For the love of Branson: Ozarks decades

Decades are like generations except they last for a set period of time and we all experience them at once. And Branson has had its share of transformative decades.

The sound of Branson is ancient and can be traced to the Scottish Highlands with a fiddle and a bow. But the Song of Branson that we know today began taking form in the 1950s. It was first sung in hills and hollers, but when they started doing an outdoor play out at the Shepherd of the Hills Homestead and the Baldknobbers started performing downtown, the magic was created. The end of the ‘50s was also when Table Rock Lake was formed by the dam and transformed the area into even more of a tourism draw.

The Mabe family that starred as the Baldknobbers in Branson at this time was both visionary as well as a simple reflection of an Ozarks culture that had been here for a few generations at this point. But their show began drawing crowds, and the idea that this town could manifest as a mecca for this type of hillbilly entertainment was born.

The next decade brought the Presleys’ Country Jubilee, the show that would forever be compared to the Baldknobbers as Branson’s Founding families. They decided to build a theatre half way between downtown and Silver Dollar City on a rural stretch of highway. And that highway would ultimately become 76 Country Boulevard lit up for the next 60 years and beyond in our community. For at the end of this decade, the Baldknobbers would join them on Branson’s famous “Strip.”

Two other famous founders of Branson opened their shows in the 1970s, namely The Foggy River Boys and The Plummer Family. And Bob Mabe of the famous Baldknobbers decided to part ways with his family and venture out on his own with Bob-O-Links Country Hoedown located where the current Clay Cooper Theatre stands.

To this day, people talk about the Branson Boom in the 1990s, but the ‘80s saw an explosion of new music shows as well. The Wilkinson Brothers, The Lowe Sisters, The Braschlers and the Sons of Pioneers also began performing in Branson at this time. Furthermore, some important Branson music “scouts” that would bring some big name entertainers to town began to emerge. Chisai Childs who would bring in the likes of Shoji Tabuchi to the community set up shop at the original Starlite Theatre, and Roy Clark launched his celebrity theatre which brought in the majority of the national names to the Branson scene. The Baldknobbers, Bob-O-Links and Lowe Sisters also contributed to bringing big names to town and Loretta Lynn even partnered with the Lowes to perform in their theatre.

But quite frankly, every Branson decade up to this point was leading to the ‘90s and the famous Branson Boom. In December of 1991 a few weeks after I was born, the CBS television program 60 Minutes did a special piece on Branson in which they called us the “live country music capital of the universe.” As one box office manager put it, “the phones never stopped ringing after that.”

Subsequently, the 2000s saw somewhat of a dip in Branson’s entertainment notoriety but the family shows once again rose to prominence. The Hughes, Duttons, Bretts and Haygoods all established themselves in this decade keeping the faith, family and flag moniker alive.

You see, Branson will continue to transform long into the future and we will be here to document it and shepherd our little community into the future. For as they say in the biz “the show must go on.”