P.S. I Love You: The Story of the Singing Hilltoppers

7. Latter-Day Hilltoppers

 •  Latter-Day Hilltoppers The original Hilltoppers (Billy, Jimmy, Don, Seymour) may have gone their separate ways by 1963, but one place always remained common ground: Kentucky, particularly Bowling Green and the campus of Western. Each came back at every opportunity. This was, after all, where their short but fabulous career had started, and south central Kentucky was home to them in more ways than one. Billy Vaughn, for example, returned to his hometown, Glasgow, in 1965 (there had already been a Billy Vaughn Day in Glasgow in July 1962) to participate in the celebration of a promotional movie, Wonders of Kentucky, for which he had been asked to write the score. He said that he almost turned down the offer: “I was afraid I couldn’t do justice to it.” Some of his friends, however, were “persuasive.” Mack Sisk, a former Western student and editor of the College Heights Herald, knew Vaughn personally and approached him about the project . Billy not only agreed to write the score: he said he would do it gratis and pay his own way from California to Kentucky to attend the premiere.1 Noted Courier-Journal columnist Joe Creason wrote the commentary, and movie star Tom Ewell, from Owensboro, did the narration. S. Rayburn Watkins of Louisville was appoint- P.S. I LoveYou  ed by Governor Ned Breathitt as the chair of the Wonders of Kentucky Committee. When Watkins and his group described the project to Billy Vaughn, “he went far beyond anything we might have asked. He not only donated the professional services of his wonderful big band but also worked with some of his musically inventive people to produce six or seven original songs for the film, tied nicely to the script.” The film was produced by Foster Films of New York. Columbia Pictures picked up The Wonders of Kentucky, which ultimately reached some six thousand theatres throughout the United States, and audiences of more than 200 million people throughout the world. (It played first in Bowling Green at Lost River and Riverside drive-ins, and at the Capital Theater.)2 For Vaughn, the job posed no problems. “I was writing about a State that gets more beautiful all the time,” he said. His lyrics extol the virtues of a Kentucky vacation and a sunset on the Ohio River as it flows through Louisville. “Off to the Races” celebrates the wonder and excitement of the Kentucky Derby. Vaughn was nominated for an Academy Award in 1965 for his song “Louisville—My Home Town,” which was played in the documentary. He later told a reporter that of all his musical arrangements and hits, he was “most proud” of the Academy Award nomination for the music in Wonders of Kentucky.3 He went home to Glasgow to visit kinfolk during the time he was in Kentucky for the premiere of Wonders of Kentucky. “He’s the same old Billy,” his mother, Sally, admiringly said. “Success hasn’t changed him one bit.” Billy sat out in the front yard at the Glasgow home of his sister, Coogie. Cars drove by, and many of their occupants recognized Billy and stopped to say hello. Billy returned the greetings. “Here, I’m Billy. Not  Latter-Day Hilltoppers a man who makes records in California. Just Billy,” he told a reporter.4 In the downtown areas of cities like Louisville and Glasgow, however, sometimes people did not recognize Billy Vaughn’s name, at least without prompting. At such times, he was always described first as a “singing Hilltopper.” (One does not use the phrase “singing Hilltopper” with the past tense. Once a singing Hilltopper, always a singing Hilltopper.) Second, his fellow Kentuckians brought up the very successful Billy Vaughn Orchestra, which, during the past six or so years, had presented one notable song after another to the American public. Billy never got upset (it would have been uncharacteristic if he had) when people in his home state did not recognize him. “There is really no reason for you to know me,” he frequently told puzzled fans, “but you’ve heard my music.”Yes, indeed, they had, and after a few titles, the fans recognized him. There seemed to be so much love and affection between Billy Vaughn and his Kentucky fans and compatriots that, as time passed by, he thought more and more about returning home to his native state. He did just that in 1977, moving to...