Bob Mabe, 91, is the last living original Baldknobber.
Mabe is the only one of the six boys born to Hazel and Donald Mabe on this side of eternity, despite being the oldest.
He and three of his brothers formed the Baldknobbbers, a Branson entertainment staple, in 1960, when Dwight Eisenhower was president
The show featured country music, gospel, hillbilly culture, hillbilly humor and some come-to-Jesus preaching.
“Baldknobbers” also is the name of the vigilante group that met on the bald tops, or knobs, of Ozarks mountains in the late 1800s.
The show has changed over the years and is still performed.
The Baldknobbers was the first show — country or otherwise — in the Branson area, but not necessarily the first on the Branson strip.
That distinction, Mabe says, belongs to the Presleys’ Country Jubilee.
Mabe sat in his comfortable chair on Friday in his Hollister home. He can look through his patio and see Table Rock Lake lap against his backyard. One lot down the street is a marina where he has a boat.
He reflected on his life and career.
“Lyle played the wash tub; Bill played the Dobro; Jim played the wash board; and I played the fiddle and was the emcee.”
Bill’s character was “Wee Willie”; Jim was “Droopy Drawers”; Bob was “Bob-O-Link”; and Lyle was the main comic, a toothless character named “George Aggernite.”
“Bob-O-Link” comes from the bird, but why “George Aggernite”?
“Our dad drove a school bus and Lyle went with him and one day he asked my dad, ‘What was the name on the mailbox back there?'”
“Dad said, ‘Which one? There were a lot of mailboxes.'”
“My dad eventually figured out it was ‘George Aggernite.'”
Was your brother really toothless?
Yes. But he wore false teeth.
“And he would keep them in a pocket in his bib overalls during the show,” Mabe tells me. “We used to have a character in the show called Chickaboo, Chick Allen, who was in his 70s and did a jig dance and played the jawbone.
“So one night Lyle’s false teeth fell out of his pocked and were there on the stage and Chickaboo starts dancing his jig and steps on them and crushes them. The audience didn’t know.”
I have to ask: How do you play a jawbone? Is it a real jawbone?
In response to my questions, Sue, his wife of 52 years, presents me with the skull of a mule, which is larger than I would have thought. She shows me how to play it.
Why he left Baldknobbers
The Mabe brothers’ first shows were at the Old Boston School House. They also played at the press conference announcing the construction of what would become Silver Dollar City. They performed at the park’s grand opening in 1960.
The group also was part of the “Shepherd of the Hills Outdoor Drama” four nights a week. On Friday nights, the Mabes performed at the Old Community Building home, where they set up a stage and chairs in the basement.
Next, they relocated to the Sammy Lane Pavilion Building on the Taneycomo lakefront. Three years later, they moved to an old skating rink on the lakefront.
Their popularity boomed and in 1968 construction began on their Baldknobbers’ Theatre in Branson.
I tell Mabe that in all the news articles I read about him and the Baldknobbers not once did I find out why he left the group in 1977.
He says this about the three brothers who stayed in the group:
“They started drinking and carrying on. Lyle got to drinking so bad that he came on stage so drunk that he could barely talk.”
Do you drink?
“I am a teetotaler. That don’t mean I’m a better guy because of it. But have seen so many guys ruin their lives with booze.”
In fact, he says, one of his great regrets is that he was so despondent after the breakup of his first marriage — they had three children — that he drank for a while.
After leaving the Baldknobbers, Mabe did not work for a year.
He re-entered the world of Branson entertainment by forming the Bob-O-Links country band and built his own theater, which still stands and resembles a barn with a silo.
The show was called the Bob-O-Links Country Hoe Down. His brothers were not involved.
It was similar to the Baldknobbers. He included the Rex Burdette family of square-dancers, who were known as The Promenadors when they appeared on the Ozark Jubilee TV show, hosted by Red Foley.
The humor in the show had to be family-friendly clean, Mabe says.
“I had a comedian who was a bit ornery who would always tell the new joke he had heard and I would shake my head and say, ‘No, you’re not going to say that,'” he says.
Mabe once received a letter from a woman who complained about a joke that went something like this: If Dolly Parton were on stage she would not be able to see the audience below because of how she’s built.
“I really didn’t think it was dirty,” Mabe tells me. But he axed it, nevertheless.
In 1978, the News-Leader said this about the Bob-O-Links show:
“From square dancing to fiddlin’ to croonin’ and crowin’ there’s nearly a score of entertainers on stage who can send a charge through yer’ toes and make you dance in yer’ seat.”
Favorite and least favorite
Mabe ran the Bob-O-Links Country Hoe Down until 1987 and retired, although he continued to own the building and leased it over the years to various acts, including the Osmond Brothers.
His favorite country performer, whom he booked twice, was Mel Tillis, who died in 2017.
“We’d go out back between his shows and talk and he’d put a little bit a chew in his mouth,” Mabe tells me.
His least favorite is Ronnie Milsap, who is 78.
“He’s a great performer,” Mabe says.
But Mabe was never fond of Milsap’s move, similar to Michael Jackson’s, of grabbing his own crotch while on stage.
Yet, he booked Milsap a second time and at the last minute Milsap canceled, saying he had laryngitis.
“I had sold out two shows and people had come from four different states, so I told him I wanted to go with him to the hospital so a doctor could look at him. I rode there with him.
“He was the nastiest man I ever seen,” Mabe says. “Filthy talking. He would say anything.”
Milsap did not perform. So the Bob-O-Links were forced into service.
Years later, Mabe says, he was still returning money to people who had bought tickets to see Milsap.
Best decision of his life
Mabe does not hesitate when I ask what the best decision of his life has been.
“The Lord. Being saved at the age of 14 in Highlandville.”
What will heaven be like?
“It’s going to be beautiful and I won’t have this old, ugly body any more.”
Toughest part of being 91?
“It’s hard to get up and move. It takes me a while just to get up from the chair. I go to church on Sundays and that is the only place I go.
“I still drive. But I let my wife do most of the driving. She’s 10 years younger than me. I don’t really like her driving. But she’s afraid of mine.”
It’s been a good life, he says.
“There is no man who has enjoyed life as much as I have,” he says. “I’ve traveled all over. I’ve been to Alaska and I’ve been to Israel. The only place I want to go to that I haven’t been yet is heaven.”
These are the views of News-Leader columnist Steve Pokin, who has been at the paper for nine years, and over his career has covered everything from courts and cops to features and fitness. He can be reached at 836-1253, spokin@gannett.com, on Twitter @stevepokinNL or by mail at 651 Boonville Ave., Springfield, MO 65806.
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