Whooos and Foghorns

Spivey's Corner (pop. 100), North Carolina, had its big day in history last week. It was there that once and for all they drew the line between hollering and hollerin', in the goldarnedest contest that the village had seen since Dewey Jackson won half a ton of fertilizer for hog calling in 1942.

Hollering is making noise. Hollerin' involves a lot more than that. Jackson, now 76, and the community's reigning basso profundo, gave the final proof. Hitching up his overalls before a crowd of 5,000, he launched into a lusty, ear-piercing "whooo," then followed with a foghorn of a tune that sailed clear into the next county. That was genuine east North Carolina country hollerin'. As Dewey told the crowd, "I been hollerin' since my mammy slapped me on the bottom the day I was born."

The event was the first National Hollerin' Contest that anybody knows about, and contestants came from as far away as Louisiana and Maryland to pay tribute to a minor art form that dates back to way before the days of the telephone. Hollerin' is the way folks used to communicate when they lived a mile or more apart. It requires a lot of lung power, and just plain shouting will not do. Traditionally, each farmer had a set of hollers that were recognizable as his own by their beat, melody and style of delivery. Some hollers were based on familiar hymn tunes, like Amazing Grace or What a Friend We Have in Jesus. Still others sounded like coyotes baying at the moon. The hollerer had to focus his tone sharply, like a diva trying to reach the upper balcony. To do this, some hollerers relied on a yodeling style in which every note was sung twice, a vibrating octave or so apart. A holler could be used to report distress, or good news--the recovery of a sick mule, the completion of spring plowing, the arrival of a circuit minister to give a service the next day. These days, hollerin' has by and large been outdated by modern communications, but it is still cherished--and practiced--by many of the old masters who used to rely on it in their daily lives.

When contest day came, the volunteer fire department spread a barbecue, the ladies baked cakes and, although nobody ever explained why, a Green Beret unit from nearby Fort Bragg put on an exhibition of hand-to-hand combat. There was an upset in the women's division: Mrs. Anita Thornton, whose dinner call can be heard by her husband three miles away, lost to Mrs. Jeanne Marie Brown of New Orleans, who charmed the judges with her "Dismal Swamp Call." Dewey Jackson won the big gold trophy, as expected, then triumphed in the duet competition with his brother O. B. But Henry Parsons, 73, became everybody's sentimental favorite with the holler that he used as a boy when he drove the wagon in for the evening. Splitting the air with a high, resounding falsetto, he yodeled up and down the scale like a goatherd piping to his flock. Said Parsons: "I would holler my holler, and by the time I got home and had the mules unhitched, Mother would have the ham a-fryin' and the peas a-cookin'."

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