MOUNTAIN VIEW — When Mark Jones was little, he believed his dad’s friend songwriter and musician Jimmy Driftwood owned just one red shirt and wore it constantly.
“When I came here with Mom and Dad, I was real young,” Jones said. “I thought Jimmy only wore one or two shirts.
“But one day I was out at his house, and going to the restroom, when I walked by his closet, I saw 20 to 25 red shirts.
“I realized it wasn’t the same one.”
Driftwood was so famous for wearing red shirts that earlier this year, state Sen. Missy Irving, R-Mountain View, proposed a resolution declaring a special day of recognition on June 20, Driftwood’s birthday.
“And how are we going to celebrate his birthday? By wearing red shirts that day,” Debra Williams said. “Red and black were his colors.”
Williams is the director for the Jimmy Driftwood Project, which is currently working to erect a statue in memory of the musician. Right now, the group has raised nearly $3,000 of the $38,000 needed.
“We just want to bring attention to the accomplishments that Jimmy did,” Williams said. “He gave so much to his life and put Mountain View on the map.”
In an effort to raise money for the statue, a concert will be held at 5:30 p.m. June 11 at the Ozark Folk Center.
General-admission tickets can be purchased for $20 at the door or at For the Earth, 208 Main St. in Mountain View. There will be donation buckets available at the concert for those who wish to contribute to the project.
“We have some great artists coming in, and I think we are going to have a good attendance,” said Ron C. Helm, vice president of the Jimmy Driftwood Project Committee.
“I am involved in the music business as a songwriter, artist and producer. I work with a variety of artists and songwriters, and I helped bring them in.”
Bands scheduled to perform will be The Folk Willies, Billy Don Burns, Josh Morningstar and The Tallent Brothers, as well as many others.
Helm lives in Oxford, which is about a 45-minute drive from Mountain View. One of the reasons he got on board for the project was Driftwood’s love of education and preserving history.
“I worked in education for 42 years,” Helm said. “I just retired about a year ago.
“I worked in public schools for 19 years and was a counselor, a coach, a principal and a superintendent. I was certified in a lot of areas.”
Driftwood received a degree in education from Arkansas State Teacher’s College, now the University of Central Arkansas, in Conway.
Helm said he loves how a song used to help students remember history — “The Battle of New Orleans” — became this “monster of a hit.”
“It was instrumental in north Arkansas,” he said. “We have a lot of musicians in this area, and we are known as the folk capital.
“It is time to pay tribute to him.”
Helm did meet Driftwood a few times.
“I think his ability to tell stories is what set him apart,” Helm said. “The lyric content is really good, and the music is, too.
“He really created Mountain View as a tourist attraction. People from all around the world come to Mountain View, and it is because of the music.”
Driftwood was born in Timbo, just outside Mountain View, in 1907. Driftwood wrote more than 6,000 songs and is probably best known for “The Battle of New Orleans,” and in addition to the songs he wrote, he collected many others, Jones said.
“A lot of songs would have been lost if not for Jimmy,” Jones said.
Jones is the son of the late Grandpa Jones, who starred in the television show Hee-Haw.
“He and Jimmy had become good friends,” Jones said. “Jimmy even asked Dad to teach at the Ozark Folk Center before it became a state park.
“Dad was going to do it, but Hee-Haw started in 1969, and he got real involved with that.”
Driftwood returned to Arkansas in 1963 and worked to defeat the plan to dam the Buffalo River.
“I met him and actually played 30 colleges with him back in the early mid-1970s,” Jones said. “We went to a bunch of colleges and other different venues.
“We even played at a couple of Indian reservations.”
Jones said Driftwood acted no different on the road traveling than he did in his own home.
“He was just who he was,” Jones said. “He wasn’t real extravagant or anything.
“He was a very calm, intelligent man. It was a lot of fun, getting to play with him. He was quite a character.”
The Jimmy Driftwood Project Committee meets at 2 p.m. Sundays at Debra’s Cabin rentals in Mountain View. Williams said the owner has been “really gracious to let us meet there.
“We are very thankful to her.”
Williams said the meetings are open to the public, and committee members are willing to listen to anyone who has ideas on how to raise more money for the statue. She said they aren’t going to give up on the project and will see it through.
“People are a little bit tight with their money these days, and we are just now starting to [draw] attention to it as well …,” Williams said. “Everywhere he played, he always invited people to come to Mountain View and enjoy the music of the hills.
“If they couldn’t find a place to stay, he’d let them stay in his barn.”
For more information, call (870) 214-2759 or visit the Facebook page at www.facebook.com/jimmydriftwoodproject.
“The musicians are volunteering their time, and we are really thankful for that, too,” Williams said.
“We are hoping the next festival will be three times the size.”
Williams said she moved to Mountain View when she was 16 and went to the Folk Center and just fell in love with the area.
“I moved to Mountain View because I love music,” Williams said. “It is a like a little peace of heaven.”
Driftwood died in 1998.
“One of the things that got my interest was how Jimmy sat down to write a song to make sure his students learned history, and when he wrote the song, he had no clue that it would be a Grammy-winning song,” Williams said.
Williams said taking that extra step to teach the lesson intrigued her.
“The more I learned about him — he lived a real modest life,” Williams said. “Jimmy lived in a little home, and he constantly put money back to teach people the way of the hills and the tradition of the Ozark people.
“He was just an extraordinary man. He really was.”
Staff writer Sam Pierce can be reached at (501) 244-4314 or spierce@arkansasonline.com.