoor
theater presenting Toby Shows. A Toby Show is a classic American
theater form lying somewhere between Melodrama and Vaudeville,
combining a loosely plotted play wrapped around songs, musical
numbers, and comedy bits. Toby, always the star of the show, was the
“wise fool” hick who ended up putting one over on the city
slickers. Toby shows were original plays written to suit the cast on
hand. Several were presented during the decade Corn Crib ran. During
the years I am speaking of, 71-72, the first years of the Corn Crib,
I was the “triple hyphenate”, writing, directing, and appearing
in the shows. The shows featured such classic corn pone lines as in
this dialog from “Hills-a-Poppin”.
Mr. Bates: (the city
slicker) You know, Toby, it looks to me like there isn't much
distance between you and a fool.
Toby: Nope, just about half
my porch between us.
It was the bottom rung of show
business, it was great fun, and there were some talented people
around, in our show and in the music shows; and in the growing number
of side men and back up musicians beginning to come to the area. It
was hard work, and because the show paid so little, all of the cast
members worked day jobs as well as performing nightly. Terry
(Bloodworth—more about him later) and I added yet another job to
the first two. We got up and helped promote the show by broadcasting
a 7:00 am radio show on local FM KPLD from the dining room of the
Branson Holiday Inn. The show was called Coffee and Conversation,
and I think to say we were awful would be to rate us too highly. We
did that half hour show, then a day working as demonstrating 1880s
blacksmiths and glass blowers at Silver Dollar City, before racing to
the theater for the evening performance. We didn't get home before
11:30, even if we didn't meet up for some decompression with
performers from Silver Dollar City or the music shows. And we got one
day a week off. Yeah, it was a cushy gig.
The fun part was all of the
talented people we got to hang out with. Young and old. The
owner/producer at Corn Crib was Lloyd “Shad” Heller. Shad's show
experience covered everything from vaudeville to clowning with
Ringling Brothers when it was still under the Big Top, to appearances
on “The Beverly Hillbillies.” In the Toby show we had Richard
Vahldick, Ragtime pianist extraordinaire. Richard could basically
stare at any musical instrument for about 20 minutes, then pick it up
and play it at a professional level. This was true for a range from
trombones to banjos.
I'm only going to name two other cast
members from Corn Crib, not because they weren't all talented, but
because they all were, and I cherish our time and friendship. The two
others I'll name are the aforementioned Terry, who has combined
acting and glass blowing into a truly creative life, and I want to
plug his shop,
Springfield Hot Glass. And Sandy, who achieved a
not-quite 15 minutes of fame when her nearly full page photo appeared
in the late 70s in the
National Enquirer along
with the story entitled “The Girl Who Broke John Goodman's Heart.”
One of the funniest stories I ever read. Not funny because it was
false; funny because it was so true. She broke John's heart.
Heartbreaking was a craft she perfected.
Two other good
friends met during the time were the late Howard Hale, all-round
musician with the Baldknobbers show, and the pride of Ash Grove,
Missouri, and D. A. Callaway.
Howard
was a pretty typical, shy, musician. I think he hung around the Corn
Crib cast trying to get up the courage to ask one of the girls in the
cast out. Any one of the girls. At least in the years I was around,
he never developed the guts. Howard moonlighted (moonlit?) as a Taney
County Sheriff deputy. As such, he was very handy to many of the
musicians and actors in the area concerning heads up about local law
“Wacky Tobaccy” raids. I owe you another whole story about the
New Year's Eve “Ass Busters” party where Howard settled a bet
about awakening Weeping Will Carpenter with two rounds beside Will's
head from his official issue .38.
D.A.
is one of the finest comic musicians ever. He had several bands with
great names. Bands like “The Midnight Plowboys.” (country boys
given to agriculture best pursued after dark—see the above “Wacky
Tobaccy” reference.) Another was “Barkin' Snakes.”--In the
Ozarks, if a fellow happened to accidentally release gas in a
gathering, it was common for him to snap his head around and say, “I
thought I heard a snake bark.” And then there was “The Smith
Brothers.” This was a party band with a repertoire from such dark
corners of the country boy mind that I won't even list song titles
here, let alone full lyrics. Many years later, in fact just a few
years back, D. A. appeared with Garrison Keillor on “A Prairie Home
Companion” and their feature Talent From Towns Under
2,000. D. A. represented the
town of Reed's Spring, MO.
