May Kennedy McCord

   I recently read that a new book featuring the collected writings of May Kennedy McCord will soon be released by the University of Arkansas Press. For those unfamiliar with her, McCord was a famous folklorist, writer, radio personality, singer, and promoter of the Ozarks who for many years had a regular column in Springfield newspapers called "Hillbilly Heartbeats" and later a radio show by the same name on KWTO-AM. She was affectionately known as the "Queen of the Ozarks" or the "Queen of the Hillbillies."
   May was born in 1880 in Carthage, Missouri, to J. Thomas and Delia (Fike) Kennedy. When May was a young child, the family moved to Stone County, where she grew up. She married traveling salesman Charles C. McCord in 1903, and the couple had three kids. The family moved to Springfield in 1918. In July 1924, when May was 43 years old, her first piece of writing in print, a poem entitled "Alarming," appeared in a very small local publication, appropriately called Midget Magazine, edited by Thomas Nickel, who was also publisher of the school newspaper for Southwest Missouri State Teachers College (now MSU). The poem appeared under May's maiden name, May Kennedy, because her husband, thinking she was already too busy with her music, her church work, and her involvement in various organizations such as the WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union), did not want her to launch a writing career as well. However, he soon relented, and she quickly had an article accepted in Sample Case magazine, a publication of the United Commercial Travelers, a national organization to which her husband belonged. Subsequently, she published several other articles in the same magazine, and she soon started writing a column called "Hillbilly Heartbeats" for Ozark Life, published by Otto Ernest Rayburn, noted author, editor, and promoter of all things Ozarkian. Ozark Life was the official publication of The Ozarkians, an organization for regional writers based in Eureka Springs. May was an active member of the group.
   In October 1932, May's "Hillbilly Heartbeats" column began appearing in the Springfield Sunday News and Leader, and she continued writing the column for Springfield newspapers for almost eleven years. In addition to May's own writings and musings about the folklore and folkways of the Ozarks, the column often carried the work of other area writers. This column was something of a forerunner of "The Wastebasket" column edited by Lucille Morris Upton and others (see my March 13, 2012, blog entry about Lucille Morris Upton). Actually, I think McCord's "Hillbilly Heartbeats" column and "The Wastebasket" column (under another predecessor of Upton's) ran simultaneously in Springfield newspapers for a while, but the two were more or less combined under the name "The Wastebasket" after McCord quit writing her column in mid-1942. Upton came along as editor of the combined column about three years later.
   The reason May quit her column was so that she could take a job in St. Louis at radio station KWK as a musician (e. g. guitar player), folksinger, storyteller, and on-air personality. May would stay in St. Louis during the week and come back home to Springfield on weekends. May's husband died not long after she took the St. Louis job, and in 1945 she moved back to Springfield, where she took a job with KWTO doing a program called "Hillbilly Heartbeats," the same title as her former newspaper column. It was during her time with KWTO that May became widely known as the "Queen of the Ozarks" or "Queen of the Hillbillies," although one or both monikers might have occasionally been used to describe her prior to this time. May continued doing this show at least through the mid-1950s, because I remember that it was still on when I was a kid. I rarely listened to it, but I think my parents occasionally did.
   Mrs. McCord was named Missouri's Mother of the Year in 1950. She was cited not just for her accomplishments as a writer and radio personality but also for her work with church and charitable organizations.

   When May died in 1979 at the age of 99, she was already a legend in the Ozarks.