Songs of the Ozarks

November 12, 2025November 13, 2025 ~ If You Want My Opinion ~ Leave a comment

I have posted about the rich music tradition that exists in the area around Springfield, Missouri, which is in a region of the country called the Ozarks (a moniker that can be both singular or plural – trust me on this one). Primarily located in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, the Ozarks is characterized by rolling hills, deep hollows, caves, springs, plentiful rivers and streams, steep rocky bluffs, lush vegetation, and rich cultural traditions that can be traced back to Appalachia and further back to Scotland, Ireland, and even Germany. A major hallmark of Ozarks culture is a type of folk music handed down over many generations, a genre that is often referred to in the region as “Old Time” music. Dominant instruments include fiddle, banjo, mandolin, upright bass, and acoustic guitar. There are definite similarities to Bluegrass music, although purists will argue about distinct differences that exist between the genres and even marked variations in style within “Old Time” music according to location within the Ozarks, especially with fiddle playing.

The traditional Ozarks music may be old, but it is far from dead. There are plenty of bands and ensembles performing tunes that date back to the 19^th century, and there are locations throughout the Ozarks that host regular jam sessions where musicians gather to play. One of the oldest is at a former general store in McClurg, a small crossroads in Taney County, Missouri. This weekly jam and potluck supper is hosted by the current owner of the venue, Tom Peters, who is the former Dean of Libraries at Missouri State University in Springfield and was my direct supervisor before we both retired at the end of 2024. One of the most encouraging aspects of Ozarks jam sessions and performances is how often young players in their teens and early 20s are participating. A new generation of “Old Time” musicians is carrying the tradition into the future.

The Ozarks is a large geographic region that even stretches west to encompass small segments of Oklahoma and Kansas and east to include a sliver of Illinois (this is a contentious topic among Ozarkers, who tend to be quite opinionated about the boundaries of the area). Most of the Ozarks is rural, with small towns and villages scattered among the hills and plateaus. There are centers of larger population, such as Fayetteville, Arkansas, home of the state’s flagship university. In Missouri there are larger towns like West Plains, Rolla, Joplin, and Branson. The largest metropolitan area in the Ozarks is Springfield, Missouri. Naturally, there is considerable diversity in musical interest throughout the region, with an emphasis on “Old Time,” gospel, Bluegrass, and country in the rural areas. These genres are also popular in the population centers, along with folk, Americana, rock, pop, jazz, and little bit of everything else. Chappell Roan, one of the country’s latest sensational pop stars, is from Willard, Missouri, a suburb of Springfield.

Promoting and preserving the music of the Ozarks are admirable endeavors, and I am proud to have been involved in such efforts while I was working at the university. I conducted interviews of musicians and vocalists and edited videos of interviews and performances, all of which were featured on the university library’s YouTube channel. Our team explored a variety of music-related topics that are available to watch or listen to on this channel: past and present live music venues along historic Route 66 that crosses the Missouri Ozarks; African-American musical influences in the region; “Ozark Jubilee,” the nationally-televised country music variety show that was broadcast in Springfield from 1955 to 1960; the Gordon McCann folk music collection; and the Max Hunter collection.

Missouri State University Library in Springfield, MO

One of the playlists on the library’s YouTube channel is titled “Songs of the Ozarks,” which was part of the university’s scholarly content associated with its participation in the 2023 Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Festival. The festival featured the history and culture of the Ozarks region, presented in part by the university, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The playlist includes 43 videos of musicians, vocalists, songwriters, bands, and ensembles who are active in the Ozarks region. The interviews and performances were conducted and recorded by Emalee Flatness-Combs, a musician, singer, and songwriter based in the Ozarks who is also an alumna of Missouri State University. The genres covered in this collection include “Old Time,” folk, Bluegrass, country, cowboy, gospel, Americana, rock, and pop.

The following is a sampling of the musical acts included in the “Songs of the Ozarks” playlist.

