In Conversation With Colin: Ozark Mountain Daredevils

It’s no surprise that The Ozark Mountain Daredevils were called ‘a ragtag bunch of hippies, bohemians, and musicians of no fixed ambition’, it’s a description the band have never shied away from and have spent their entire five decade career living down to. Despite, or because of this, the band became a legendary name in Southern country rock circles.

As they prepared for their farewell American tour after 52 years on the road, Newport City Radio’s Colin Palmer caught up with original band member and bassist Michael ‘Supe’ Granda from his home in Nashville and chatted about the band’s early years and their five studio albums for A&M Records.

Coming out of Springfield, Missouri in the early 1970s the Ozark Mountain Daredevils soon won a reputation for their multi-instrumental playing skills and strong song writing abilities. Their music was always difficult to describe – there was bluegrass, folk, rock, country, and maybe even a sprinkling of gospel thrown into the mix. The band is mostly known for their singles ‘If You Wanna Get To Heaven’ in 1973 and the more intricate pop song ‘Jackie Blue’ released in 1974 plus plenty of album tracks that helped define country rock of the period. Yet in the annals of music history, The Dares have never received their full due.

Although chart success didn’t follow the band into subsequent decades, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils continued to tour, write and record. In 2019, the band issued the ‘Heaven 20/20’ EP featuring a collection of new songs, and 2023 saw the release of the single, ‘More Cowbell’.

Before moving to Springfield in 1969 ‘Supe’ had already been a bandleader for five years in his hometown of St. Louis. He was listening to Chuck Berry in his late teens back home where he grew up, but it was when he came to Springfield that he felt an affinity for country music.

“Chuck Berry had a farm right outside St. Louis and he would have parties out there. As a kid who couldn’t even legally drink I would go up there and I could drink” remembers Supe with an element of glee.

Within two years of relocating to Missouri he became involved in the local burgeoning music scene with like-minded musicians and fellow hippy college dropouts, and became a co-founder of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils alongside John Dillon, Randle Chowning and Steve Cash, (Cash died in October 2019 at the age of 73).

The New Bijou Theatre was a short lived but much loved nightclub in Springfield, it was founded in late 1971 by co-owners Steve Canaday and Curt Hargis as a place where budding songwriters and musicians could get together and was instrumental in the formation of the band. National touring bands played the venue as well as local musicians.

Rehearsals began in December 1971 with each member bringing song ideas to the table, the diversity of the band is evident by the array of instruments they used including a mouth bow, an unusual instrument heard on the song ‘Chicken Train’. Only a handful of people in America knew how to play this including Buffy Sainte-Marie and Jimmy Driftwood and, somewhat remarkably, John Dillon.

“I knew when we all got together that we were good and would be successful from the very beginning” says Supe. “We knew we were good before we went into the studio, we weren’t the greatest band in the world, not one of us has ever got one vote in those best guitar player polls but when we stepped up to the microphone we had a strong self-belief”.

Just prior to the New Bijou Theatre burning to the ground in March 1972 the group had recorded much of their new material on reel to reel tape. Steve Canaday presented a cassette tape of that early recording to John Hammond after cold calling and blagging his way into the music mogul’s office at Columbia Records in New York. Hammond liked what he heard.

“John Hammond sent producer Michael Sunday down to make a demo tape, this was July 1972. We were very together and efficient, we knew the arrangements and everything and we laid it down. We had twenty four songs on this demo tape of which John Hammond had first option”.

Hammond was expecting two completely finished songs, what he got was nearly two dozen, but he didn’t sign the band. “That was the tape that they paid for, and we now owned” recalls Supe. Many of the songs on this demo appeared thirteen years later as the record The Lost Cabin Sessions.

Now armed with a proper demo tape the band contacted Kansas City’s Paul Peterson and Stan Plesser who managed fellow Missourians Brewer and Shipley, the pair became their managers as well in October 1972.

The same demo tape eventually caught the attention of A&M Records staff producer David Anderle, who was looking for an Eagles country rock type of band to place on the label’s roster. Anderle was friends with record producer Glyn Johns, they both flew to Missouri to catch the band’s performance at a converted roller skating rink called Cowtown Ballroom on March 10th 1973. The venue also hosted Brewer and Shipley, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and a banjo playing comedian no one had heard of named Steve Martin.

The band were promptly signed by label boss Gerry Moss to A&M on the first day of May and sent to England to record their debut album at Olympic Studios in London under the tutelage of Glyn Johns during that June and July.

The record company had the foresight to accommodate the band into Headley Grange, Supe still remembers with amazement that first trip to Britain, “We would get up in the morning, listen to what we had recorded the night before and we would think about what we were going to record that afternoon, we could still feel the vibe of Led Zeppelin in the great stately rooms of this magnificent old building.

