We wrote a coffee table book, Branson: Country Themes and Neon Dreams, in 1993. Branson was not entirely old-timey then, but today it is a crossroads of cultures and genres. Where will hillbilly photographers go if modernity triumphs? (click to enlarge)

On a sunny January day in 2014 we drove the White River hills searching for hillbilly holdouts. Coffelt Country Crossroads, a collection of craft, souvenir, and flea market enterprises, is in a relaxed, off-season mode. Prefabricated transportable buildings (trailers) alternate with shacks and log cabins. Come summer, visitors can stick their heads out of ovals in painted plywood and become either stereotyped tourists or stereotyped natives. The Comedy Jamboree billboard beyond guarantees unsophisticated humor, most of it probably indistinguishable from the Goober acts that all Branson country shows have. Tacky and hillbilly are associated lapses in taste in the minds of the elite.

Music Highway 76 is lined with a multitude of opportunities to swipe one’s credit card in exchange for food, shelter, souvenirs and gifts, and live entertainment. A percentage of the theaters are of the country music genre. There are also several fee-charging exhibitions – Ripley’s Believe It or Not, the Titanic, the Hollywood Wax Museum, and the World’s Largest Toy Museum. Within the latter is a small collection of relics that once belonged to Harold Bell Wright, the author who led the public to believe the region was still inhabited by God-fearing pioneers as well as some proto-hillbilly rowdies.

The World’s Largest Toy Museum on Highway 76 contains a small collection of Harold Bell Wright memorabilia. (click to enlarge)

Just down the road is a non-charging exhibition of American cast off goods and decorative objects. R. Z.’s Antiques and Flea Market didn’t yield any treasures to add to our collection, but earlier in the day, Crystal extracted from a Hollister second hand emporium a scarce hillbilly ceramic face that was made by a local pottery in the 1950s.

References to America’s frontier epoch – lusty hillbilly and godly pioneer alike – are less visible than twenty years ago. In that time, institutions, big business, and a powerful central government have expanded. Branson is now more diverse and pop and somewhat less country. Religion and politics have grown closer. “Old fashioned” doesn’t have the cachet it once did as memories of rural life recede with each urban and suburban generation.

There are goods like a conceal-and-carry holster available in old downtown Branson that are not sold in the trendy corporate outlets of Branson Landing. (click to enlarge)

Corny jokes are still cracked onstage and whittled hillbillies are still available in gift shops. Virtually every live show, country or not, will have a red blooded patriotic number and will end with a hymn. The glass fronted, 12-story Hilton Hotel has TV channel lineups chock full of redneck reality shows. Hillbillies have proven to be surprisingly adaptable to changing times and adroit in homesteading new media. You can buy a conceal-and-carry holster on the Main Street of Old Branson. You will look in vain for a conceal-and-carry designer holster among the national brands that have set up shop in the new Branson Landing. Lord knows, real hillbillies don’t go nowhere unarmed.

Branson Scenic Railway awaiting passengers in front of the highrise Hilton Hotel.

Mural of early Hollister painted on the side of a caboose. Branson’s rail connection was responsible for its early growth as a tourist destination.

Branson’s new airport has failed to meet expectations.

Rocking chairs at Branson’s new airport. Sit and rock a while as you wait for your friend’s jet plane to come in.

Bass Pro Shops and Belk department store anchor the mall filled with national chain stores and restaurants at Branson Landing

Surviving mom and pop operations in old Branson have probably benefited from corporate competition. Their prices seem reasonable by comparison.

Downtown Branson restaurants are popular with tourists and locals alike.

Leland makes friends with an amiable dog who had a leisurely schedule. Branson advertises and delivers a slower pace.

Tea Party headquarters, downtown Branson. Yes, there are Democrats and liberals who come to Branson to be entertained although the region is often incorrectly considered exclusively conservative.

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Booklet from the Baldknobbers, a family act that remodeled a skating rink near Lake Taneycomo to perform country music and comedy for tourists. (click to enlarge)

Branson, Missouri has been called the “hillbilly Las Vegas.” For the purpose of illustrating our hillbilly book (in progress) – would that it were. If artifacts are mute and architectural remnants scarce what can we learn from Branson’s tourism business? Learning from Las Vegas is easier than learning from Branson. The entertainment and attractions here must read an audience that really doesn’t know its own mind. It could be called the capital of the Hypercommon. They react negatively to certain taboos, but they have not codified their preferences. Intellectuals attribute an ideological selectivity to the populace that, truth be told, they do not possess. Neither Branson’s entertainments, nor its audience, fulfill the contemporary, rougher definition of hillbilly. Since its early days as a tourist destination it sold a kinder, gentler rustic. Harold Bell Wright’s novel, Shepherd of the Hills, was Christian and bucolic. His night-riding mountaineer lowlifes were the villains. In this 1906 book, seminal to Branson tourism, he used the word “hill-billy” only once, and then nonspecifically.

Local shows – the Presleys and the Baldknobbers – used hillbilly in their 1960s advertising, as it was still an acceptable word for country music. Following Nashville’s lead, the Branson acts have all but abandoned the term although their string band stylings and comedy licks are still pretty hillbilly.

A 1993 advertisement for the Baldknobbers. It’s hillbilly comedy, but they don’t use the word (click to enlarge)

Such diffidence could apply to the whole history of sensitivities to disparaging caricatures of the American rural primitive. Branson’s attractions are said to be predominantly “country,” which in the distant past would have universally been called “hillbilly.” Then, as now, the word, its definition and significance, has been subject to inconsistencies and frequent revisions. As “hillbilly” and “redneck” have become smooshed together in popular jargon, the Branson Chamber of Commerce isn’t encouraging the employment of the word.

Rural white people are often considered unenlightened conservatives. “Traditional” might be a better adjective. Branson must bear the criticism of sophisticates no matter what it considers itself. “Hillbilly” will be resurrected and used by slumming urbanites to describe the mixed pop, mid-cult vacation magnet with a taste for rural nostalgia. Some things hillbilly have always had a nostalgic, even sentimental, flavor. Other rustic memories are less savory. Intertwined sweet and sour recollections of backcountry life have contributed to the longevity of this persona. Such ambiguities give him a pulse long after simpler, less contradictory pop culture creatures have flatlined and been buried and forgotten. The current notoriety of the appellation may have repressed its usage in promotion, but the heritage of hillbilly/hillfolk hides in the shadows of Branson’s glitzy show facades and new modernist corporate structures.

The twelve-story Hilton Branson Convention Center Hotel separates the spanking new Branson Landing Shopping Mall from the old downtown. Combining the past with the present is a time-honored craft in Branson.

Branson has always preferred its rustics to be folksy. Tim Smith won a 1990 contest to sculpt something that embodied Ozark heritage. The stone piece was originally located along Lake Taneycomo but was moved downtown when Branson Landing was constructed.

Hillbilly pawnshop, Hollister, Missouri just across little ol’ Turkey Creek from little ol’ Branson.