MISSOURI:

1
MISSOURI
A Crossroads of
American Roots Music
2
Missouris two largest cities Kansas City and
St. Louis are renowned for their indispensable
contributions to American roots music, past and
present. If time permits, we can discuss some
of those contributions later in our conversation
3
For now, though, well focus on roots music of
rural Missouri, because

• rural communities are the focus of the Museum on
  Main Street program, and
• plenty of good information about the musical
  histories of St. Louis and Kansas City is readily
  available from other sources.

4
Does anyone know what Missouris official state
instrument is?
5

• Old-time fiddling i.e., vernacular fiddle music
  that reflects traditions that predate the advent
  of radio and recordings in Missouri bespeaks
  the states status as a cultural crossroads.
• Scholars of Anglo-American old-time fiddling have
  identified three (or four) broadly conceived
  regions within Missouri on the basis of style and
  repertoire. They are

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• Ozark (example Bob Holt, Wolves a-Howling)
• Little Dixie (example Pete McMahan, Fiddlers
  Dream)
• North Missouri often subdivided into
• North-central (example Nile Wilson, Tie Hacker
  1)
• Missouri Valley (example Cyril Stinnett,
  Lantern in a Ditch)

7
Other ethnic fiddling traditions in Missouri

• African-American
• German-American
• French Creole

8

• Old-time fiddling traditions, especially
  Anglo-American traditions, are closely related to
  the string band tradition (in the broadest sense
  of the term).
• Music-making by a string band in south-central
  Missouri might have played at least a nebulous
  role in inspiring George D. Hay (The Solemn Old
  Judge) to establish the Grand Ole Opry.

9

• In the 1920s and 30s, string band music often
  described as hillbilly music at the time was
  transmitted by radio and recordings. A
  commercial music industry based on vernacular
  music of the rural South and Midwest began to
  develop, and Missourians were among those who
  contributed to it (example Grinnell Giggers,
  Ruths Rag).

10
The example that we just heard illustrates the
influence upon Anglo-American string band music
of an African-American genre closely associated
with MissouriRAGTIME.
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• Ragtime evolved in the late 19th century when
  black musicians incorporated harmonic and
  especially rhythmic characteristics of
  African-American folk music into middle-class
  white popular forms such as two-step dances and
  marches.
• The Missouri Valley was one of the foremost
  centers of ragtime music early in the history of
  the genre.
• Perhaps the most influential innovator of ragtime
  was pianist and composer

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• Scott Joplin

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• who lived in Sedalia in the 1890s and early
  1900s. His Maple Leaf Rag (1899) is named for
  an African-American social club there.
• Another important innovator of ragtime from
  Missouri was

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Warrensburgs ownBLIND BOONE.Example
Sparks, performed by Frank Townsell.
15

• Before we delve further into African-American
  music, lets discuss another important genre of
  Anglo-American vernacular music ballads.
• Some of the ballads sung in Missouri originated
  in England or Scotland and have been circulating
  in oral/aural tradition for centuries. Others
  were composed here in the United States but
  belong to the same tradition with respect to
  poetic and musical style.

16

• Traditionally, Anglo-American ballads were (and
  are) sung with little or no instrumental
  accompaniment. Scholars believe that it was not
  until sometime in the 19th century that the
  combining of singing with instrumental music
  became a regular practice among Anglo-American
  musicians in the Upland South. (Of course, there
  were numerous precedents in other
  European-American and African-American vernacular
  genres, as well as in popular and classical
  music.)

17

• Unaccompanied ballad singing was practiced in the
  Missouri Ozarks well into the 20th century (and
  occasionally still is).
• One of the largest and best archives of
  recordings of traditional Anglo-American ballad
  singing in the United States is the MAX HUNTER
  COLLECTION, located at Missouri State University
  in Springfield. The entire collection has been
  digitized and is now available online (example
  The Gypsy Davy, Child ballad no. 20, sung by
  Mrs. George Ripley, Milford, MO, 1959).

18

• Several significant latter-day ballads either
  originated in Missouri or commemorate events in
  Missouri history. They include Jesse James and
  Sweet Betsy from Pike, which apparently refers
  to Pike County, Missouri, and was written by John
  A. Stone, a native of that county.

19

• A number of Missouri musicians who are currently
  active are avid collectors of ballads and other
  folk songs associated with our state. Among them
  are
• Cathy Barton and Dave Para of Boonville, who were
  strongly influenced by the folk revival of the
  1960s, and
• Judy Domeny of Rogersville.

20
All of the musical traditions that weve
discussed so far, as well as others, contributed
to the development ofBLUEGRASS.
21

• Bluegrass music is named for one of Missouris
  neighbors to the southeast, the home state of
  Bill Monroe, the principal originator of the
  genre.
• Monroe developed a distinctive musical idiom
  within the Upland Southern string band tradition
  in the late 1930s and 40s. His stylistic
  innovations, especially with regard to ensemble
  configuration and technique and vocal style,
  generated renewed interest in traditional string
  band music and enabled it to remain competitive
  within the rapidly changing country music
  marketplace. Monroes version of traditional
  Upland Southern string band music became known as
  bluegrass.

