They Love Mountain Music

Springfield, Mo., "queen city of the Ozarks" (pop. 96,350) has convinced millions, through radio and TV, that it is the home of country music. While other radio stations were scratching out pop music on wax, Springfield's KWTO (Keep Watching the Ozarks) gave its listeners live, howling hillbillies.

Two years ago the Springfield hillbillies began moaning and wailing on a two-hour KWTO show called Ozark Jubilee, and ABC put 25 minutes of it on its radio network. Six months later the show was on the ABC-TV network, soon grabbed 90 minutes of prime television time (Sat. 7:30 p.m., E.S.T.) three weeks out of four. Last week Springfield could lay claim to being the hillbilly capital of the world.

Hillbilly Boom. At last count, 121 hillbillies were dancing, singing and strumming on Jubilee, ambitious youngsters were washing dishes, waiting for their chance to howl their way to success, and Springfield had become accustomed to high-heeled guitar players breezing around town in expensive cars. Jubilee executives figure that they will squeeze about $2,500,000 out of country music this year.

The record sales of Jubilee's star, Clyde Julian ("Red") Foley, have topped 2 1/2 million. Foley and two other Springfield hillbillies (Webb Pierce and Eddy Arnold) sell close to half the country-music records marketed in the U.S. Six years ago Pierce was selling clothes in Sears, Roebuck; now he is making something close to $200,000 a year. Foley can command up to $1,500 a night, but does only four or five dates a month because he "doesn't want to take all that money to the graveyard.'' Jubilee has always been "a two-camera, no-ulcer show," and manages to remain casual despite the recent addition of a third camera.

Hayride & Opry. Springfield's claim to hillbilly distinction annoys both Nashville, long the mecca of hillbilly music, and Cincinnati. Cincinnati takes pride in Midwestern Hayride (Wed. 10:30 p.m.), which consists of fancy Dans caterwauling heart-rending laments and pretty cowgirls yodeling morosely as they pluck at guitars. The show turns around Master of Ceremonies Willie Thall, a part-time hillbilly from Chicago, who talks corny on mike, but is a city slicker off.

Nashville's bid, more impressive than Cincinnati's, rests on the corn-fed program Grand Ole Opry, an NBC radio show for the past 30 years, and now an ABC-TV show too. The radio show has not missed a Saturday night broadcast since 1925, has a live audience of about 5,000 every week, has drawn over the years 5,000,000 visitors to Nashville to see Grand Ole Opry.

The sentiments expressed in hillbilly music are far from subtle, but they are forthright ("I've been workin' hard the whole week long/But I'm gonna have some wine, women and song"), candid ("If she's a honkytonk angel, I'm the devil that made her that way"), sincere ("I mean a lot to my Mom and Pop/I just hope I mean somethin' to you").

Why is it so successful? Says Ralph D. Foster, mastermind of Springfield's hillbilly enterprises: "There are more country people in America than any other kind of people. Most city people were from the country and are still sentimentally attached to it."

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