OHR Presents: "The Poor Valley Girls"

Ozark Highlands Radio is a weekly radio program that features live music and interviews recorded at Ozark Folk Center State Park’s beautiful 1,000-seat auditorium in Mountain View, Ark. In addition to the music, our “Feature Host” segments take listeners through the Ozark hills with historians, authors and personalities who explore the people, stories, and history of the Ozark region. This week, East Tennessee all-girl stringboard “The Poor Valley Girls” perform live at the Ozark Folk Center State Park. Also, Interviews with The Poor Valley Girls, Aubrey Atwater & Elwood Donnelly present “Women Warrior Ballads,” and Mark Jones offers an archival recording of Ozark original Jay Round. The “Poor Valley Girls” hail from the hallowed musical grounds of Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. “Poor Valley” refers to the geographical region that both Heather Pace and Madison Brown call home in Virginia. This region of the United States also includes Bristol, TN, which is known for the “sonic-boom” of country music recordings, on the Victor Record label in the early 1920’s (Jimmy Rogers and The Carter Family, among others.) For their performance at the Ozark Folk Center State Park, Heather and Madison are joined by friend and musician, Colleen Trenwith. This recording is a wonderful example of how the traditional sounds of their region have moved seamlessly to the next generation of musicians. Prolific folk musicians Aubrey Atwater & Elwood Donnelly profile influential folk music icons Jean Ritchie and the Ritchie Family, as well as explore the traditional Appalachian music and dance that the Ritchie Family helped to perpetuate into the modern American folk lexicon. This episode offers a presentation of “Women Warrior Ballads.” Mark Jones' “From the Vault” segment offers an archival recording of Ozark original Jay Round performing the traditional song “Soldiers’ Joy,” from the Ozark Folk Center State Park archives.