PATTI MCCORD: She was just my grandmother.

[laughs] You know?

She was just puttering around the house like any old grandmother would.

She was wonderful.

She would sing songs with us and tell us stories, and, you know, which I'm sure was quite different from other people's grandparents.

But I just assumed that's the way all grandmothers were.

[music playing] May Kennedy McCord is one of the Ozarks most beloved personalities.

Her writings and philosophies graced newspapers and radio programs from the early 1930s to the 1960s.

Although she never published any books herself, her words remain an homage to a simpler time and a snapshot of life in the Ozarks of the mid-20th century.

My guests today are Dr. Kristene Sutliff and Patti McCord, who have recently published a new book, Queen of the Hillbillies, a collection of May Kennedy McCord's writings from throughout her long and varied career.

Join us as we talk about the fascinating life of this Ozarks philosopher.

NARRATOR: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally-produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

You know, if we had a special opening thing that said, this is a PBS special, "OzarksWatch Video Magazine" special, we'd sure run it today, because this edition of "OzarksWatch Video Magazine" is about as special as it's going to get.

I have been looking forward to this program for a long time.

Hi.

I'm Dale Moore, and, as always, I'm tickled to death that you're with us for this program today.

You know, in my house when I was growing up as a kid, there were three names that were spoken with tremendous reverence; uh, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Billy Graham, and May Kennedy McCord.

And I am so delighted to be joined on "OzarksWatch Video Magazine" today by a coup-- one dear friend of mine and one new friend of mine, who have written a book chronicling all of the writings of May Kennedy McCord.

Kris Sutliff, Patti McCord, welcome to OzarksWatch.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So good to have you here.

You know, I'm going to get right to it.

I'm on my third go-around on this book.

And when I pick this book up, uh, I'm one of those readers that, typically, I've got two or three books going.

I'll start a book and go-- you know, a nonfiction, or a fiction, or something else.

And when I started this book, what I found myself doing was stopping, and which is uncommon for me because I'm a straight-through kind of a reader.

And I stopped, and I started over, and I stopped, and I started over.

And I would read something and say, you know what, I remember when I was a kid, I remember that.

So let's get started right at the very beginning of how this project started.

How did you all start your collaboration on this book?

Well, Patti came to my office one day, looking for some guidance about putting together an art exhibit of her brother's work.

Mhm.

And I didn't know anything about it, but I knew who to point her to.

DALE MOORE: Right.

But she'd been directed to me as Director of Ozarks Studies Institute, and so we just sat and chatted.

Then, once I told her, well, I'm not the one you need to see, but here's where you go, and we were-- I said, are you related to May Kennedy McCord, by any chance?

And from there, it was exciting, because that was a reverent name in my house too.

[laughs] My dad was an over-the-road trucker, but when he was home, he had to listen to Mae Kennedy McCord.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

And he would just shake his head and say, that May, she sure is a character.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

And so we just talked, and we talked about how it's sad that May's works are not collected anywhere, and so she's kind of passing out of memory.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

Only the old-timers like us can remember.

And we kept saying, well, you know, somebody ought to collect her stuff.

And we said that two or three times, and then we kind of looked at each other and said, well, we're somebody.

Yeah, yeah.

KRISTENE SUTLIFF: So that's how it started.

So it didn't really start as a book project between the two.

No.

Uh, there are papers, boxes of her material that had been passed around the family.

And someone died, or moved, or whatever, they'd send it to the next one.

And I ended up with this stuff.

And I had it in the garage for several days, for several years.

And finally, one day I was looking at that stuff, and I said, I ought to see what's in there.

And then I started going through it, and I thought, you know, my children might really like to have this.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

There were letters from Carl Sandburg and from their old newspaper articles, and things she'd written that may-- probably have never been published.

So I thought, this was her life work, and nobody has really chronicled this.

And it's scattered, hither and yon.

And, you know, it was in magazines, it was a newspaper columns, it was in articles that covered her speaking engagements.

And so I decided maybe it was time to pull it together.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

I had no-- I've never written a book.

I'm not a scholar.

I had no idea how to do it.

So when Kris suggested, well, maybe we should do that, I was on it.

Yeah, yeah.

