Queen of the Hillbillies: Writings of May Kennedy McCord is a collection of folklife writings from the Ozark Mountains region published between 1925 and 1942, mostly in Springfield, Missouri, newspapers but also in regional magazines like the Dial and a few national publications. This collection is edited by McCord’s granddaughter Patti McCord and Dr. Kristene Sutliff, professor emeritus from Missouri State University’s English department. This book is part of the Chronicles of the Ozarks series and includes a preface by the series editor, Dr. Brooks Blevins, also of Missouri State University.
The introduction to this work acts as a short biography of McCord, detailing how she grew up mostly in rural Missouri. McCord was born in Carthage, MO, in 1880 and died in Springfield in 1979. Because her parents were not originally from the Ozarks, she sometimes took an outsider’s view, but she also fiercely loved the Ozark region and people, something that comes through clearly in her written depictions. Something else that comes through clearly in her portrayals of the region are her romantic views of the area, a quality to be expected of regional folklife writers of the time. McCord was a part of a group of Ozark writers and folklorists who met somewhat regularly and wrote to each other often. This group consisted of Mary Elizabeth Mahnkey, Otto Ernest Rayburn, Vance Randolph, and McCord, with references throughout McCord’s writings to the other members of this cohort. McCord also acted as a radio host, spending most of her time on the radio at Springfield’s KWTO, hosting “Hillbilly Heartbeats” from 1945 until 1963; the title of her show is the same as that she used for her newspaper columns in the Springfield News and Leader and later the Springfield Daily News.
McCord requested her readers to share their “hillbilly” stories with her; these reader contributions made up a large portion of her columns. McCord collected the information from locals then reprinted it “in the raw” since any attempt to change the stories would ruin them (9-10). This practice of keeping true to her informants’ words created a large collection of regional folklife information that would otherwise no longer exist. McCord was also known as an excellent ballad performer, someone who not only collected a ballad from her source but also learned it to perform later, which is another way she carried Ozark traditions forward.
The book is organized by theme beginning with a chapter on the Ozark region and ending with a chapter focused on seasons and holiday gatherings. Other chapters include lore about daily life in the early 1900s, ghost stories, school, local gatherings, and gardening. The book’s chapter on politics and religion focuses mostly on religion: sharing accounts of baptisms, revivals, and Protestant worship services, while the portion on politics focuses mostly on Dewey Short and William Jennings Bryan. One chapter, “The Music of the Ozarks,” includes some of the ballads that May collected and performed. McCord tied her collection of folk music back to the 1600s and had little good to say about the so-called folk music, or “whangdoodles” as McCord labeled them, played on the radio during the mid-1900s (22). McCord felt that simplicity was an important aspect of folk music. Ballads from Ozarkers regularly depicted hardship, and this theme rang true to the experience of living in the region for many of its occupants. Another chapter focuses on superstitions and Granny women. McCord was not known as a Granny woman, but her column was known to share plenty of their traditional guidance. McCord herself said that many of the superstitions she shared were more for entertainment than any other purpose, but she also claimed to believe some of the old superstitions herself. Another chapter of note focuses on death and burial, with a considerable section on “feather crowns,” which were said to form in the feather pillow of a dying person and, if found, would be kept as an heirloom through generations. McCord even reported having had one in her own possession, sent to her by a reader. This chapter also includes May’s first publication, a story called “A Buryin’,” about the reaction to the death of a young neighbor, ranging from the overnight building of a casket to the boy’s burial services the next day.
This collection of McCord’s writings is valuable, especially because so much of the information came from McCord’s readers who themselves were long-time residents of the Ozark region. Further, this volume provides insight on the people of the Ozark region for those interested in the ways popular culture and the media have and continue to influence perceptions of the region. Further, it is valuable to have the perspective and writings of a woman together with folklore collected mostly by men during the early 1900s. What would make this work better is if it also included mention of the groups of Indigenous people, such as the Osage, Caddo, or Quapaw to name a few, who were displaced by those McCord called pioneers. Also, without mention in this work are the African Americans who once called the region home and whose communities were forcibly removed from the region, mostly between 1890 and 1910. Though these elements of the region’s history are not the focus of the book, their mention in an afterword would have helped to prevent the further erasure of their stories and contributions.
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[Review length: 894 words • Review posted on January 27, 2023]