Randall Chowning – a founder, one of the lead vocalists, and the lead guitarist of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, a rock band formed in 1972 in Springfield.
John Fullerton – “Cowboy John,” a member of the legendary Sons of the Pioneers who has appeared with a wide range of celebrities including Roy Rogers Jr. and the High Riders, Three Trails West, Miss Devon & the Outlaw, and Riders in the Sky.
David Scrivner – a lifelong “Old Time” fiddle player and student of the great Missouri fiddler, Bob Holt; Scrivner won the Arkansas State Fiddle Contest in 2019 and plays fiddle regularly at the McClurg jam.
Sylamore Special – an award-winning Bluegrass band based out of northwest Arkansas that came together in 2021 and have played numerous times at Silver Dollar City amusement park in Branson, Missouri, and also at the Arkansas Country Music Awards.
David Warren – an accomplished Bluegrass musician and jig dancer who played several years with ensembles including the Bluegrass Buck Jumpers and the Bressler Brothers.
Pam Setser – a musician, singer, and songwriter whose career spans decades and has brought her in touch with music legends from Merle Haggard to Doc Watson and Maybelle Carter; she has performed on “Hee Haw” and has been on stage with Grandpa and Ramona Jones, The Whites, and Joni Bishop.

Sylamore Special performing at the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival

There is a rich tradition of music in the Ozarks going back more than 150 years, and so much of that legacy lives on today throughout the region. There is also a lasting influence of indigenous music from tribes that inhabited the Ozarks for many generations before European settlers migrated into the area. And beginning in the late 20^th century, new musical and dance styles were introduced as refugee and immigrant populations from around the world began taking up permanent residence in the Ozarks. The musical landscape is constantly changing in the Ozarks, but fortunately so far, the newcomers are not displacing the old standards. Cultural diversity is a treasure to be valued, and the Ozarks is blessed with an abundance of it.

A Swift Rise to Stardom and Influence

September 13, 2024 ~ If You Want My Opinion ~ Leave a comment

American popular music has produced some unforgettable female icons during my lifetime: Janis Joplin, Dolly Parton, Cher, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Beyonce, Adele, just to name a few. They have all been influential on their fan base, and to some degree, to the public in general. Joplin gave young women permission to experiment with sex and drugs, often to dangerous excess. She died of a heroin overdose. Dolly Parton has always encouraged women with her words and by example to be strong and independent without sacrificing their femininity or sexual charm. Madonna in some ways paralleled the rise to fame of Michael Jackson. She was definitely the queen of pop for a while, more so than Michael’s own sister, Janet. She still holds the record as the biggest selling female artist to date. All of these women enjoyed success here and around the world.

Perhaps these women prepared the way for the female entertainer who has taken the world by storm in the 21^st century and will likely surpass them all at some point. Taylor Swift is so much more than a singer, songwriter, musician, producer, and entertainer. She is a force. With the release of her single “Our Song” in 2006, she became the youngest singer-songwriter to perform an original song and reach the number one spot on the Hot Country Songs chart at the ripe age of seventeen. Two years later she became the youngest person to win the Country Music Association Awards’ top spot. She has won more American Music Awards than anyone else in history. She is the first woman to have four albums in the Billboard 200 chart’s top 10 simultaneously. She also broke Billboard’s record for most number one albums by a female artist. Swift made history again at the 2024 Grammy Awards when she took home the Album of the Year, becoming the first and only person to have won the award four times.

These accolades are phenomenal; however, some of her other accomplishments have served to establish her as one of the most influential women in the country, if not the world. According to some sources, the opening night of Swift’s Eras Tour set a record for the most attended concert ever by a female musical entertainer in the U.S. The tour continued to break attendance records across the country and became the first to surpass $1 billion in revenue. According to Forbes magazine, Swift became a billionaire in 2023 and thus the highest-earning female performer in the music industry. Between vinyl, streaming, and other media, Taylor Swift continues to break sales records in various categories every year.

