Interview with Jack McDonald  -   22 September 2001

At his store, the IGA/Shopworth store in Bean Blossom, IN.

[Tape index numbers shown before each segment] 

JM = Jack McDonald

TA = Thomas Adler

Paraphrased content except where quotation marks are shown!

000

[TA asks about the 1950s;  JM says he was in the Air Force between 1952 and 1956, so didn't come to the BCJ too much then.  JM was home once a month then, but wasn't up there very much.  It was going on then, though.

After the festivals started, JM went to all of those. 

014   TA wonders: political events at the barn:  JM: Birch would just lease the barn any time someone had something going on. Didn’t interfere with regular Sunday shows.

023  When the festivals started, that was a good thing, when they'd bring 'em in here in the middle of the week.
"Gosh, I've met people from all over the country, and we'd build up relationships, friendships, and they'd come in, and they'd say, "Well, you're still here, you're still around!"

People still call the store IGA, though it's now Shopworth; JM's dad signed up with IGA and was an IGA store for more than 50 years. 

035  Shows that JM might recall before the festivals?  No -- I was there.  Went to University from 1957 to 1961, then married Nina Jo.   Doesn't remember a lot of the BCJ from those years.

047  Impact after the festivals grew:  JM has lived at the house in the corner of the festival lot since 1962; his daughter born there in 1963. But he wasn't up at the Jamboree that much.

056  Beautiful Downtown Bean Blossom -- lady named Kathy Brown had an embroidery machine, did bowling shirts for a team, and JM was asked to sponsor a team.  Kathy came in one day with a new thing, a silkscreen process, able to do t-shirts.  Carl Brummet had a wrecker service, and on the side of his wrecker service truck, it said "Beautiful Downtown Bean Blossom Wrecker Service."  It wasn't the name of the business, just the truck.  Kathy asked if JM would buy some shirts, and try to sell 'em.  She brought in a dozen SM, M, and L t-shirts, white with red letters, and they said "Beautiful Downtown Bean Blossom."  She also went to the Nashville IGA store, and took them some that said something like "Nashville and Brown County," and JM sold his very quickly.  So she came back and he was out, and learned that Nashville had sold none, but JM was sold out!  She made more for JM, did that for a while, then she got divorced or husband died, and her production tapered off.  Then JM got them made at a t-shirt place in Nashville.  Somebody Nina Jo knew did them t-shirts after that, and they did some, showing a kid with toes out of his shoes, and a one-gallus strap across his chest and a finger in his nose, and it said "Picking and Grinning in Bean Blossom."  That sold very fast.

111  JM never did Bill Monroe t-shirts, but did the "Picking and Grinning" and the "Beautiful Downtown BB". 

120  Not too far back, JM got associated with Brown County Youth League baseball, but they had a shop in Martinsville that did t-shirts, and they've been doing the BDTBB shirts since then.  Sell about 500 a year.  You have them on the shelf and on the rack in about six colors, and someone will ask for a certain color and JM can order it. 

137  Sometime back, when Bill had "Japanese kids over," (1971), he sold them via an ad in BU, for $5.00, mailed anywhere.  JM got an order with a check, in both Japanese and English,  for $250.00 on the Bank of San Francisco in Tokyo, and a Japanese guy ordered 50 of them, not specifying sizes or colors.  JM found at the post office that he couldn't send the shirts insured, since they were going out of the country, and he had to send them in five bags of ten shirts each, and he wanted them to sell to other Japanese bgrass fans who had seen the shirts they brought back from Bean Blossom, and wanted their own. 

173  

TA: In the 80s and 90s, decline ?

JM: People were really into it.  They'd come from everywhere with campers, and find not much in the way of facilities at the park; not many hookups.  And Birch would come down and get 4 60-watt light bulbs to wire the whole grounds!  It just wan't that much there for them.  I think it was just the time.

TA:  In 1967, three festivals in the whole country, but by 1975, maybe 250 of them.

193   "Bill didn't have near as many acts as Dwight has now."

And also local people on the festival: Talmadge Law, etc.  And Birch was having shows back in the woods, and it was right behind JM's house, so his boys, Jim and Mike, would go over there.  Jim had a little motorcycle; it's in the picture of the red barn.  Somebody went back on the old [1968] outdoor stage with an axe and cut some wires.  A little vandalism.  And JM worried, because he knew there would be a show on Sunday.  So he got Mike and went over and got some wire and some tape and spliced the wires back together.  And he was over there that night, they had the show, and there was only two rows of people watching the show, and half of them were relatives of the musicians. 

235  Birch would use the outdoor stage in the heat of the summer, after it was built, for BCJ shows.  Two old buildings: one straight back where the concrete block building is now.  Earlier there were two food/concession stands: Birch's and Bill's.  Birch had two female employees: Mary Williams and Dee Bennett, who worked those concessions.  Dee lived in Michigan, near Benton Harbor.  "And the story goes, and you know, that they'd say, 'Birch, we need more buns and more hamburger,' and he'd come down and get a package of buns and a couple pounds of hamburger meat, and some Kraft cheese slices . . . " 

250  The ladies only came down to work the outdoor concessions during the festival.

TA: In the 1990s, festival losing attendance:  some said he thought JM lent money to Bill in that period; JM says no, he never did.  But Bill would come to him for help at times: once he had a problem; his bus was parked up where the mowing machine used to set, near the entrance to the park.  And JM was around, and some BG Boy, maybe not Wayne, but-- Birch would hire kids to work for him, to empty trash barrels, and pick up trash, and help park cars.  There were some people he owed a lot to, and the festival ended, and it was Sunday night and these people hadn't been paid.  So they got around the bus, and there was one who layed down in front of the bus, to keep 'em from going out of there till they got paid, but JM says Wayne or one of the BG Boys came down and asked for a loan of $2000.  He said, "We've had this festival, and we've paid it all out to the entertainers, and we don't have enough to pay the people.  It was a Sunday night, and I had extra money, I always do on Sunday night, so I gave him $2000.  He said, "we'll send you a check in the morning."  So Tuesday morning a check came in for $2000, and JM cashed it.

