Ozark Mountain Valley Home

View From The Front Porch  

“Ozark Mountain Valley Home”

By Stan Hitchcock

It was early morning, about 4 O’clock I reckon, during the Spring of 1968, when I awoke with a start and realized I had been dreaming about a song. The words and the melody were still running through my mind as I jumped up to get my songwriter pad and my pen.  As fast as I could write, I put down the words on paper then grabbed my old J45 Gibson and started singing the words to the melody I could still remember.   It seems strange now, dreaming a song into reality, but at the time it seemed just as natural as anything.  The song I wrote then is called “Ozark Mountain Valley Home” and it is just a collection of memories that I still carry of home and early life on the farm. 

Songs come in many different ways to different songwriters.  Some can sit down and just write from a simple idea or thought, while others need to write about personal experiences, others write on a regular schedule just like going to a regular job.  Since songwriters are the real heroes of our music, I like to study them to see what makes them tick.  Hank Williams seemed to be a personal experience writer, writing from the perspective of his troubled marriage to Audrey, his drinking problem and his basic lonesomeness.  Marty Robbins liked to write about old Western history, almost like reading a Louis L’Amour novel.   Bill Anderson has done the impossible by writing hits from the 50’s up to today, going through several different generations of music makers, writing now with new, young writers and pitching to new and younger singers.  Roger Miller was almost a test case of songwriting in his ownself.  He had such a genius for wordsmithing that no actual description fits him.  Jerry Foster and Bill Rice had a teamwork situation going in the 60’-70’s that broke all country music hit song writing records and still just leaves music people shaking their heads in wonder.  Dallas Frazier, who wrote one of my favorite songs, “There Goes My Everything”, says that he tends to live his songs as he writes them and they become very personal.   Some writers just seem to have something magic in their songcraft.  Garth Brooks, when he first came to Nashville from Oklahoma in the early 80’s, came out to my house in Sumner County, Tennessee, in his old pickup, with his dog and his wife at the time, Sandy.  I was running CMT and the record company wanted me to hear his songs raw.  He joined me on my front porch, sit down in an old cane bottom chair and opened his guitar case.  He had an old notebook that was ragged and torn, but when he opened the book and started singing his songs, one by one, all the hits that later made country music history. “If Tomorrow Never Comes” was one of the songs and went on to be his first music video which I World Premiered on CMT and the music world was set on it’s ear for sure. 

Shocks of corn on a hillside farm....

Photo taken by Denise Hitchcock

I have been shooting some new Heart to Heart shows in the month of March and it feels good to be visiting with my friends again.  First show I did features Ron Elliott, one of the fine steel guitar players in Nashville and a true road musicians who has helped take classic country music to the world with stars like Stonewall Jackson and Jack Greene.  We use Ron on BlueHighways TV to play BHTV Music Breaks and he has a world of fans out there.  I just wanted to feature a true road musician to capture the view from the musicians behind the stars. 

I invited my friend of many years, the legendary Jerry Galen Foster, half of the songwriting team of Foster and Rice that just broke all records of having hit records from their songs in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.  I have some wonderful video from my old “Stan Hitchcock Show” from 1979-80 when Fos came up to Branson and worked my show and I wanted to show him now and get the great stories of his career.

Dallas Frazier was kind enough to come sit down at the piano in the recording studio and perform some of his music.  He is one of my all time songwriting heroes and wrote one of my favorite songs of all time, “There Goes My Everything”.  He has an amazing life story and I had to get it on the show. 

Music still runs true in the heart and mind of Stan Hitchcock and songwriters are still my heroes and the love of the music never shall die along with my desire to share the music with y’all. 

Take a listen to my song, “Ozark Mountain Valley Home” from a live recording of the “Stan Hitchcock Television Show” in 1980.  32 years must be a long time, judging by how my looks have changed, however, it seems like just yesterday when I was young and the music never stopped. 

Lord, bless our country, protect us from our enemies, bless us with good health and clarity of mind, draw us all closer together in faith and thank you for each day that you gift us with. 

Stan