I couldn’t find an estimate of how many people have seen Swift in concert over the course of her career. Based on stats that are available, close to 10 million people worldwide have attended her Eras tour, which ends in December 2024. She has been a dominant figure in the lives of at least two generations: her adoring fans and the many parents who continue to take their young children to her concerts. It is amazing how many of those parents and children (mostly female but certainly not all) sing along to every word of every song Taylor Swift performs. What a rush that must be for her.

Swift is an outspoken advocate for progressive causes, especially related to women and the LGBTQ population. She is not afraid to let her fans know through public statements and social media where she stands on controversial issues. She is not overtly political, and she attracts fans from across the political divide. Yes, there are Swifties for Trump – they may not agree with her ideologically, but they still love and identify with her music. She doesn’t shy away from publicly revealing her candidate of choice, even on the national level. She backed Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024. She wisely stops short of suggesting who her fans should support, but she strongly encourages them to do their research and vote their conscience. Shortly after the presidential debate between Trump and Harris in September 2024, Taylor Swift sent messages on her social media platforms making her choice known and including a link to a voter registration site. According to multiple sources, over 400,000 people clicked on the link in the 24 hours after Swift posted it. That’s power, and I would guess that very few people in this country have that level of influence.

For those who still think that Taylor Swift’s work is just a bunch of shallow revenge music obsessing over her broken heart, I suspect they haven’t followed her career closely enough. Her latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, has considerable depth thematically in places. Her lyrics really started to show her maturity as a songwriter with the 2020 release of Folklore. Okay, perhaps her musical compositions are not complex or interesting enough for some people, but I maintain she is writing good stuff. The song “This Is Me Trying” from the Folklore album packs a powerful punch that almost channels Bruce Springsteen in my mind. Oh, one more thing. My wife and I live in Missouri and are Kansas City Chiefs fans. We absolutely love seeing Taylor Swift at the football games and think the budding romance between the rock star and Chiefs tight end, Travis Kelce, is a refreshing American celebrity love story. They are adorable. Go ahead, call me a Swiftie. I’m “fearless.”

Source consulted:
https://theweek.com/culture/entertainment/1025810/taylor-swift-records-2023

Images:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Swift

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

August 24, 2024 ~ If You Want My Opinion ~ Leave a comment

My wife and I took a brief trip to Cleveland, Ohio in August, 2024. We had hoped to do so in 2020 while my wife was working temporarily in Fort Wayne, Indiana, when I could fly in, and we could then drive over to Cleveland. But the world shut down when COVID struck. We both love rock music, and as an amateur rock and pop musician, I was interested in visiting one of the top destinations the city has to offer: the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. However, we both agreed that we would need more than a single objective to justify flying from our home in Springfield, Missouri, through O’Hare airport in Chicago, and then on to Cleveland. We found one. We discovered that one of our favorite bands, Hootie and the Blowfish, was touring in 2024 and that Cleveland was one of their stops. They were going to be playing at the magnificent Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, about 20 minutes south of Cleveland. We had a twofer and were good to go!

Neither one of us knew much about Cleveland and didn’t have high expectations beyond what we planned to do while in the city. We were pleasantly surprised. Situated on the southwestern shore of Lake Erie, Cleveland is taking advantage of tourism with great parks and beaches right on the water. The views are breathtaking. With a scenic skyline, good hotels and restaurants, stadiums, arenas, and several major attractions, Cleveland really is a place to explore. The city claims to be the birthplace of Rock & Roll music, primarily because radio station WJW disc jockey Alan Freed coined the phrase “Rock & Roll” to describe the upbeat black rhythm and blues music he was playing in 1951. Of course, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was ground zero for us, and it also exceeded our expectations.