I, uh-- I mean, the book, it's like eating a home-cooked, you know, blackberry cobbler.

[laughs] Can I have another piece, please?

I mean, it's that sort of read.

That's sweet.

DALE MOORE: And the thing that I read-- the first time I read through this, and I went and I read it a second time immediately, was remembering May Kennedy McCord, where you talked about your grandmother.

Introduce us, and remind those of us who remembered her, but those new viewers that maybe not know who she was, help us remember May Kennedy McCord.

Well, she was born in 1880.

That's a long time ago.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

PATTI MCCORD: And she kept her middle name.

So "Kennedy" was her family name.

May Kennedy McCord.

And she grew up most of her life in Galena, down in Stone County.

DALE MOORE: Right.

PATTI MCCORD: And then they moved to Springfield, when her husband took-- was promoted to a sales job.

Now, he was a salesman, so he traveled a lot.

So she was at home without anything to do.

Well, that was great for her, because that meant she could join with different groups, and she had time to do those things that she really-- she really loved.

DALE MOORE: Right.

And starting in the late '20s, then she was-- she started to write.

And she was writing for Otto Rayburn's material, for his books or his magazines.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

And then the Springfield newspapers picked her up.

And because she had been so active in writers groups, and the Hillcrofters, and other groups of like-minded people who wanted to savage the history of the Ozarks, she decided that her column should always contain information that other people sent her.

And when I started looking at this, I realized a difference with the way she wrote books from some of the others who'd chronicled the Ozarks was that she always left their voice.

She didn't collect information and then edit it together.

She actually put in there what Ray Martin, or whoever sent her something, what they said.

And she felt that was so much a part of who-- of what needed to be said about the Ozarks.

And she always credited it.

She gave the name, and so people would know who it was.

She gave their town.

DALE MOORE: Mhm.

And then as time went on, she became better known.

And she spoke from New York to Los Angeles, and had a radio program in St. Louis and was really very well-known.

But the major thing, I think, was she kept going to events in the Ozarks.

They were her people.

So if there was a family reunion, or a town fish fry, or a square dance, May was there.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's kind of who she was.

You know, when I read this, it struck me, and I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before, but she was-- she was on the radio.

She was truly a multimedia-- Yes.

You know, today, we don't give that a second thought.

I mean, multimedia's such a common sort of a thing.

But here, what, '40s and '50s, she's doing multimedia work then, which was pretty extraordinary.

Well, and don't forget that, really, her first thing was that she was a balladeer.

And I think that's what set her apart from Vance Randolph and Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey, the wonderful poet, and others was that when she would go out and speak, she would always pepper her lectures with a ballad or two.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

PATTI MCCORD: And then, of course, she has ballads of the Library of Congress, and there are places you can still find them online.

Yeah.

Kris, what was the most challenging part of this project for you as an editor?

[laughs] Where to start, or how to organize, or-- Organize.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

And we changed our minds numerous times.

And we spent hours and hours on the phone.

And then Patti'd come to town, and we'd spend hours and hours at a dining room table.

And, uh, we-- you know, it was going to be chronological, and then it was going to be radio and newspaper.

And finally, we decided, no, we've got to go with topics.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

And the second most challenging was cutting it to get it down to few enough words that the University of Arkansas press-- DALE MOORE: Yeah, you said in a presentation-- --would take it.

--that your publisher said, you've got to reduce this, you've got to reduce this, which is the worst thing a writer wants to hear.

PATTI MCCORD: Absolutely.

KRISTENE SUTLIFF: Well, we thought we'd done that before we ever presented it to them.

We thought we had the bare bones.

And they said, this is great, we're excited, we want this.

But it was about 175,000 words.

And they said, you're going to have to get it down to 120.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

So we spent the next year, a solid year back, and forth on the phone, and we didn't cut things unless we both agreed.

And, you know, sometimes, we'd have assignments, meanwhile.

And I'd go through it, oh, I can do without that.

And then I talked to Patti.

Oh, no, that was so important to my grandmother, you know?

Or she'd want to cut something, and I'd say, oh, I love that.

And so we finally got it down below 120, and we sent it to them again.

And they said, well, this is great, but, meanwhile, times have gotten harder, and now it's got to be below 100,000, preferable even 90.

