There is a time for love and laughter
The days will pass like summer storms
The winter wind will follow after
But there is love and love is warm
“There is a Time”… Lyrics by Rodney Dillard/Mitch Jayne

Mitch Jayne, humorist, bass player for the bluegrass/newgrass band The Dillards, language scholar and Ozark storyteller, passed away August 2, 2010, in the afternoon at the Truman VA Medical Center in Columbia, Missouri. Mr. Jayne was 82 (or thereabouts…his online bios give his birthday as July 5, 1930, but in the Ozarks what’s a year or two?) Plans for memorial services are incomplete at this time.

There is a time for us to wander
When time is young and so are we
The woods are greener over yonder
The path is new the world is free

Jayne was born in Hammond, Indiana, but after having attended school in Columbia, Missouri and begun his career teaching one-room school in the Ozarks, he thoroughly embraced his adopted area, becoming a Salem, Missouri radio announcer at KSMO featuring local musicians and funny bits, like the “tick and chigger report” and “snake futures.” He created a stable of fictional local characters, and met a few real ones, such as Rodney and Doug Dillard, whom he later accompanied as bass player and band MC in a long career as “The Dillards.”

Along the way, Mitch became a novelist, with three published books to his name: “Forest in the Wind”, “Old Fish Hawk”, and “Fiddler’s Ghost.” He also wrote prolifically on Ozark speech, the outdoors and Ozark characters and scenery, compiling choice bits and stories in a non-fiction book called “Home Grown Stories and Home Fried Lies.” He retired to Eminence, Missouri, where he was living with his wife Diana until his death. In a wry twist of fate for a musician, his hearing failed in his later years, but his sense of humor, never. Up until two weeks before his final illness, Jayne wrote a weekly column for The Current Wave and an annual “Message to Tourists” (which sometimes made you wonder if you really wanted to be in Shannon County, but you stayed anyway since you were sidesplit with “Uncle Mitch’s” advice, the spirit in which it was intended.)

There is a time when leaves are fallin’
The woods are gray the paths are old
The snow will come when geese are callin’
You need a fire against the cold

A brief summary of the musical story of Mitch, The Dillards, (aka The Darlings…their stage name as The Darling Boys on the early 1960s The Andy Griffith Show) can be found at
European bluegrass blog . and numerous places on the Web. Jayne’s early career as a novelist, which won him some recognition, but not quite as much as other aspects of his life, finally took off in 2007 with the publication of Fiddler’s Ghost, an eerie tale able to happen no where else but the Missouri Ozarks. According to an interview with Traveler in 2009, Jayne was revising and reworking a manuscript tentatively titled “Glory’s War”, about a town fighting inundation by large dam.

So do your roaming in the springtime
And you’ll find your love in the summer sun
The frost will come and bring the harvest
And you can sleep when day is done

Mitch’s last column for The Current Wave ran on July 21, and was a retelling of a person’s bear sighting on Sinkin Creek. He finished with this, “Folks, I was scheduled to give a talk this Saturday for the National Park Service at Big Springs, in Van Buren. Unfortunately, I’ve been a bit under the weather and will not be able to do it.”

Sleep well, Mitch.
–Jo Schaper