MARGARET BRITTON Vaughn, known to most people as “Maggi,” tracked the grit on the avenue from the ruts of the road. Many of the songs she hummed have been sung by names and faces we know and recognize today. Vaughn knew early that her writer’s voice was shaped by and tuned to country radio stations as she declared her destiny to her mother as a third-grader.
Vaughn said, “I said, ‘Mama, I’m going to be a poet and a country music songwriter,’ and I handed her my song. It was titled “Here I Sit Alone at the Bar.” Well, Mama looked down and said, ‘Oh my, are you sure you don’t want to be a nurse?’ Back then, a girl had three things she was supposed to do: finish school, get married, and have babies. That was it. But I knew as a child I was going to be a writer. I told Mama I was going to be a poet and a songwriter, and I kept that dream all my life, and I fulfilled it.”
The ruts in the road took a little girl born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to different worlds before leading her to her forever home in Bell Buckle. Her firefighter father died tragically in an on-the-job traffic accident when she was only 9 months old. Not long after, she and her family transferred with her stepfather’s job to Gulfport, Mississippi, and the coastal era of Vaughn’s life was born.
Vaughn is surrounded in her Bell Buckle living room by treasures that celebrate this season and influence her life. “When we got to Gulfport, Mississippi, it was wide open. Gamblers, strippers, nightclubs, and liberal thinking. Girls were supposed to go to college. And 50 or 60 miles from Gulfport was New Orleans. I was opened up to both worlds, conservative and liberal, and I’ve been able to incorporate both of those worlds into my life. So Gulfport had a huge influence on my life,” she said.
Vaughn pursued songwriting just out of college and was hired by the Wilburn Brothers, who signed her immediately to write for their publishing company, Sure- Fire Music. They loved her lyrics but not her melodies and paired her with a young singer-songwriter charting at that time with Honky Tonk Girl, Loretta Lynn. It was the beginning of a friendship and songwriting partnership that endured through the years. Vaughn was co-writer of the grammy-nominated song “I Miss Being Mrs.Tonight.” According to The Wilburn Brothers’ Facebook page, Vaughn is also credited with “Neon Lights” (with Teddy Wilburn), “Bartender” (with Loretta Lynn), and “I’ll Sure Come A Long Way Down” (with Loretta Lynn).
Vaughn soon discovered the journey of a song in Nashville from the pen to the radio stations was long and slow, so she returned to Mississippi in search of a new career. Vaughn said she found it as the first female ad salesperson in Mississippi at the Daily Herald in Gulfport. Vaughn later accepted a sales position with Nashville’s Newspaper Printing Corporation, owned by the Tennessean and Nashville Banner, where she worked for 17 years. But her heart was in Bell Buckle, a small town that spoke to her when she was a little girl visiting with her aunt to buy fabric at the mercantile. From that moment on, Vaughn said Bell Buckle stuck in her mind.
“On a trip to Bell Buckle to go junking, I said to my friend, ‘Winfred, this is where I’m supposed to be in life. It’s calling to me. And I know now why it’s calling to me. This is where I’m supposed to live.’ I quit my job, went back, and gave my two weeks’ notice.”
Friends and family weren’t as convinced as Vaughn that it was the right move, but she was undeterred. And today, from her Bell Buckle studio, Vaughn puts our thoughts and memories into poems in a language that we feel is as much ours as Vaughn’s. We connect with her words so deeply that she was appointed the Poet Laureate of Tennessee in 1995, one of the longest-standing poet laureates in U.S. history.
As poet laureate, Vaughn has written the inaugural poems for four governors, the Tennessee quarter poem, Tennessee women’s suffrage poem, the Grand Ole Opry’s 100th-anniversary poem, and The Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College 100th anniversary poem. The bicentennial poem, “Who We Are,” which hangs in the state capitol and many other places throughout our state, was designated as the official Tennessee state poem. Vaughn’s 50th anniversary commemorative poem for the U.S. Air Force was read into the Congressional Record of Washington, D.C.
Vaughn is the first poet to be awarded the Mark Twain Fellowship in Elmira, New York. In 2007, she was awarded the Arts and Humanities Award for achieving a notable and distinguished career in the Mid-South by the Germantown Arts Alliance. This award’s previous recipients include William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Alex Haley, and many other distinguished writers.
Vaughn, a member of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College Hall of Fame, has now released over 20 self-published books through her publishing company, Bell Buckle Press. Her most requested poem, she said, remains “Is That You, Mama?”
Whether it’s the official poems written for the state of Tennessee or a poem about quilts, the old school desk, or the front porch, Vaughn is the voice of the rural South. Penning the lines is as natural as speaking or breathing, and her success is no secret to her.
“The reason I get so much response from people is that I got my voice from country music,” Vaughn said.
Keep speaking, Ms. Maggi! GN