And we decided, we're not even going to aim for 90, but we'll get it like two words under 100, and we did.

So essentially, you have enough material, maybe, for even-- for another book.

But not ours.

It's too much work.

And I'm too old.

We're too old and tired.

I don't know.

The way I believe this book is being received, you may be forced into editing another version whether you want to or not.

The book that I would like-- if I were 15 years younger, I would write a book about her ballads, because I have a collection of her ballads.

And there's such history about ballading in the Ozarks and, of course, in the country.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

But that's not happening.

When-- as a child, and you were at Grandma's house, did you have a sense that she was a big deal?

PATTI MCCORD: No, of course not.

She was just my grandmother.

[laughs] You know?

She was just puttering around the house like any old grandmother would.

She was wonderful.

She would sing songs with us and tell us stories, although, which I'm sure was quite different from other people's grandparents, but I just assumed that's the way all grandmothers were.

DALE MOORE: Yeah, yeah.

You know, one of the things that I liked early on in the book in the early chapter here, it starts with, who is a hillbilly?

PATTI MCCORD: Right.

Because that's a common question that those of us that are hillbillies or from this area, because there's this caricature, of course, of what a hillbilly is.

And she started off by talking-- Art Galbreath and just a beautiful-- I'm going to read just a little bit of it.

After some years of reading, I'm beginning to wonder and to find myself conjecturing on the somewhat lazy-- hazy character known as the "hillbilly."

One story I read leaves me particularly picturing the hillbilly character as a lank, solemn people who almost never smile, and who live according to a code of morals that originated centuries ago.

I mean, what grand writing that-- and that's what this is filled with is that kind of very verbose, you know-- so after you read this depiction-- I'll ask both of you what a hillbilly is-- did this make you understand what being a hillbilly is better than you thought you knew?

Probably.

Although, I think I'm proud to call myself a hillbilly, and so I'm with May in resisting the caricature of the, you know, lazy ones lying around, smoking corncob pipes.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I don't do that.

But, you know, I'm proud to be from the Ozarks.

I love the Ozarks.

And it was good to find a kindred spirit who so fiercely defends and upholds the hillbilly.

I was really taken by how true to the language and the characterizations that she was.

As I said, as I was reading this, my mind would stop, and I thought, I remember that exact kind of characterization or saying that somebody would say.

I was raised on a farm west of Mount Vernon, out in the country.

Something similar.

And we put up-- you know, we butchered hogs, and did a garden, and put up hay.

And so as I was reading it, I thought it was like kind of watching an old, old home movie for me.

PATTI MCCORD: Nice.

Is that the feel you were going for when you wrote this book to conjure up those kind of memories, or-- because you managed.

PATTI MCCORD: No, I think-- KRISTENE SUTLIFF: No.

PATTI MCCORD: No, I think we were just trying to present what May had written.

KRISTENE SUTLIFF: We just wanted to preserve May's legacy.

Yeah.

Yes.

What was the most surprising-- or was there something that was utterly surprising as you went through this project-- Oh, Kris?

--that kind of caught you off guard?

You caught me off guard.

[laughter] Well, I'll tell you, there was one instance in here where she was describing Thomas Hart Benton.

And she was not a-- Yes, yes.

She was not a big fan of Thomas Hart Benton.

Can you recount that story a little bit or recall what-- Well, yes, because what was happening was that there-- but she didn't like the fact that he'd presented these musicians, these Ozarks musicians according to the stereotype that we're talking about here.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

And apparently, the mother wanted him arrested for the way that her boys had been presented.

And apparently, May was invited by the newspaper to do the review of this piece of art.

And Thomas Hart Benton said, let her have at it.

[laughter] Oh, that struck me as a-- I mean, there's so many.

Just about the time I'd read something and go, well, it can't get any better than that.

Then, you come across pictures in the parlor.

And, you know-- PATTI MCCORD: Oh, I love that one.

--if you remember your childhood at all from this era, I mean, what she describes in here, the pictures that are on the wall, I could almost recapture the smells of some of my old-- you know, my aunts' homes and houses just by reading the depictions that she did here.

How many pieces altogether did she write for-- I mean, did you did you count those up?

