"My grandma played piano in the local Baptist church back in Texas," Clay Cooper begins his story. "I would listen to her play the piano while my dad and his four siblings would sing in harmony. My dad played the guitar around the house and sang country songs, and I was hooked on country music at an early age."
After finishing "A History of the Ozarks: The Ozarkers," Brooks Blevins' magisterial history of the region, I decided to read some of the work of the late Otto Ernest Rayburn. As luck would have it, a new edition of Rayburn's 1941 book "Ozark Country" was released last year by the University of Arkansas Press, complete with an introduction by Blevins.
"My grandma played piano in the local Baptist church back in Texas," Clay Cooper begins his story. "I would listen to her play the piano while my dad and his four siblings would sing in harmony. My dad played the guitar around the house and sang country songs, and I was hooked on country music at an early age."