The next year Bill came in and said, "Thank you for the favor, friend."

285  BM had a festival going up there one year, and came in to sit and talk to JM about different things.  Nina Jo said, "You know, I think he just had to get away from it."

300

JM: "I've told you the story about Birch coming in one day and getting ice and stuff, and I carried it out to his car. And the back-- The floor board in the back seat of the old Chevy was full of money.  And it was setting by the phone booth out there, and it wasn't locked or anything.  Bundles of money on the floorboard, it looked like a sea of money. I said 'Birch, you better lock your car up, you got a lot of money in there.'  'Oh,' he says, 'I forgot that!'  It was Bill's money, so Birch wasn't worried about it."

312

TA notes that Richard Smith's book criticizes Bill's management style.

JM:  He relied on a lot of people, and he's lost a lot of money, over the years.

320 

Was the property financially good for Monroe?

JM: I don't know.  I know it had to help him out a lot over the years.  There were good years.  JM worries now about Dwight, who's doing a good job, but maybe has too many entertainers, and might not be making enough.

343

JM: Somebody had a plan, they were gonna buy the whole thing and develop it, but there was no water at that time, I mean, we had some water, but we didn't have enough.  At one time, it had a little water line that went out to the stage, to get a drink of water out there or something, but there was no hook-ups.  You'd go in there, and had to have a self-contained camper.

Before Dillman bought it, possibly, some water had been put in there, but JM doesn't remember how far back that was.  And the water was supplied from Nashville, and came over in a 2" pipe supplying all of Bean Blossom and everyone from Nashville to Bean Blossom as well.  At the corner of JM's property, where the cabin is, the water company parked a water tank truck out there.  And they had water during the daytime, fairly well, but it was fed from the tank truck, and the hill is higher there, and there's a cistern in the ground near the Greasy Creek road meets Hwy. 135.  The 2" line brought water across, and some people hooked on, then more.  During the daytime, there wouldn't be any flow into the cistern, then during the night, it would fill.  And they could use it, but then it would run out.  So they brought a tanker up and hooked the end of the line to it at JM's house.  Since the tank was lower than the cistern, the water would flow into the tank truck; then someone would come over in the morning and let water flow out, and then more would come in from the cistern, so they would have decent water pressure in the mornings. 

A lot of people still have wells.

397  Power came late to the county, too.

JM's family had a Delco light plant at the store that also helped them light their house.

400 

Brown County has had infrastructure problems with water, power, etc., because it's all rural. 

Bean Blossom water comes from Helmsburg system, but through Nashville's lines. 

422 

JM went to Florida in 1969 or so, took his one-year old son Mike down. When they came back, the festival was going on . . .

450

TA: Background: the impact of WWII; gas rationing didn't stop anything.

455 Glen and Kenny Rund were involved in running the Jamboree.  JM is a cousin to the Runds.

468 

You saw Glen [in photos he showed me] with his cowboy shirt on, and his wife.  They had to have some involvement with the Jamboree.  Glen became a federal marshal. 

480

Management after Monroe: with Birch nominally in charge.

JM doesn't recall Tex Watson; was thinking of Tex Logan.

495 

JM remembers Tex Logan wearing a Stetson hat and long white coat when he cooked beans, which he'd buy at McDonald's IGA.  They had a big kettle to cook 'em in, inside the bean shack; one year they left the beans in the kettle until the following year, then had to clean it all out again.

515

They had free beans to help get people in to attend the festival.

520 

In the old days, the raffle of a basket of groceries was to get people to buy tickets. 

[end side 1 / start Side 2]

000

JM had to deliver the three baskets of groceries over to the old stage, when it was "down by the beauty shop, where the filling station used to be, on the far end of that lot."

People would buy a ticket in order to see the show and have a chance on a basket of groceries.

008 

Today JM heard on the Columbus radio station WKKG that there are plenty of good seats "still available" for the festival running right now; they should have said "bring your lawn chairs."

018 

JM graduated from high school in 1950, and went up to the Jamboree on Sunday nights.  It was something to do.  It was a great time, there were a lot of people around that needed it, and it brought in people too.

025 

The families of the performers made up perhaps a third of the crowd on the regular weekly shows.

030

Jack Cox was involved, and might know the names of some of the other local groups, if he can remember them.

033

JM doesn't remember who told him, but somebody had Francis Rund's book that listed the payments made to him by Bill.  It covered a long period of time.

045 

No Monroe performance at the Jamboree until Oct. of 1951, but by April 1952 it had changed hands. But Bill hadn't yet paid for it; the payments went on until 1959.

052

Jack Cox knows who told Bill Monroe that he could buy the property: it was Shorty Shehan. 

055

Francis got to the point where he just didn't want it, and the price he got was a good price.  Jack said $4500, but JM says, no, it was much more.  JM paid Francis $5000 for the property he bought up by the Jamboree, the Rund subdivision, where JM built his house.  Recently JM read somewhere that it was $38,000.

075

JM thinks the account book where Rund recorded Monroe's payments no longer exists; maybe Jack Cox knows who had the book.

090  [End of recording with Jack McDonald]