The building is a modern structure with a huge glass atrium at the entrance. It has six levels beginning on the entrance floor, but the tour starts one level below with the Ahmet Ertegun Main Exhibit Hall, which carries visitors from rock’s earliest stars to those newly emerging contemporary musicians. There are thousands of items on display, along with feature films, videos, interactive kiosks, reading material, and plenty of music. This exhibit has the museums largest displays devoted to single artists, bands, subgenres, and movements of Rock & Roll history and the industry: Revolutionary Women in History, Hip Hop, Roots of Rock, Pioneers of Rock, Sun Records, Cities & Sounds, the music of Cleveland and the Midwest, and so much more.

Level 1 has a ticket booth, a café, large museum store, and the Klipsch Stage where performances are scheduled throughout the year. Level 2 is called “The Garage” where visitors can sign up to play various instruments with or without a house band in a setting that looks very much like a real garage. I played an electric guitar (something I never do) and sang “Midnight Rider” by the Allman Brothers Band with the help of a house drummer and a bass player, who also sang harmony with me. Although it wasn’t my best performance of that song, it was still fun to play in such an iconic venue. This level also has a large collection of different types of instruments and sound booths for visitors to jam on their own. The Les Paul exhibit is on this floor too, paying homage to the American jazz, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid-body electric guitar, and his prototype served as inspiration for the Gibson Les Paul guitar.

Level 3 is focused almost completely on the Hall of Fame inductees, with the Inductee Signature Gallery, New Inductee exhibit, and the Connor Theater featuring the Power of Rock Experience. Visitors can look through alphabetic lists of inductees and a large chronological display of the all the inductees going back to the Hall of Fame’s inception in 1986. This floor also has the New Inductee and the In Memoriam exhibits. The Connor Theater is on this floor, where visitors can watch a 15-minutes video highlighting the Hall of Fame induction nights from the past.

Level 4 features the Pink Floyd tour replica of The Wall, designed to mirror the Berlin performance in July 21, 1990. This level is also the location of the Foster Theater, which is used for onsite education programs or private rentals. The theater has hosted hundreds of rock star talks and legendary rock films over the years. Level 5, along with some of the ramps in the museum, has individual display cases devoted to the legends of Rock & Roll, from the Bee Gees and the Doobie Brothers to Public Enemy to Tom Petty.

Level 6 is devoted to an exclusive exhibit that Bon Jovi unveiled with the museum in 2018. This full-floor showcase spans four decades of the band’s career along with never-before-seen artifacts from each of the band members. Visitors are immersed in the band’s story and music from inception to the present. Huge video presentations are joined by text panels and display cases filled with musical instruments, clothing, and loads of memorabilia from the band.

Organizations like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that establish themselves as authorities of a particular subject area all have one thing in common. They always stir up controversy, mostly about who or what is included, but more contentiously, excluded from their lists. This museum obviously recognizes this dilemma and even seeks to address it by allowing visitors to submit names of performers or bands they think should be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Many writers over the years have discussed this topic, and some of them have challenged the Hall of Fame on its choices of inductees through the decades. One of the most ironic exclusions is Huey Lewis and the News, the band that had a major hit with “The Heart of Rock & Roll,” which actually mentions Cleveland at the very end of the song!

I certainly had my share of questions come to mind as we strolled through each level of the museum. I was disappointed to see how much more space and almost reverential attention was given to Elvis Presley on one wall, while on the opposite wall a smaller display featured Chuck Berry, often considered the Father of Rock & Roll. I think those two positions should have been swapped. One of my favorite wall displays was for Jimi Hendrix, probably the greatest guitarist in rock history. I was baffled to learn that bands with place names such as Chicago were inducted fairly late in the game and that the bands Kansas and Boston still haven’t made it. At the same time, I was delighted to see so much attention given to Wanda Jackson, an Oklahoma native who got her start on ABC Television’s “Ozark Jubilee” broadcast out of Springfield, Missouri from 1955 to 1960. She later became known as the Queen of Rockabilly, a title she still holds to this day. As of this post date, she is still with us.