PATTI MCCORD: Oh, gosh no.

Hundreds, maybe.

Thousands?

PATTI MCCORD: And I'm sure we-- KRISTENE SUTLIFF: Thousands.

PATTI MCCORD: --didn't get everything.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

Because she wrote for so many different small magazines.

You know, her first one was for her husband's-- her husband was a salesman-- for his journal called The-- KRISTENE SUTLIFF: Sample Case.

--Sample Case, and no one's ever heard of that.

So there must be a lot of those kinds of places.

Yeah.

And she did have some national exposure too in some of her pieces.

PATTI MCCORD: Oh, sure.

Well, she-- Uh, the-- PATTI MCCORD: She wrote an article for Field & Stream about being the wife of a fisherman, and that was funny.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

That's when she says that, you know, fishing's-- fishing's not a recreation.

It's a serfdom.

DALE MOORE: [laughs] Yeah.

And she described the first time that she left Galena and came to Springfield.

And she-- how'd she described that?

As the mecca or some-- she used this term to describe coming to Springfield, and just the most unusual way of describing it.

But it just-- PATTI MCCORD: The great mecca.

--makes you sit and chuckle.

What I remember most in my grandmother and my mother listening to May Kennedy McCord was that they would continually chuckle over something.

There was just-- it was always humorous and kind of uplifting, and even when she wrote about things like death and burial.

PATTI MCCORD: Oh, that article is a scream.

It's a scream.

KRISTENE SUTLIFF: Very, yes.

I mean, the different customs and kind of reporting on the customs.

Just when you think you know everything that there is to know about the Ozarks, a book like this comes along, and it just literally kind of blows your mind.

Let me-- I just got to pick up a couple more here that just tickled me to no end.

Uh.

Oh.

[laughs] Over where she's talking about superstitions and granny cures.

Well, there are-- I mean, there are so many granny cures that I had forgotten about.

If you stick a nail in your foot, pull the nail out and stick it into a piece of tallow just as far as it had been stuck in your foot, and the foot will heal right away.

[laughs] Makes sense to me.

Hey, if you don't have tetanus shots, why not?

Yeah.

Well, if you want to cure a sore throat, you get the refuse in the nest from a mockingbird that is sitting on three eggs-- no more, no less-- and dissolve it in a glass of lukewarm water and gargle it.

[laughs] Now that is whole time remedies that are at the top.

So as you go through it, I mean, everything from the Ozarks country down through seasons and celebrations, it's just a compendium of what's happening in the Ozarks.

Did you enjoy it?

Did you have fun doing this?

I did, I did.

I did.

Yeah?

I think I spent more time on those, more hours, I know that I did on my dissertation.

But this was way more fun than my dissertation, too.

DALE MOORE: Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

I mean, it's like-- I've tabbed it so many times, it's like, where do you go-- where do you go next, you know?

What do you-- what's the-- possibly makes this better than the last thing that you just read?

It's kind of like supper warmed over again and again and again.

So-- PATTI MCCORD: Nice.

Yeah.

So what-- PATTI MCCORD: Thank you.

You know, and the pictures, the picture that you have here, there are some old-timey pictures that are in here.

She was a person that loved hats, that was-- Oh, yes.

In fact, people used to make fun of her hats.

We purposely chose one of the pictures that has a really silly hat-- [laughs] because that was so much-- And that's what I remember.

Even when she would show up at our house, she always had these little funny hats on her head.

[laughs] DALE MOORE: Yeah, yeah.

Well, it is an absolutely, you know, glorious book and everything that's in it.

What have the reviews been like?

What have the-- you been talking to people.

What's the reaction been to the book?

Very positive.

Good.

Very positive.

We love Kaitlyn McConnell's review, and she did an extensive one on her Ozarks Alive.

Wayne Glenn has posted a long one on Facebook.

Brooks Blevins had very positive things to say about it.

And, of course, I respect him as the preeminent Ozarks scholar, so-- I almost put him up there with Billy Graham when I'm talking about the Ozarks.

If he'd been around here back then, that would have been a name in your household, probably.

And just my friends and neighbors just are enjoying it.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know.

I can't imagine, you know, how you could have improved upon what you've done here.

