For the love of Branson: The river where your heart sings

     I want to take y’all back to one of my earliest memories. I was seated on a makeshift raft that was designed to roll across the stage of the Mel Tillis Theatre. But of course, in this case, the stage was covered in fog and meant to represent the Mississippi River. My grandpa played the part of Huckleberry Finn and I was Huck Jr.

“River in the rain, sometimes at night you look like a long white train,” my granddaddy sang in his iconic baritone voice. You see, we were performing a medley from the Broadway smash hit “Big River.” Simultaneously we were also paying tribute to two of my grandpa’s biggest influences, his dear friend Roger Miller who wrote the musical and his favorite author Mark Twain upon which the characters were based. And as I’ve reflected on that moment over the years, I’ve realized that it didn’t get more Midwestern than this showcase.

While my grandpa was a Southerner by birth, he became a Midwestern icon along with the other Branson stars. For no bard represented the Midwest spirit more than Oklahoma’s Roger Miller, and no author presented the story of the Heartland of America more than Missouri’s Mark Twain. And the premise I am presenting in this piece is that the Branson performers became the Midwest’s biggest stars.

This idea of regional stars is unique but certainly matters when telling the story of America’s music history. We all know the stars of the Wild West for example. One immediately thinks of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and even some later stars such as Marty Robbins and Chris Ledoux. Of course, this is distinguished from the legends of the West Coast which would instead include artists like The Beach Boys and Tupac Shakur across genres. In the Northeastern United States, you have figures such as Frank Sinatra, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. And finally, the Southern U.S. has as many musical legends as any region. Johnny Cash, Alabama, Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton and the Allman Brothers just to name a few.

Furthermore, the ironic thing about this idea is that many of the stars we are attributing to the Midwest actually came from the South but reached the zenith of their careers in the Ozarks. Now to conclude this section it wouldn’t be fair to this region of the country without including the Midwest’s influence through Detroit and its Motown sound or even the legendary bands like Styx that hailed from Chicago. However, part of the premise behind naming Mel Tillis, Shoji Tabuchi, Roy Clark and Mickey Gilley icons of the Heartland are the values they espoused during their performances.

We can all identify the ethos of the Northeastern states in the bravado of Frank Sinatra for example or the populist spirit of Bruce Springsteen. But the Midwest has its own homespun values that were exemplified on a Branson stage, namely Faith, Family and Flag. And why was this regional influence so important? Because the Branson audiences were made up of visitors from Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and every place that characterizes itself as the Midwest. Branson entertained those people close to home and that’s what made it so special. Furthermore, the audiences who came to Branson saw right through the artists who were fly by night and didn’t make their permanent home in the town during our boom era. The biggest stars who came here but didn’t live in the area such as Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson didn’t last nearly as long and the ones who brought their families.

Finally, one last point needs to be made in this study. The pantheon of stars who came to Branson weren’t random. Instead, they were national figures in a unique way. I have always contended that the slate of stars who called Branson home were the staples of the American talk show circuit in the 1960s and 70s. My grandpa, for example, was known to non-country fans through his many appearances on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.” The other Branson celebrities such as Tony Orlando and Glen Campbell had television shows of their own on major networks. And lastly, that friendship we started this essay with between Mel Tillis and Roger Miller was born when they were both members of Porter Waggener’s band which reached millions of Americans on a regular basis. How ironic that America’s stars became Branson icons and they made their homes in the Midwestern United States.