We were able to pack a lot in just two full days while still having some down time walking along the shore of Lake Erie, enjoying some great meals and drinks, and exploring the public spaces on the water around the Hall of Fame. On top of all that, we were lucky enough to catch Hootie and the Blowfish back together again for a national tour. Oh, and their opening acts were Edwin McClain and Collective Soul. For people who love rock music, it just doesn’t get much better than our quick trip to Cleveland.

Hootie and the Blowfish at Blossom Music Center (Ohio)

Sir Elton John

May 30, 2024 ~ If You Want My Opinion ~ Leave a comment

There is no entertainer whose work I have admired more than that of Elton John. His 1974 Greatest Hits may have been the first album I ever personally owned, only because I have a sister who is about six years my senior, and I listened to her albums and singles until I discovered Elton John on the radio as I approached my formative teen years. I played that vinyl until it warped. Three years earlier I had started learning to the play the guitar, at first with a few lessons from a fellow who loved old folk tunes, but I quickly began picking out chords on my own and learning to play by ear. I had been singing both melody and harmony parts since I was a young child, mostly in church, school, or with family and relatives.

Elton John concert, February 1, 2022 (Kansas City)

The songs that Elton John and his lyrical collaborator, Bernie Taupin, produced interpreted the human condition for me and countless others around the globe. By his own testimony, one absolute constant in Elton John’s roller-coaster life has been his love and admiration for his songwriting partner. It was their songs that largely inspired me to start playing music, and I have been playing and performing them ever since. I still cover several of their tunes to this day (on guitar and keys), including the brilliantly composed “Your Song,” which I am still astounded to know that Taupin wrote at the ripe old age of 19.

If I had to choose one word to characterize Elton John’s life, it would have to be “outrageous,” an adjective that he has used from time to time in public appearances and in writing. By his own admission, Elton John has an addictive personality and spent many decades fighting horrible battles with drugs before finally going sober. He has a nasty temper nurtured by his wealth and fame, a personality trait that in my view is his least attractive. “I’m perfectly aware of how ridiculous my life is, and perfectly aware of what an arsehole I look like when I lose my temper over nothing,” he writes in his 2019 memoir simply titled Me. Of course, he is known for being self-indulgent, something he shares with many other pop stars of his generation. He is fairly critical of himself and open about what he perceives as his failures.

Elton John has endured his share of sadness: a troubled relationship with his parents, the many friends he has lost to AIDS, his own broken personal relationships, and the many years he was imprisoned by cocaine and alcohol. Those low points are perhaps balanced out with times of great joy, especially his hundreds and hundreds of live performances through the decades, the part of his career that he perhaps loved the most. He found what seems to be enduring love with his husband, David Furnish, and the couple have two sons, Zachary and Elijah. In the end, for multiple reasons connected to his upbringing and his rise to fame, I get the sense that Elton John had a very difficult time growing up, even long after he reached adulthood. Even so, I don’t see him as a tragic figure. I see him as an incredibly talented musician, songwriter, and entertainer who from a young age wanted to be loved and needed to be the best at what he was doing. By my account, he succeeded.

In a post from a few years back, I mentioned that I missed an opportunity to see Elton John perform when I was studying abroad in England in 1984. Fortunately, my wife and I were able to catch him in Kansas City in February, 2022, for his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour. He was showing obvious signs of his 75 years on the planet by then, but his voice was still incredibly strong. Yes, I know that backtracks and other enhancements make it possible for concerts to sound almost flawless, but Elton John has been extremely critical of performers who lip sync at their shows. I’m assuming he doesn’t. He has probably tuned his songs down a half or whole step from the original, and he has younger vocalists to help with the stratospheric notes, but he also rearranges songs to make them more manageable for his septuagenarian voice. Some of the tunes don’t sound the way most of us remember them, but they are still wonderful songs, and he remains a fabulous and generous entertainer.