Also among our group was a young
actress we all knew as “Tessie.” You know her today as Golden
Globe and Oscar nominee Tess Harper. She was beautiful, kind, and a
wonderful performer at Silver Dollar City, and had, as she has now,
eyes I heard described as “Blue like Windex.”
This was a
time when there were also still “real” hillbillies around, and
they were great people. One, John Corbin, observed of my performance
of my one song in the Corn Crib show, “That boy's got a lot a music
in him. Must have, cause ain't none of it ever come out yet.”
A
final side story before I get to the incident which I remembered, and
which remembering got me into this reverie.
That small radio
station where Terry and I did the morning talk show also employed
Richard Vahldick as a DJ some afternoons. The station was REALLY
small and low power, and was located at one end of a small strip
shopping center in Branson. The call letters of KPLD, we transmuted
to “K'puddle.” The tower, such as it was, was in the alley out
back. Also in the center was a small cafe where working men of
Branson liked to get their midday coffee and gossip—free, unlimited
refills on both.--A bit of technical info, a DJ working at a console
can feed a signal to his headphones either from “line”, which is
a direct feed of what's going through the control board, or from
“air”, which picks up the feed from a dedicated radio receiver
and provides sound that has actually been broadcast. Just a switch
will toggle between the two. The wise DJ will monitor “air,” as
that lets him know instantly if there's a problem anywhere in the
chain, including the transmitter. “Line” will not.
“Air”
does, however, give the slightest delay in the sound, and takes some
getting used to. Richard was, therefore, monitoring “line.” And
on this particular day, two of the working men who decided to drop in
at the neighboring Chat 'n Chew were the crew from the Branson
garbage truck. They parked out back, just a bit up the hill from the
tower. As Richard later explained, “They musta forgot to set the
air” on their truck. So, while they were in getting coffeed and
donuted, the garbage truck rolled backwards down the hill and knocked
down the transmission tower. Because Richard was monitoring line, he
had no clue that he was out of the broadcasting business. He knew
nothing until two very stinky men in smudged green coveralls came
tromping in from the muddy alley, spreading red clay up the back hall
of KPLD, tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hey, we don't think
yore on ta are no more.” (“are”= “air” in a community where
“tire,” “tar,” and “tower” are all pronounced exactly the
same.) Some may say, “garbage in, garbage out,” but this is a
case where garbage stopped anything from going out.
And
before anyone asks why I'm not discussing Silkey or Lyle here, that's
because either of them is a book on his own.
The
music theaters in Branson then, and in years to come, were “family
oriented.” In the most conservative Christian meaning of the word.
In fact, not a one of them would dare end a show without a “song of
faith and devotion.” About the only place in the town where you you
mix alcohol and music was the lounge of the Holiday Inn. That lounge
was directly connected to the restaurant where we did the morning
talk show. One of the requirements from the hotel management was that
we plug the restaurant and lounge, and that we interview the musical
acts appearing in the bar. One such fellow was a one man band kind of
act who had a Les Paul Gibson guitar that he had somehow wired to an
early, rudimentary synthesizer so that his frets contacting the metal
strings would create harmonic tones in addition to the note played.
Yeah, it sounded as much of a mish mash as that description. I'm not
positively remembering his name, but I think he billed himself as
something like, “The Royal Wayne Royal.” He played ALL of the
“big” rooms on the circuit. Terry ran into him a few years later
playing the bar of the Ramada in Harlingen, TX. Well, to be fair, and
to save Terry having to 'splain anything to Julie, Terry saw his
promotional poster out front of the hotel. Terry wasn't IN the
bar.
The morning Terry and I were interviewing Mr. Royal—a
tough task considering how much musicians hate getting up for early
morning radio shows after performing until 2 am—Terry asked him,
“What do you think it takes to succeed as a lounge performer?”
The man of the magically wired guitar looked right into the
microphone and said, “Well, you either have to have a gimmick, or
you have to be a Master of Your Music. And I don't have a
gimmick.”
Just think how successful he'd have been if, for
instance, he'd had a Beagle Posse that talked to him.
That was
a great time with great people—mostly great people.
