Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A • W I N T E R 2 0 1 7 36 D THE SNAKE RIVER OUTLAWS Before television arrived [in the late 1950s], people in Montana devoted a considerable share of the time they budgeted for entertain- ment to live music, dances, picnics and similar social functions that seem far less commonplace today. Going to a nightclub or "honky- tonk" to listen to live music remained one of the primary choices for entertainment. Enter the Snake River Outlaws in Missoula, in 1953. Down on the corner of Woody and Alder streets, in the heart of the "skid row" section of a city whose economy depended mainly on the timber and lumber mils, well-heeled men and women in business suits and evening dresses elbowed their way into Jimmy Rose's Sun- shine Bar to listen to the hillbilly music by musicians from across the hills in Idaho. e Outlaws played there six nights a week, from 9:00 p.m. until closing, which in Montana meant 2 a.m. at was a brutal work schedule. e band's frontman, Orville Foctman, estimated that he learned well over two hundred songs. e Outlaws put out two singles in their ca- reer, both in the 78 rpm format…In 2008, Scot Wilburn and Wylie Gustafson approached Hal Cannon, director of the Western Folklife Center, with a collection of reel-to-reel tapes made of the Sunshine Bar radio broadcasts. e tapes were a time capsule that preserved some of the best music ever played and performed in Missoula. A ARON PARRETT STRUGGLES TO DEFINE "AMERICANA" IN HIS INTRODUCTION. "It covers an immense amount of territory. I focus mainly on hillbilly, country, country-blues and old-time folk music, as well as its offspring, bluegrass." These excerpts from Montana Americana Music, Boot Stomping in Big Sky Country, are reprinted with permission from The His- tory Press, 2016. This book is dense with anecdotes about musicians that show the deep knowledge of the author, who is also a talented musician. He says, "I had the luxury to write about what I liked." D I S TI N C TL Y MONTA N A by AARON PARRETT TO THE SNAKE RIVER OUTLAWS: distinctlymontan.com/ outlaws LISTEN

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