Perspectives: Jim Stafford, Branson's best -- Laughter is serious business

Randall Murphree - Guest Columnist OneNewsNow.com April 14, 2007

"My doctor asked me if I'm sufferin' from old age and I told him, 'Why, no, I'm enjoyin' it!'" Jim Stafford says. "When I find myself sitting in the car in my driveway and can't remember if I'm comin' or goin', I've got a sure-fire way to figure it out. Just get out and grab ahold of the tailpipe! If it burns the skin off your hand, you just got home!"

That's vintage Jim Stafford from the Branson, Missouri, entertainer's hit stage show. At his family-friendly Jim Stafford Theater, the perennial Branson favorite bursts on stage playing some of the best guitar you'll hear anywhere. Then he launches into some of that down-home humor and throws in an occasional vocal, especially singing some of his early career hits (e.g., "Cow Patti," "Spider and Snakes").

Good guitar, fun vocals and a lot of laugh-out-loud jokes -- those are the elements Stafford has mastered in mixing the show he puts on each night. In a couple of areas, he gets a little more serious. He clearly and proudly revels in the crowd-pleasing stage performances of son Shea (14) and daughter G.G. (10).

Finally, Stafford makes no apologizes for his patriotic leanings when he segues into a salute of thanks and gratitude to American veterans. It's one of the few subdued and serious parts of an evening at the Stafford Theater.

In his office after the show last season, I had a chance to see the serious side of laughter. Stafford says that for him, entertaining, laughing and joking around are pretty serious business and a way of life. Oh, it's fun for him, too, but during every rehearsal and every show, his mind is on making sure his audience has lots of laughs and good clean fun.

"I think I was around 12 or 13 when I first started dreaming of a career in entertainment," Stafford says. His earliest inspiration was his dad, who entertained the neighborhood playing his guitar on the front porch. Friends and neighbors would gather on the street, in the front yard, and come up and sit on the steps. But music was never a career for the elder Stafford. Jim and his sister Beverly grew up working in the family's dry cleaning business in Eloise, Florida.

Daddy's stage

"That ol' porch was daddy's only stage," Stafford tells his Branson fans today. "I reckon I'm livin' his dream." The truth is, he's living his own dream as well. Long before Branson, Stafford spent a lot of years on the road, playing guitar and honing his joke-telling skills at various small venues such as Holiday Inn lounges.

"I felt compelled to announce songs or say hello to people," he recalls. "I got in situations where somebody had to talk, so I started trying to figure out that end of entertaining -- how to talk!" He never felt he had a singer's voice, so he relied heavily on parody and comedy even in his lyrics. He wrote and recorded "The Swamp Witch," his first chart-making song, in 1974.

The quick wit and sense of humor that seem so natural and easy on the Branson stage were not always easy. He says that in his early years, it was "hard as the dickens" to figure out how to weave humor into his stage act. "I don't have to tell you about a blank page," he says. "They're never fun to face."

Stafford pretty much writes his own material, but often draws from the wealth of stories that come to him from friends and from cards that his audiences fill out. "People are just as funny as they can be," he says. He works on his show daily -- practicing the old standards, tasting and testing new jokes, fine-tuning new elements for the show, integrating the kids' talents into the show.

Both Shea and G.G. take to the stage with as much energy and charisma as does their famous dad. And they are talented, playing fiddle, guitar, harp and piano. They're in every show, and that's quite a pace for kids their age. They attend a Christian academy which works with the family to keep them up to par with their school work.

"We've got a new thing we're doing," he says. "When Shea plays 'Orange Blossom Special,' we're going to have a breakaway screen with various big train film footage on it." The screen will feature a train approaching out of the distance and coming up to full-size. Then another screen will open up, a light will project over the audience and the illusion is that the train bursts out of the screen.

Jim's journey

"The Jim Stafford Show" debuted on ABC in 1975, launching a television career that included hosting 56 episodes of "Nashville on the Road," 26 appearances on "The Tonight Show" and performing regularly on the "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," for which he was also head writer/producer for two seasons.

But his first love as an entertainer has always been performing before a live audience. To do that meant that he had to go on the road, and it was obviously a hard road sometimes. He got a gig at Branson's Roy Clark Theater in 1983. That job sparked a new idea in his mind.

"The first day I came to Branson," he says, "I just came here as another day on the itinerary. I didn't know what to expect." He found himself in awe, driving down the streets where everything had neon fiddles and music stuff all over the place. He'd been in the business 25 years, traveling wherever the contracts led him. But in Branson, he became intrigued with the dream of something different.

"I just kept going by one theater after another," he remembers, "one little motel after another and I thought, 'Boy, if I could be here, I wouldn't have to travel all the time.'"

He played in Branson for seven years before moving there in 1990. Even then, it was still scary. He didn't have a steady job nailed down, and he didn't think he knew how to make the transition.

"If you're a guy like me, over the years, you sort of develop a circuit," he says. "To try and do something like move to Branson, you need to commit to it. You say goodbye to all the people you've depended on. That was scary for me."

But his wife Ann, whom he married that same year, had been in the convention business and was good at planning, setting goals and organizing things. He credits her with helping him get his feet planted solidly on the Branson stage.

It may have been scary at first, but he shouldn't have been worried. 2007 is his 18th season in Branson. He's been voted Branson's Best Entertainer and Best Comedy Show. And he's serious when he says he still loves it all -- performing, being just five minutes from work, being a dad in the business with his kids, the family-friendly atmosphere of Branson.

"I'm gonna live in this place as long as I can," he declares. "I love the people. I'm going to entertain as long as they'll come see me. I'm a fortunate man to have this all happen to me." And it's clear that Branson audiences feel fortunate to have Jim Stafford on stage.

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