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Natural Heritage

History, Culture & Craftsmanship

Branson News & History

Home
History, Culture & Craftsmanship
• Music
Music Index


• Family Recollections (from John Tilden)

• Music in the Ozarks (A Word from Louis Darby)

• Harold Morrison (from the Ralph Foster Museum archive)

• The Fiddle In Missouri (from Greg Bailey)


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Family Recollections

Music is a big part of our family, just as it has been for a lot of families in the Ozarks.

It was a good way to get away and have some fun for a change instead of just thinking about hard work.

Lots of my relatives — grandpas, uncles — played the guitar, the fiddle.

My dad played on a radio program in Branson when he was younger. It's been a huge part of our life.

My grandpa was on an album recorded years ago. There was a individual in the '20s who would travel around and record people's music, getting the flavor of that area.

Now several years back, a gentleman on the East Coast wanted to compile the music that had been recorded.

So a song my grandpa was playing on in the 1920s is on that CD that they made. Music really goes back a long ways, both in my family and in the Ozarks.

I do play guitar and I like to write. Gospel songs, Christian songs, is really my love right now. I don't want to write anymore if it's not for the Lord.


— John Tilden, Reeds Spring, Missouri
10/24/07, Sassafras grove, Baker Creek Farm, Mansfield, MO. Photo credit, J. Heston. Photo adjustments made.
So the days slipped over the wood-fringed ridges. The soft green of tree, and of bush and grassy slope changed to brilliant gold, and crimson, and russet brown, while the gray blue haze that hangs always over the hollows took on a purple tone.

Then in turn this purple changed to a deeper, colder blue, when the leaves had fallen, and the trees shows naked against the winter sky.

— Harold Bell Wright, 1907
Note from the editor:

John Tilden, the fifth-generation to grow up on the family farm near Galena, is a humble and very talented young man.

A gifted Christian songwriter, it was an honor to simply sit and visit about his views of the Ozarks and family recollections. You may now find several of these recollections throughout the site.

John currently works at the Marvel Cave in Silver Dollar City.

— Joshua Heston