FOLKLORIST PUTS HISTORY INTO SONG AT BURFORDVILLE; BOB DYER REVIVES STATE HISTORY IN MUSIC

BUFORDVILLE -- Huckleberry Finn, a steamboat called "Jim Johnson," and Jim the Wonder Dog made a historical visit to the Little Ole Opry on Sunday, thanks to Bob Dyer.

Dyer has made a career by taking characters from Missouri's history and folklore and setting them to music.

"I've always been interested in history," said Dyer, who performed a mix of original ballads and other songs for an audience of nearly 150 on Sunday. "There are all sorts of aspects of Missouri history without songs, so I've tried to bring them out through music."

A native and current resident of Boonville, Dyer began mixing history and music together by putting his poetry about river life into song while still an English professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

"I was the type who attended and participated in poetry readings," said Dyer, 60. "But poetry readings attract two or three people, and they're not a real responsive crowd. That's why I turned to making music."

The story of the "Jim Johnson" steamboat is an example. It comes from the fact that the Missouri River has always been narrower, shallower and faster than other rivers, Dyer said, and the fable that steamboat captains got together to build a boat that was big enough to handle it.

Dyer's original song about the boat tells how it is as big as a mountain and takes two weeks to pass by a town.

Besides performing, Dyer takes his songs to schools across the state to teach history in an entertaining manner.

Liana Jenkins, a fourth-grade teacher at Advance, constructs her lesson plans for history around Dyer's visits. Last year she taught about the pony express, and Dyer helped the children compose their own historical folk song based on what they learned.

In the past, he has helped them create songs about French settlers in Missouri and the 1811 New Madrid earthquake, Jenkins said.

Another of his original songs tells the tale of Jim the Wonder Dog. As Dyer explained it, a hotel owner in the town of Marshall bought a scrawny puppy from a Louisiana kennel in the 1930s and named him Jim. Not long after, Dyer said, the owner discovered Jim had special abilities. If he told Jim to pick out a car on the street by its license plate number, the dog did it by walking up and placing his paw on the car. He would do the same with trees, and he picked seven winners in the Kentucky Derby, according to Dyer.

A statue dedicated to the dog still stands in Marshall, Dyer said.

"They have made it into a real tourist industry," he said.