time for nostalgia and memory trips.
August 1958-I returned to the Ozarks from my four year tour in the
Navy, a young man with greatly expanded horizons, and a much better
understanding of what the world was all about. I took a job at E. A.
Martin Machinery Company, a regional Caterpillar tractor dealer, working
in the parts department. I loved the job, especially ordering parts on
the teletype machine, which I could use just like we use computers on
the internet today, ordering parts, while also adding some personal
comments to the person on the other end, at the Caterpillar factory in
Peoria, Illinois. So, you see, I have always had a tendency to be a
blabber mouth on communication devices. While I had been gone
overseas, my Uncle Bob Johnson had started a new church in Springfield,
Missouri called Seminole Baptist Church. Uncle Bob was a fine preacher
and we started going regular to his church. One Sunday morning, a group
of young people from down in the deep hills South of Springfield came
to sing at Seminole Baptist Church. That event changed the course of my
life, forever. The group called themselves, "The Waymakers", and man
they set that church to rockin', even waking up the old man on the back
row who used the church time to get some really meaningful sleep most
Sundays, but who now was even clapping along with the music. "The
Waymakers" were all cousins in the Bilyeu family, with the exception of
the bass singer, Vernon Armitage, and the piano player, and were bout
as good as I ever heard. I was drawn to them like a magnet, and after
the service, Uncle Bob introduced me and said, "You kids ought to get
together and do some singing, Stan sings and plays the guitar." From
that point on I was at every singing where they were performing and
finally they just felt sorry for me and asked me if they could sing
behind me as I sang and played my little songs, just as I had been doing
since I was 12 years old. We became a unit, Stan Hitchcock and the
Waymakers and started singing in every church you can imagine from
Arkansas, Oklahoma and all over SouthWest Missouri. It was some of the
happiest times of my life. By this time I had been working at the
Caterpillar dealer for almost a year and doing well. One morning, in
the Fall of 1959, Uncle Bob Johnson came in to the dealership and asked
me to come outside to talk to him. We went out on the sidewalk of
Commercial Street and he said, "Stan, I'm going to start up a home for
homeless boys, and I'd like for you to come help me. It won't pay
anything, but you'll get your food and a place to live on the farm I
want to buy, and a chance to use your voice for the Lord." Well, that
sounded like a pretty good deal to me so the next week I gave Mr. Martin
my two weeks notice and left my paying job for a meat and three plus
lodging job, and it was the best decision I ever made. Uncle Bob had
found a 110 acre farm out by Brighton, Missouiri with an old two story
farm house, a barn and a chicken house and that was now "The Good
Samaritan Boys Ranch". I immediately started going around to radio
stations in a 100 mile radius of the Ranch, asking for 30 minutes of
radio time for a promotional vehicle for the work we were doing. By
this time we had taken 13 boys from jail houses and lockups where the
State Of Missouri, in those years, kept the boys that had no other place
to go, and we brought them to the Ranch and loved them. I set up a
tape recorder in the front room of the Ranch house and I would sing, the
boys would tell a few of their stories and Uncle Bob would preach. By
late 1959, The Waymakers and I decided to cut a little record to promote
the Boys Ranch, to give out as we were singing at rallys and all night
singings to get the word out about what the Ranch was doing. I say
little record, beause it was little....a vinyl record of smaller than
regular size called an EP, or extended play. We cut the record in the
studio of KWTO radio, carried it around to the radio stations in the
region and they started playing it. A huge thrill for the Bilyeu
cousins, Vernon and myself, my gosh! That's us on the radio! We
continued to do Boys Ranch rallys all over the region, to raise
operating money for the Ranch, and finally did a big one at the Shrine
Mosque, in Springfield. I had gone to Ralph Foster, the owner of KWTO
and asked him to help me get a big star to headline our show. He placed
a call to California, and our headliner was set. The Waymakers and I
contacted gospel groups we had done shows with and the final lineup was
this: Boys Ranch Rally and Concert! Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, The
Blackwood Brothers, The LeFevres and Stan Hitchcock and the Waymakers.
The Shrine Mosque was packed and a good amount of money raised to feed
the boys for several months and the Lord continued to bless the work.
In 1960, The Waymakers and I cut a full sized album called The Boys
Ranch Album "To Help A Homeless Boy", again at KWTO and this one was
really popular in the Ozark region and I continue to hear from people
that have a collector copy even today. My years from 1959 to 1962 of
singing and having such a joyful and blessed relationship with all the
Waymakers is a special time of my life. From that musical joining came
the call from Don Law of Columbia Records, in late 1961, to come to
Nashville. I left the hills of the Ozarks in 1962, moving to Nashville
to begin the new chapter of my life, as a country singer and soon to be
tv host that kinda just went on the rest of my hillbilly life.... to
today, of sitting on the front porch of the old farm house, on Deshea
Creek, Sumner County, Tennessee, 53 years and Hundreds of thousands of
miles later, still hearing, in my mind, the ringing voices of those hill
kids as they stood at the front of Seminole Baptist Church and changed
my life for ever more. God bless you my Ozark friends and singing
partners, wherever you are today, and know that you still live in my
heart and mind and that I love you as the music goes on....if only in a
memory. -Stan
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