Preserving Old-Time Music

by Marti Attoun

When Bob Everhart plays Down in the Valley, he hears the voices of pioneers. And those voices have inspired a museum, two halls of fame, and a festival to honor America’s traditional country music.

“This music is a form of bringing people together,” says Everhart, 66. “If you can play a few chords and sing not too far off, people will dance. It’s a sharing experience.”

Everhart grew up near St. Edward, Neb., (pop. 796) hearing country tunes fiddled from front porches, tailgates of pickups, and dance halls. Those songs stayed with him, and in 1976 he founded the National Traditional Country Music Association to preserve the music of the nation’s frontiersmen and dirt farmers, cowboys and coal miners.

“These were hill folk and sons of the soil and their music shouldn’t be relegated to the coal bins,” Everhart says. “This is part of our heritage.”

Each summer, Everhart and his wife, Sheila, perform that old-time music at their Oak Tree Opry in Anita, Iowa, (pop. 1,049) where they also maintain the Pioneer Music Museum, which houses America’s Old Time Fiddlers Hall of Fame and America’s Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame.

The Everharts also take their prairie music on the road, regularly performing at festivals across the United States and overseas. Sheila, 30, plays upright bass and fiddle and clog dances. Along with his 12-string guitar and harmonica, Everhart plays unusual instruments such as a 32-string prairie harp and a pianoette with strings to bow and strum.

“After we play, someone will come up and say, ‘Oh, Red Wing was my grandma’s favorite song,’” Sheila says.

Those comments keep them publishing Tradition magazine with articles about old-time performers and songs. Everhart recorded six albums for the Smithsonian Folkways label and produced Old Time Country Music for Iowa Public Television for seven years.

Their biggest event is the Old-Time Country & Bluegrass Contest and Festival held each fall since 1976. The festival, now held in Missouri Valley, Iowa, attracts 50,000 toe-tapping fans, who tune into 10 stages, 250 shows, and 600 performers.

Even so, the festival maintains a down-home flavor. Everhart stands on a picnic table and says grace before helping serve hundreds of free chicken and pinto bean dinners. Three festival rules apply: no electric instruments, no drums, no alcohol.

Ed and Lola Holmes of Council Bluffs, Iowa, (pop. 58,268) have performed at 27 festivals. “It’s old-time music and you don’t get to hear it anymore,” says Ed, 83. “We try to keep it going.” Two of their favorites to perform are I’ll Be All Smiles Tonight and When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again.

In 1998, the Holmes were inducted into America’s Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame. Fellow inductee “Happy Valley” June Campbell, 79, of Mesa, Ariz., who got her nickname from her 1940s radio show on KFNF-AM in Shenandoah, Iowa, is another regular festival performer.

“Bob has helped so many people with their singing,” Campbell says.

The Everharts are as unpretentious as their music, living in an apartment inside the Oak Tree Opry building with daughter Bobbie Lhea, 6. Across Main Street is their Pioneer Music Museum, filled with artifacts such as Patsy Montana’s old Harmony guitar, two of Johnny Cash’s harmonicas, and one of the last suits worn by Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass Music.

“I just got this powder blue suit that Roy Acuff wore at the Grand Ole Opry,” Everhart says.

Still, the Everharts may be the best attraction when they’re on the stage at the Oak Tree Opry performing one more homespun rendition of Down in the Valley.

Marti Attoun is a frequent American Profile contributor.

first appeared: 3/21/2004