Cape River Heritage Museum honors Jaycee Follies

Once a year, from 1962 to 1982, the Cape Girardeau Jaycees would team up with some of the community's best musicians, singers and cutups for the Jaycee Follies.

The Follies was a variety show that raised money for various community projects. On Oct. 30, the Cape River Heritage Museum will host a public reception for the cast and crew of the Jaycee Follies, as part of the "Jerry Ford's 50 Years of Music" celebration.

"This whole thing started as the Benton/Clio Follies, and it was put on by one of the fraternities and one of the sororities," said Jerry Ford, who provided music for the Follies. "Then around '62, the Cape Jaycees took over the show. A New York producer would come to town with scripts, gags and sets and would just whip everyone into shape. With all the skits and dance numbers, it really was like the old 'Carol Burnett Show.' I was in the pit providing music, but I will always remember Millie Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh's mother, and Mary Frances Kinder, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder's mother, singing as a duet, and they always tore the house down."

Ford said the warm-ups before the show were chaotic, with people on roller skates, actors who acted drunk and people dressed up as small girls with giant lollipops.

"I just remember loving the rehearsals and practicing," said J.J. Edmonds, a Jaycee who started with the Follies in late 1969. "We all knew that we, the cast and crew, weren't professionals, and that was what made it fun for everybody."

During his run with the show, Edmonds cut a rug dancing the cha-cha and the jitterbug, and he would sing selections from Bobby Darin or Frank Sinatra.

One year, Edmonds said, "We were going to go three nights at the auditorium, which seated about 930. Not only did we go three nights, but they had to provide extra seating and we raised a heck of a lot of money that year."

Larry Essner, executive director of the Community Counseling Center Foundation and a member of the reunion committee for the Follies, said after expenses, the show raised around $3,000 to $4,000, making it one of the group's largest fundraisers each year.

"Most of the money that the Jaycees earned went into playground equipment in the various parks around town," Essner said in an e-mail. "We would also buy toys for Operation Santa Claus before it was Toybox."

The reception begins at 6 p.m. at the Cape River Heritage Museum. Tickets are $5 in advance or $7 at the door. The evening will be decidedly more low-key than the old shows but no less special; the Jerry Ford Combo along with those who took part in the Follies will perform some of the more memorable musical numbers of the show's run and swap stories about the past.

"The thing that made it unique, it seemed like the whole town was involved," Ford said. "All these wonderful entertainers, housewives who became chorus girls, carpenters who built the sets and so on."