“Every morning I would get up and pinch myself, you have to remember we were this bunch of hippy hillbillies from the Ozarks and here we were in London recording at Olympic Studios with Glyn Johns that had worked with The Who and many others. We went into Olympic studio with a pool of fifty songs, and Glyn Johns had the pick of the bunch”.

The resulting self-titled album affectionately called The Quilt Album due to the patchwork quilt cover artwork was released December 1973.

Their harmonica driven debut single, ‘If You Wanna Get to Heaven’ written by Cash and Dillon rose to Number 25 on Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 chart due to heavy FM radio airplay.

A second album, again produced by Glyn Johns called It’ll Shine When It Shines was released October 1974, this time recorded in an old civil war era farmhouse in the Ozarks and went even further than its predecessor, peaking at Number 19. It’s impossible to imagine It’ll Shine When It Shines being written and recorded anywhere other than the Ozarks.

When the album’s first single failed to chart, a second song was released to radio stations, ‘Jackie Blue’. The catchy track, ironically atypical of the band’s repertoire reached Number 3 on the Hot 100 chart in May 1975 and remains their signature song. Interesting to note the

album was mastered by Doug Sax, he would go on to be a legend amongst mastering engineers.

Disappointingly ‘Jackie Blue’ failed to chart in the UK despite heavy radio airplay. Radio 1 disc jockey Johnnie Walker championed the song playing it as often as he could on his weekday lunchtime show.

A brief UK tour in summer 1975 included a gig in Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre and Glasgow’s Apollo on two consecutive nights before their infamous appearance at the Reading Festival.

“I remember it was raining when we played, and it was miserable, the crowd didn’t get us at the beginning but towards the end it was better. Our music has never lended well to outside stadiums, the nature of our music is better at theatres and indoor stages” explains Supe.

During that August bank-holiday weekend the band performed on Saturday and were introduced on stage by John Peel, their performance was met with lacklustre reviews in the UK press. NME wrote “UTTERLY CASUAL. Distinguishing whether the pony-tailed freak at the side of the stage is one of the band or a roadie is an impossibility. That’s the kind of outfit you’re coming up against with The Ozark Mountain Daredevils”.

They were the only American act at the festival that year and couldn’t escape being compared with Commander Cody who, two years prior, stole the Friday night show from Rory Gallagher.

The third album, The Car Over The Lake, was recorded in Nashville at Quadrofonic Sound Studios and again mastered by Doug Sax, with its mix of country, rock’n’roll and jazz it lacked the musical coherence of its predecessors. A sticking point was the band’s unwillingness to try and duplicate their biggest hit, ‘Jackie Blue’, or copy what other groups were doing. Jerry Moss, the head of their record label, wanted them to move to Los Angeles so he could promote them more aggressively. Each band member refused to leave citing their values as something other than fame and fortune, for them it’s always been about the songs and staying true to who they are as a band. As a result, A&M began to lose their enthusiasm for the band.

Undeterred, the band came back to the UK the following year and played a live concert recorded at the BBC theatre Shepherd’s Bush on March 26th, this performance aired three weeks later on The Old Grey Whistle Test. Nine days after that transmission the band played Newcastle City Hall, followed by Glasgow Apollo and on May 5 London’s

Hammersmith Odeon before heading out for a brief European and Scandinavian tour.

“We were very aware of the BBC’s OGWT and were aware of it being a conduit to the music loving people of Great Britain and we played in a great venue for the recording, we did sound checks during the day, to check the lighting and the camera angles, and it’s a really good recording”.

Upon their return home, Randall Chowning unexpectedly quit the band for reasons that have never fully been explained. Norwegian musician Rune Walle, whom the band had met while on tour in Bergen with his band the Flying Norwegians was then contacted in June to replace him. Walle’s first show with the group was at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City on July 23rd 1976 on a bill that also included The Beach Boys, The Doobie Brothers and Jeff Beck.

Supe explains, “When Randy left we contacted Rune Walle, he knew our music and we had got together on tour when they were supporting us, we were hillbillies from Ozark and he was a Viking from Norway, but we had been drinking and making music together on tour in Europe and having a great time so we just rung him up and asked him to join the band and he immediately came on over, and he ended up being our guitar player on four albums”.

September 1976 saw the release of their fourth album Men From Earth recorded at the new Caribou Ranch recording studio in Colorado, made famous by Elton John. “We were told by A&M you got to go to Caribou because that’s where Chicago and America are recording and Elton John, that was the hip and happening place so we went out and recorded there” recalls Supe.

Following personnel changes within the band a fifth album Don’t Look Down was recorded and released in October 1977 with Steve Canaday now a bona fide band member. The five studio albums they made in the 1970s defined the Ozark Mountain Daredevils but none achieved the success of the first two releases

By the end of the decade, country rock and its cousin, Southern rock, were fading in the record industry. A change of label to CBS was calamitous and sales for their self-titled 1980 album were tepid, the band entered a two decade period in which they cut albums sporadically but were essentially lost in the weeds yet still retained a loyal fan base.