Jimmy Driftwood

Timbo/Mountain View

1907 – 1998

Jimmy Driftwood carried the songs, stories, and traditions of the Arkansas Ozarks onto the national stage, then spent much of his life making sure they survived at home. Born James Corbett Morris near Mountain View, he grew up surrounded by traditional music. His father was a folk singer, and as a boy Driftwood learned to play a homemade guitar fashioned from pieces of an old rail fence. Music and education became inseparable in his life: while teaching in the rural schools of Stone County, he began turning history lessons into songs for his students.

One of those classroom songs became his unlikely breakthrough. Driftwood wrote “The Battle of New Orleans” to help students understand the War of 1812. After he began recording for RCA under the guidance of Chet Atkins, Johnny Horton heard the song and recorded a revised version. Horton’s 1959 recording became a major country and pop hit, and Driftwood and Horton received Grammy honors for Song of the Year. Driftwood went on to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, Carnegie Hall, and major folk festivals, while songs such as “Tennessee Stud” became part of the American folk and country repertoire.

But national success never pulled Driftwood away from the Ozarks for long. Returning to Stone County, he helped organize the Rackensack Folklore Society and the Arkansas Folk Festival and became a driving force behind the creation of the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View. His preservation work extended beyond music: Driftwood also helped advocate for the Buffalo River’s designation as America’s first national river and for the development of Blanchard Springs Caverns. More than a successful songwriter, he became one of Arkansas’s great cultural preservationists, demonstrating that the music of the Ozarks was not simply a relic of the past, but a living American tradition.