Another rhinestone for the jeweled bracelet of classic Florida Folk Music videos provided to us by the late Carl Wade who shot this video and Gary Fuller, the caretaker of Carl’s videos and CDs, who provided us this wonderful treasure. This is the Dade City Pioneer Fest, a longtime West Central Florida Folk music-dominated festival not far from where Major Dade and his battalion were massacred by the Seminoles in the Second Seminole War.  Sit back and listen (and watch) the classic Bobby Hicks, Cracker from his stories to his songs. And thanks for visiting the Florida Folk Show podcast> Give us a Subscribe if you haven’t already.

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Whitey Markle was a proud and defiant defender of Florida’s environment, animals, lands and especially water. Like the late songwriting legend Bobby Hicks, the famous Game Commission biologist songwriter Dale Crider and the 400-song Patriarch of Florida Folk Music, Frank Thomas, Whitey was unforgiving to those who dared despoil Florida, throw a cigarette out a car window, leave litter on a beach, dig holes to drain wetlands, clear cut miles of forest and throw up trailer parks in natural prairies. I can see him right now, face red as fire, his vitriol boiling over with anger towards cowardly politicians and Councilman and the faceless corporations that dare to cross his path. Yet he had a soft touch that could silence an angry room with songs that made you feel the old Ocklawaha flow through your veins as the room grows quiet and shy like the squirrel who perches like a statue until we all safely walk by. Whitey, I knew and respected you every day since we first met at the 1971 Florida Folk Festival and we offer this podcast in your honor, to the bears and panthers and gators and mullet and those vanishing parts of Florida we can still see and feel, which you helped preserve. We present your first appearance at the Florida Folk Festival, including Cousin Thelma’s introduction, as well as your last FFF appearance. And we have your appearances at many environmental meetings, standing like a vicious bantam rooster before governments, the bad guys, the people who want to do things like they did up north where they had to leave because it was so bad. Remember, Whitey and rest in peace knowing you have trained and educated an Army of protectors, a veritable militia who will use their binoculars and notepads and phone cameras to keep watch over Florida and bring to justice the bastards whom I hope your memory will haunt the rest of their days. Richard “Whitey” Markle, a man like no other in Florida history. Courageous, bold, stubborn yet sweet in his own Florida cracker way.

I hope you enjoy this Tribute to Whitey produced by Tim Valle from everything we could quickly get our hands on at the last minute. And thank you for watching the Florida Folk Show podcast.

This episode of the Florida Folk Show podcast is all about storytelling. It features some great segments including Chief Jim Billie telling the Seminole legend of the Kissimmee River, Will McLean telling the story of the massacre that started the First Seminole War, Chubby Wise explaining his role in writing Orange Blossom Special, and much more. We hope you enjoy these uniquely Florida stories and songs.

Robert Orr “Bobby” Hicks was a legendary Florida folk music songwriter best known for his celebration of the Florida cracker native and staunch defense of the Florida environment in story, song and a roaring activism that scared land developers, water polluters and, even, his own audiences, into paying close attention to a man whose passion for Florida and hatred for those who would despoil it knew absolutely no limits. He took no hostages. He told no lies. He never backed down. “I’m Florida,” he sung out at every show. “Need I say more?”