Roots music tells its story to the world mostly through its leading festivals like this weekend’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Telluride, and Merlefest. But the music wouldn’t be around with a story to tell decade after decade without organic support at the literal grass roots, and in that realm, few were as effective and genuine as John Murray “Hippie Jack” Stoddart, Jr., who died on Sept. 25 at his home in Crawford, TN. He was 75 years old.
He was most famous among Americana musicians and fans for creating and hosting Jammin’ At Hippie Jack’s, a family-run, volunteer-driven music festival that brought top talent and up to 1,000 festivarians to his farm in Overton County on the Cumberland Plateau. But before launching that event and its long-running public television series, Stoddart made his name as a photographer and documentarian who revealed lives and cultures in the Upper Cumberland region. And he was a down-home philanthropist who raised funds, ran food banks, and gathered warm winter coats and firewood for families in need, up to and including Christmas mornings.
His family’s announcement put it this way: “For more than five decades, Jack documented the people, places, music, and stories of the Cumberland Plateau. Through his photography, videos, radio, and the creation of Jammin’ at Hippie Jack’s, he built a community centered around Art, Music, storytelling, and the belief that we should always help those in need…There will never be another Hippie Jack. But his kindness, photographs, stories, and the community he built will continue to carry his spirit forward.”
Becky Magura, President of Nashville PBS, encountered Stoddart many years ago when she ran PBS station WCTE in Cookeville, and she thought his homestead and his way of life was “magical,” to use her word. “We knew what he was doing needed to be shared through public television,” she told WMOT. “During Hippie Jack's weekends, always, were people of all walks of life, all ages, lots of families, who literally came together for the music, but came together to be in community. He and his wife (Lynne) embedded themselves in the upper Cumberland in that region by that farm. They were wonderful to their neighbors throughout their life. They grew a garden just to feed people. He lived the values he believed in.”
What started as a documentary about Jack quickly evolved into a rough-and-ready festival captured on video with small cameras and minimal lighting. Launched in 2007, the series’s homespun qualities and hand-picked artists sparked wider interest, and through the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA), WCTE got the series on as many as 162 stations in 30 states. Show guests included The Steeldrivers with Chris Stapleton, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, Dan Tyminski, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Mountain Heart, Malcolm Holcombe, and one of the final performances by Kentucky songwriter Tim Krekel before his passing.
Americana songwriting star Darrell Scott, also a Jammin' veteran, has been Jack’s neighbor for years, after Jack pointed him to property along the same stretch of the West Fork Obey River and then helped him move in. Scott told me that Stoddart became respected in the region as an artist and citizen decades before he became a show promoter.
“He made friends with the locals. He would get them to be comfortable with him taking pictures with their mule or the Mennonite kids up on the hill making their sorghum,” Scott said. “He was documenting real 30s and 40s Depression-era looking stuff. That was his photography esthetic. And then he just brought that over into the (festival) video as well. Like, we don't have to prop this up. We don't have to make it fancy. Just catch it as it is, in a verite kind of way. That seemed to be what he was about.”
According to Stoddart’s official family obituary, Jack was born in 1951 in Miami, FL and moved to Tennessee in 1972 with his wife Lynne. “In 1980, Jack held his first one-man art show at Cheekwood Botanical Garden & Museum of Art,” the article says. “Throughout his career as a fine-art photographer, his work received numerous awards and became part of permanent collections, including those of the Smithsonian, the Tennessee State Museum, the museum at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, and the Atlanta Art Museum, among others.”
Then the festival became Stoddart’s identity, expanding to spring and fall editions that ran through 2019. On the way, the family set up The Council of Americana Roots Music, a non-profit devoted to culture and service. “Our mission,” they said, “is to promote, present, and preserve Americana roots music, while serving the under-served people of Appalachia with fairness, dignity, and compassion.” The Covid lockdown put Jammin’ on hold, but it came back in 2025 and again last spring, when campers and volunteers dealt with rains and a roaring river while the lineup featured Paul Thorn, Knoxville favorites Cruz Contreras and the Black Lillies, the Flea Market Hustlers and more.
The festival was described by those who attended it as “loose” and sort of self-governing. Area folks who just wanted to hang out mingled with those who’d come for the music, which is presented on two stages. Kids would play in the river. Jack’s famous bus, an ancient Bluebird coach festooned with folk art, was a fixture. Folks wore shirts with Jack’s sardonic slogan: “The Wrong People Doing The Right Thing.’
Indications are that Jack’s son Silas plans to keep Jammin’ At Hippie Jack’s going. On Facebook he paid tribute to his father: “He was complicated, stubborn, funny, generous, passionate, and completely one of a kind. He could drive you crazy one minute and make you laugh until you cried the next. But more than anything, Dad cared about people.”
A Celebration of Life will be held November 7, 2026, from 1:00–3:00 p.m. at the Hippie Jack Farm in Overton County.
