“Shorty, as everyone called him, was born October 7, 1901,” read the 1965 obituary of Clifford Wilkinson. It mentions his string band called “Shorty Wilks and his Jolly Ranch Hands.” For his day job, he operated a confectionary in Sullivan, Missouri.
We’ve seen “Shorty” identified in one photo as the tall bass player, but in another shot the same gent is holding a fiddle. Calling tall folks “Shorty” wasn’t uncommon and was thought amusing. In his Oct. 28, 1965, obituary in the Tri-County News (Sullivan Missouri), “Shorty” is identified as Clifford Wilkinson. In addition to heading up a string band that played on numerous radio stations and played for dances, he operated a confectionery in Sullivan. He died suddenly at the age of 63 years, 11 months and 26 days.
A Christmas postcard of the Jolly Ranch Hands without the dancers was inherited by Dr. Kenneth Johnson whose mother managed Baecker’s Place, a dance hall just south of Morrison, a village in Gasconade County. Johnson, now a professor at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, grew up in a bedroom “separated from the dance hall by only a thin wall” and recalled falling asleep every Saturday night to the sound of country music. His mother couldn’t recall anything about the band except they hailed from Sullivan. Some on that town’s Chamber of Commerce gave him leads and Dr. Johnson began a quest to identify other groups that played dances at Baecker’s. To his amazement small town Ozark newspapers were full of ads promoting both country and even small/big bands who played VFWs, Grange Halls, and even floored barns.
In addition to the newspaper ads, he discovered a fantastic pictorial history of live music in rural Missouri. The bands all had professional photographs taken for publicity. Johnson collected several hundred and tracked down the few surviving musicians and relatives who identified the performers. A well-produced book, Moonlight Serenade to City Lights: Rare Images of Bands and Orchestras from the Dance Hall Era in Missouri, was published by Reedy Press (2014) from his research. Copies are available from the Gasconade Historical Society for $35.
Most of the images are from the 1940s and ‘50s. The names of the groups capture that era’s ambivalence about identifying commercial country music with the word ‘hillbilly’. Many of the band members dressed in Western togs and added to the leader’s name “ranch hand,” “rambler,” or “rhythm boys.” There were defiant exceptions—”Pappy Cheshire and His Hillbilly Band,” “Missouri Bob and His Hillbilly Pals.” What chord long time KMOX performer Roy Queen and his Brush Apes hoped to strike in listeners is unknown. Roy built a venue near Warrenton that hosted many well-known country performers.
Like the Fredericksburg Military Band, posted earlier, these live dance bands have disappeared from the rural Missouri scene. Its repertoire may have come from commercially printed music or, in the case of the country-western bands, learned from phonograph records. Both genres had a near-folky culture and sound compared to the canned, corporately controlled music that followed. A poignant movie in the mold of The Last Picture Show or Paper Moon could be made centered around the closing of a rural dance hall or the final ice cream social concert of a small-town military band.
A few of the more talented musicians ended up in Hollywood or Nashville. Lawrence Welk’s celebrated South Dakota-born accordionist, Myron Floren, played for a spell with The Buckeye Four and the Shady Valley Gang, a St. Louis countrified group who played regional dances and had a KWK radio show.
Vintage Images is a column we provide to River Hills Traveler, a monthly publication. Lens & Pen Press publishes all-color books on the Ozarks. Our book, “See the Ozarks: The Touristic Image,” showcases many of the primary tourist destinations across the Ozarks. It is available for $22.50 (10% off retail), postage paid. Click on Buy our Books
