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civilians in 22 countries including Czechoslovakia, behind the Iron Curtain.
Somehow these letters and cards got past Russian censorship. "Please play George Morgan's 'Candy Kisses/ and think of us here now and then," the writers might say. Most letters from civilians, however, came from Germany. In German-belabored English, these often made such inquiries as "What ist meaning of the song Too Old to Cut the Mustard'?"
Hillbilly favorites, by countries, as best Mr. Carrigan could figure were: Germany, "Death on the Highway" (Roy Acuff); France, "My Daddy Is Only a Picture" (Eddy Arnold); England, "It Is No Secret What God Can Do" and "Peace in the Valley" (Red Foley); Belgium, "Let Old Mother Nature Have Her Way" (Carl Smith); Scandinavian countries, "Birth of the Blues" (Chet Atkins); while Hank Snow's "Moving On" was a general continental favorite.
As a special Saturday night feature, the "Hillbilly Gast Haus" broadcast transcriptions of the WSM Grand Ole Opry radio program. Europeans and U. S. personnel took to this so avidly that a year or so ago Mr. Carrigan organized a European version of the Opry, made up of Army hillbilly musicians. They performed every Saturday night to overflow audiences in the Frankfurt Palmgarden, seating 3,000. The hillbilly programs broke all Palmgarden attendance records, including appearances there of Bob Hope, Horace Heidt and other more sophisticated performers.
U. S. personnel and European civilians from as far away as Rome stood in line five and six hours to get in. Prim-faced ladies came over from London to applaud hillbilly renditions of homely religious hymns, and young women and men bicycled down from as far north as Denmark.
Later the Army's Grand Ole Opry was put on the road. One of its duties came to be instructing local civilian musical groups in the mysteries of hillbilly music. German violinists, accustomed to rendering Viennese waltzes played with long, sweeping movements of the bow, had trouble grasping the hoedown technique, which is played with short, choppy strokes. It was amusing, witnesses report, to see Army hillbillies demonstrating the fiddling technique for such numbers as "Bile That Cabbage Down" to the |
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