Walkin' Preacher

Ol' "Doc" Bible was a hard rock reliable preacher in old Mizzoo;

When he got lyrical,

Many was the miracle

"Doc" was liable to do.

These lines belong to a fast-beat patter song, Missouri Walking Preacher, written in 1949. It was recorded and did fairly well in Midwestern jukeboxes, though it never made the hit parade.

Last week it looked as though the song might have been an error instead of a hit. Leathery-faced Guy Howard, 59, who wrote a poignant book, Walkin' Preacher of the Ozarks (TIME, Nov. 20, 1944), about his itinerant evangelism in the mountains, had heard the song and gone to law about it. The piece, he charged, was a "burlesque on me and maligns my work and Christianity." In St. Louis federal court, Evangelist Howard asked $1,000,000 damages from RCA Victor, Decca and Capitol record companies.*

While defense attorneys argued that 1) the song was not written about Howard and does not name him, and 2) the lyrics are laudatory rather than defamatory, the hill-country minister pressed his claim that Missouri Walking Preacher invaded his right of privacy and blackened his character. Said he sadly: "The boogie-woogie, beer-hall music of this song has brought me much grief and caused friends to question my faith and integrity."

At week's end, RCA and Decca settled out of court for about $4,000 apiece; Capitol, for the moment, was still fighting it out.

* Neither Tunesmith Willard Robison nor the publisher was cited in the suit.

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