And it's just a-- it's a beautiful book.

KRISTENE SUTLIFF: Thank you.

So the future maybe doesn't hold a book right at the moment?

No, not at the moment.

No.

We can talk the end of this, this is kind of an important thing to do.

We do have a lot of stuff.

There's a lot of material.

There's no question about that.

DALE MOORE: What didn't make it into the book that you would have liked to had make it in?

I would have liked that chapter on pioneers coming into the Ozarks.

Now, again, much of that material was not written by her.

It was information that people had sent in to her.

But I just thought from a historical standpoint, people talking about coming through with the oxen, and getting stuck in the waters, and the information that was there, that we had to cut that.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

KRISTENE SUTLIFF: Yeah, we had to cut a lot of really good poetry.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

That pained us too.

Yeah, yeah.

How much-- I mean, did she write original music?

Did she do any original songs or she-- PATTI MCCORD: Not really.

No.

She-- in fact, one of the scholars in one of the journals said that her ballads were important because she sang them the way she heard them, so that made them much more authentic than a lot of the ballads.

But, of course, May always said that you could tell a ballad if it was a little bit changed, because as things got passed around from her to me to you, we'd change a word or two because we forget the original.

Mhm.

Did she see herself as a preservationist at the time?

Or how did she see her role in what she did, do you think?

PATTI MCCORD: That's an interesting question.

Well, I think she would have said she would like to be a preservationist, but I think she was just having fun.

I was going to say that too.

I don't know that she was that serious about it.

Or if she had been, I think she would have taken Vance Randolph's advice and compiled all this stuff into a book.

Yeah.

And you mentioned that she had hung around with some folks of renown from that era.

KRISTENE SUTLIFF: Oh, yeah.

Oh, sure.

But, you know, I would argue that she was better known than Vance Randolph at the time.

Because she was the one who would go, as I had mentioned earlier, to these picnics and all these places, and she was on the radio.

Like you said, she was a media person.

DALE MOORE: Right.

PATTI MCCORD: So to the people across the Ozarks, she was very well-known.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

And she was incredibly well-known in St. Louis, I think.

That was-- PATTI MCCORD: Right.

Yeah, tell that little story.

That's great.

I think it's very significant that they-- when she was doing her daily five-day-a-week radio show for-- [interposing voices] DALE MOORE: Think about that.

[laughs] KRISTENE SUTLIFF: --I think.

You know, she'd ride the bus up there.

PATTI MCCORD: Train.

Train.

PATTI MCCORD: Yeah, in Frisco On Monday mornings and come back Friday afternoons.

And one of the newspapers did a survey of who is the best known radio personality in St. Louis.

And I don't remember who came in second, but I remember who came in third, because that's very surprising.

It was busy Dean.

DALE MOORE: Yeah.

[laughs] And May Kennedy McCord came in first.

DALE MOORE: Yeah, yeah.

Well, the book is "Queen of the Hillbillies: Writings of May Kennedy McCord," edited by my good friend, Dr. Kris Sutliff and Patti McCord.

Now, I think this-- some of the proceeds are funding a scholarship?

Is that correct?

Our part of the proceeds.

We can't speak for the University of Arkansas.

[laughs] But, yes, there's already endowed a scholarship in May Kennedy McCord's name in Ozark studies.

Students have to be either an undergraduate minoring in Ozark studies or a graduate student willing to commit to doing work in the Ozarks.

OK. Well, thanks for doing this.

Absolutely thank you both for being here on the program today.

Thank you.

I said it was going to be a special day, and it has been.

Thank you very much.

And thank you for your kind words about our book.

DALE MOORE: Absolutely.

Yes.

Tell you what, you owe yourself the opportunity to take this in, so make sure that you do.

You stay tuned.

I'll be right back.

NARRATOR: Ozarks Public Television and Missouri State University are proud to present "OzarksWatch Video Magazine," a locally-produced program committed to increasing the understanding of the richness and complexity of Ozarks culture.

Visit our website for more information.

I'd like to thank our guests, Dr. Kristene Sutliff and Patti McCord, for talking with us today.

And we'll see you again real soon on "OzarksWatch Video Magazine."

[music playing]