By Mike Templeton

One of the ways the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition conveys the importance of urban Appalachians to all of greater Cincinnati is by making people aware of the ways urban Appalachians have come to form such a crucial part of what we consider our local culture and history. While people love to take pride in many things when it comes to Cincinnati’s local cultural heritage, UACC makes it clear that urban Appalachians are an essential part of that heritage. One of the local treasures that made this cultural contribution so emphatically was The Midwestern Hayride.

For anyone of a certain age who grew up in greater Cincinnati, the sounds and sights of The Midwestern Hayride are part of the tapestry of our memories. The band striking up those square dance tunes, and the dancers filing onto the stage with choreographed square dances marked a very special moment in the week, and the thought of it all still evokes intense memories. What is striking about The Midwestern Hayride is that it seemed so common and ordinary to all of us in the greater Cincinnati area, but in other parts of the country, this kind of music and dance were still novelties; it was all the stuff of some distant part of American life and culture that few people beyond our region knew anything about. It was the presence of a large demographic of displaced migrant Appalachians in areas like Cincinnati, Dayton, and Chicago who made a show like this possible.

To write this I consulted Fred Bartenstein, historian and co-author of Industrial Strength Bluegrass. Bartenstein’s book details the rise of the Appalachians in our area and the influence urban Appalachians had on radio and television. Bartenstein explains in Industrial Strength Bluegrass that by the early 1920s, advertisers and radio producers were starting to get onto the fact that the influx of Appalachian migrants into the cities offered an underserved and potentially lucrative audience. Country music made its first appearance on radio in Chicago in 1928, and it was in 1937 that a radio producer named John Lair, a native Kentuckian, developed and produced a radio show called National Barn Dance. Lair created the show by recruiting musicians from Kentucky to play what was becoming known as country music and bluegrass. The music proved to be a hit with the new and growing population of urban Appalachians, and it began to lend its irresistible appeal to people beyond the urban Appalachian population. National Barn Dance was picked up and broadcast locally on WLW which was then referred to as the Nation’s Station. WLW, at the time, boosted 500,000 Watts, and could be picked up in Europe.

Eventually Lair was hired by WLW to produce the show locally and the show became known as the Renfro Valley Barn Dance. It made its debut from Cincinnati’s 6000 seat Music Hall and featured the Coon Creek Girls, Red Foley (who would eventually be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame), and Country Comedian Whitey Ford, known as “The Duke of Paducah.” Lair was making good money from selling advertising time for these shows, and the execs at WLW were not happy that they were not getting a cut. Lair had worked it out so that he only had to pay for radio time, and he got to retain the advertising revenue. As a result, WLW produced their own show called The Boone County Jamboree. Lair eventually moved his show to Kentucky, which had always been his intention. WLW continued to broadcast the show for several more years as The Boone County Jamboree continued to grow in popularity.

As the popularity of these shows grew and reached wider audiences, the urban Appalachian populations in areas like Cincinnati also grew. The demand for these shows started to emerge across the country. As a result, The Boone County Jamboree was picked up nationally and rebranded as The Midwestern Hayride in order to remove local references and give the show a national character. The show we in Cincinnati know and love debuted 1951 on television as a summer replacement for Sid Caeser’s Your Show of Shows. The new show featured dancers and nationally known musicians. Some of the stand-out names that appeared in The Midwestern Hayride included Chet Atkins, Cowboy Copas, the Delmore Brothers, Grandpa Jones, and Merle Travis. The show launched the career of local country music star Kenny Price who eventually became the show’s host when it shortened the name to just Hayride. Dancing featured Bonnie Lou and the Midwestern Dancers. Note the change from references to Kentucky and Appalachia to the emphasis on the Midwest. The presence and influence of urban Appalachians had become so important by this time that the Midwest itself was home to bluegrass, country music, and square dancing.

The Midwestern Hayride ran on WLWT until 1972 when it was deemed too expensive to produce. A radio and television show like The Midwestern Hayride could never have come about if it were not for the massive presence and influence of urban Appalachians in greater Cincinnati and other urban centers. The influence of urban Appalachians on popular culture and on economic forces more generally cannot be under-estimated. That a growing population of Appalachians who migrated from their homeplaces to work in urban regions changed the face of television, radio, and popular culture is a testament to the power of who we are. Fred Bartenstein makes the compelling case that Cincinnati, Middletown, and Dayton formed a corridor of musical talent which gave the world blue grass and helped create what we now call country music. The same demographic forces were at work in the ways tv and radio were shaped in the years from about 1920 to the mid-1970s. The world, and Cincinnati, would never be the same.

As Appalachians came to exert their influence simply with their growing presence, the ways popular culture appeared to the world around them were shifting to meet the interests of this crucial demographic. The kinds of things that began to appear on television and radio in greater Cincinnati slowly changed from the early days of tv to the mid-century boom in television’s influence. Appalachia moved from the periphery to the center of cultural life, and shows like The Midwestern Hayride led the way in this cultural transformation. That The Midwestern Hayride came to occupy a cultural space alongside things like the early tv variety shows seen across the country reveals the outsize influence of Cincinnati’s urban Appalachian community on the entire country.

Fred Bartenstein’s assistance was instrumental in writing about The Midwestern Hayride. His website contains links to all of his work, including the book and recording, Industrial Strength Bluegrass: fredbartenstein.com.

WLWT offers clips of The Midwestern Hayride from their archives on YouTube. You can watch a sample at this link: youtube.com/watch?v=0d-8qy__KZ4.

Cover photo source: Red Turner promotional picture from his time at WLW’s Midwestern Hayride in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Michael Templeton is a writer, and independent scholar. He is the author of The Chief of Birds: A Memoir published with Erratum Press and Impossible to Believe, published by Iff Books. He is also the author of Collected Apoems, forthcoming from LJMcD Communications and the awaiting of awaiting: a novella, with Nut Hole Publishing. Check out his profile in UACC’s Cultural Directory. He has published numerous articles and essays on contemporary culture and works of creative non-fiction as well as experimental works and poetry. He lives in West Milton, Ohio with his wife who is an artist.