Jimmy Driftwood is recognized as a music icon of the Ozarks for a number of reasons: his shape-note singing, signature red button-up shirt and turquoise bolo tie, and unique guitar made of a fence rail, an ox yoke, and a headboard from his grandmother’s bed to name a few. But he cemented his status by advocating for the region and putting Ozarks folk music on the map.

Before Driftwood became the music icon he is known as today, he was born as James Morris on June 20, 1907, in Timbo, Arkansas. As a young man, he taught school in his hometown, and it was his career as a teacher that inspired what would become one of his most famous songs, “The Battle of New Orleans.” It was Driftwood’s way of getting his students interested in historical events.

“Some of his songs that he wrote were to kind of help teach history to his students,” explained Pam Setser, a fellow Ozarks musician from Mountain View, Arkansas, who participated in the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Setser first met Driftwood when she was around six years old. She would perform alongside him at the courthouse square in Mountain View in “hootenannies”—informal gatherings of folk singers—as part of her family’s band, The Simmons Family.

“Most of my young days, Jimmy was a big part of my life,” she said.

Like Setser, Driftwood began to make music “just as young as a kid could learn,” as he said in an interview with Folklife Festival co-founder James R. Morris—no relation—in 1970. That year, both he and The Simmons Family, with a nine-year-old Pam, performed at the Festival as part of the Arkansas program.

“Now folk culture, the singing of the songs and the playing and everything that had to go with it—when I was a child, that was really all the entertainment, except church,” Driftwood recounted.

Though his interest in music began early in his life, Driftwood did not hit the first milestone of his musical career until he was twenty-eight years old, when he won a contest in Phoenix, Arizona, to be on a radio program. Though, he returned to teach in Arkansas shortly after and did not have his first song chart until he was in his early fifties.

Before he found success in music, Driftwood found other ways to keep music in his life, like making songs for his students.

The “turning point for his career,” as Setser described it, happened when Driftwood got a record deal and, later, Johnny Horton recorded his song “The Battle of New Orleans.” Soon, Driftwood began appearing on shows like the Grand Ole Opry and Ozark Jubilee and eventually performed at Carnegie Hall. In 1959, he won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

Despite newfound fame, Driftwood continued to perform in what was called the “Rackensack,” which Setser explained was a group of musicians who would play together every week. In the interview with Morris, Driftwood said that the Rackensack was “not meeting to put on a performance. We are actually meeting to practice. The right word I suppose is ‘rehearse,’ for the festival in the spring.”

The festival he refers to is the Arkansas Folk Festival, which Driftwood founded after taking an interest in folk culture and is still held every year in Mountain View during the third week of April. Setser recalled that Driftwood was also “part of the group in the ’60s that made the trip to Washington, D.C., to rally for funding to be able to get the Ozark Folk Center built.”

“My dad was part of that group too, but Jimmy was a driving force,” Setser added. “Jimmy’s popularity helped get them in the door.”

Although Driftwood died in 1998, he left an undeniable mark on the Ozarks both through his music and as an “ambassador,” as Setser described him, for the region and, in particular, for Arkansas.

In his honor, the Jimmy Driftwood Music Barn in Mountain View acts as a kind of modern hootenanny on Friday and Sunday nights. Like the Arkansas Folk Festival and the Ozark Folk Center, the venue “keeps his name part of our community, and his legacy living on,” Setser said. And so do the “musicians coming on that are learning his songs,” she added.

At the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, a number of musicians from the Ozarks region described Driftwood’s importance in the music scene and their own personal musical careers. Many of them sang his songs as part of their own performances on the National Mall. The Creek Rocks try to perform at least one of his songs in every one of their sets.

“To me, one of the biggest compliments for a songwriter is that other people want to sing your songs,” Setser said. “So, I think that says a lot for Jimmy and for his legacy.”

Bana Ghezai is a former writing intern at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and an undergraduate at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where she is studying English.