22

• String band musicians throughout the South and
  Midwest recognized bluegrass as a close cousin to
  their own music and began to adapt some of
  Monroes stylistic innovations or to convert to
  bluegrass altogether.
• Among them were musicians in Shannon County,
  which became an important center of bluegrass
  early in the history of the genre. The Current
  River Opry in Eminence and other local venues
  hosted performances by Bill Monroe and His Blue
  Grass Boys, Flatt and Scruggs and the Foggy
  Mountain Boys, and other now-famous pioneers of
  bluegrass.
• A number of musicians in and near Shannon County
  still play very well in a first-generation
  bluegrass style. They include Jim Orchard and
  the Bressler Brothers.

23

• Since the early 1960s, a substantial proportion
  of the most accomplished and best-known musicians
  in bluegrass have been Missouri natives.
• Among them are

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• THE DILLARDS
• Originally from Salem, the Dillards moved to Los
  Angeles in the early 1960s and rapidly achieved
  national prominence through their recordings on
  Elektra Records and especially their appearances
  as the Darling Family on the Andy Griffith Show.

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• LONNIE HOPPERS
• Originally from southwest Missouri, banjoist
  Lonnie Hoppers began his career performing at the
  Ozark Opry near Lake of the Ozarks. He was a
  member of Bill Monroes Blue Grass Boys in the
  early 1960s. He later made a series of
  recordings with virtuoso flatpicking guitarist
  Dan Crary of Kansas City (Kansas, alas). He
  still performs frequently with his own band, New
  Union.

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• DALE SLEDD
• Dale Sledd (third from left in the photograph),
  like Lonnie Hoppers, is a veteran of the Ozark
  Opry. He was the guitarist and third singer (and
  frequently also a composer) in the Osborne
  Brothers band in the late 1960s and 70s. He
  lives in southwest Missouri and continues to
  perform and record.

27
Two of the most renowned musicians in bluegrass
today are Missourians. They are

• Rhonda Vincent (from Kirksville and closely
  associated with the Sally Mountain Park and
  Festival at Queen City)
• Valerie Smith (from Holt).

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• Many bluegrass festivals take place in Missouri
  each year. They include (among many others)
• Starvy Creek Festival (near Conway)
• Bluegrass Pickin Time (near Dixon)
• Fourche Creek Festival (near Doniphan)
• Sally Mountain Festival (near Queen City)
• Old Grassy Spring Festival (near Grassy, rural
  Bollinger County).

29
Missouri Kirksville, specifically is also
home to the Society for the Preservation of
Bluegrass Music of America.
30
Missouri has also been well represented in
Nashville. Several of the most renowned
classic country performers are natives of the
Show-Me State. They include
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• Jan Howard (from West Plains)
• Porter Wagoner (also from West Plains)
• Leroy Van Dyke (from Mora)
• Ferlin Husky (from Flat River, now Park Hills)
• Example Ferlin Husky, Wings of a Dove,
  composed by Willow Springs native Bob Ferguson.

32
And speaking of sacred music, a variety of
vernacular sacred music traditions are important
to Missouris musical life, past and present.
They include
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• The tradition of white spirituals and folk
  hymnody that is closely associated with the
  early-19th-century four-shape tunebook tradition
• Would anyone like to explain the shape-note
  system of notation and the rationale behind it?

34

• Especially important within Missouris musical
  history is the Missouri Harmony, a four-shape
  tunebook published (in Cincinnati) in 1820. It
  was compiled by Allen Carden, a singing-school
  master from Tennessee who was based in St. Louis
  at the time.
• The repertoire found in the Missouri Harmony,
  like that of contemporaneous shape-note
  tunebooks, represents the full stylistic range of
  devotional music sung by Evangelical Protestants
  in the young nations rural hinterlands
  18th-century New England psalmody and fuging
  tunes hymns by Watts, Wesley, and their
  contemporaries set to music by Lowell Mason,
  William Bradbury, and others Southern
  aural/oral-tradition hymns revival spirituals.

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• From the recent edition of Missouri Harmony
• Southern gospel/Brumley publishing tradition
• Old Baptist, Church of Christ, funeral quartets
  (Oregon County), and related a cappella
  traditions situated between four-shape
  tradition and Southern gospel historically and
  stylistically
• Intentionally retrogressive style of chorale
  singing associated with the Lutheran
  Church-Missouri Synod

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• African-American sacred musical traditions in the
  Bootheel, Little Dixie, etc. sparsely
  documented (to my knowledge, at least) will be
  very interesting to explore
• Likewise, African-American secular musical
  traditions in those regions are sparsely
  documented (especially as compared with those of
  Kansas City and St. Louis)

37

• Rockabilly (and post-rockabilly country) in
  southeast Missouri example Narvel Felts
• History of Branson largely new to me might be
  interesting to compare with small-town oprys
  elsewhere in the Ozarks
• RECENT IMMIGRANT POPULATIONS GREAT POTENTIAL
  OPPORTUNITY FOR OUTREACH!
• Concluding illustration of Missouris musical
  crossroads status Missouri Waltz