Summary: Ozark Highlands Radio is a weekly radio program that features live music and interviews recorded at Ozark Folk Center State Park’s beautiful 1,000-seat auditorium in Mountain View, Arkansas. In addition to the music, our “Feature Host” segments take listeners through the Ozark hills with historians, authors, and personalities who explore the people, stories, and history of the Ozark region. This week, the witty & convivial Americana ragtime, blues & early jazz quartet, “Side Street Steppers” perform live at the Ozark Folk Center State Park. Also, interviews with these fascinating performers. Mark Jones offers an archival recording of Ozark original Buddy Lancaster performing the traditional song “Back up & Push.” Author, folklorist, and songwriter Charley Sandage presents a portrait of Dr. Bill McNeil, the long time archivist at the Ozark Folk Center, focusing on Dr. McNeil’s knowledge of traditional ballads. Christian Stanfield and Miss Vera Victoria founded the Side Street Steppers in June of 2009. What began as a simple duo of musicians unearthing material from the Golden Age of American Gramophone recording has grown into a full-blown Memphis institution. The Side Street Steppers are a page from Americas past, playing rare and popular music from the 1920s and 30s. Dubbed the Golden Age of Gramophone Recording, the two decades between 1920 and World War II saw the rise of jazz and the birth of the blues, the demise of ragtime and the emergence of hillbilly music that would become known through the world as country music. The Side Street Steppers present a pastiche of this transformation of the American musical landscape, performing on vintage and homemade instruments. Get ready for plenty of hip-shaking, foot stompin', caterwauling and croonin’. In this week’s “From the Vault” segment, musician, educator, and country music legacy Mark Jones offers an archival recording of Ozark original Buddy Lancaster performing the traditional song “Back up & Push,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives. Author, folklorist, and songwriter Charley Sandage presents an historical portrait of the people, events, and indomitable spirit of Ozark culture that resulted in the creation of the Ozark Folk Center State Park and its enduring legacy of music and craft. This episode focuses on Dr. Bill McNeil, the long time archivist at the Ozark Folk Center. For thirty years, from 1975 until his untimely passing in 2005, Dr. Bill McNeil served as the Ozark Folk Center’s folklorist and all-purpose advisor on all things dealing with traditional Ozark culture. During his tenure at the Folk Center, Bill McNeil guided the establishment of the Ozark Cultural Resource Center, an archival and teaching facility on the Folk Center’s grounds. This installment focuses on Dr. McNeil’s knowledge of traditional ballads.
