Louisiana Hayride: Radio and Roots Music along the Red River

221 Pages·2004·2.08 MB·English

by  Tracey E. W. Laird

Louisiana Hayride:
Radio and Roots Music
Along the Red River
Tracey E. W. Laird
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Louisiana Hayride
AMERICAN MUSICSPHERES
Series Editor
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Louisiana Hayride
Radio and Roots Music Along the Red River
Tracey E. W. Laird
LOUISIANA HAYRIDE
Radio and Roots Music Along the Red River
(cid:1)(cid:2)
Tracey E. W. Laird
1
2005
1
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Copyright © 2005 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Laird, Tracey E. W.
Louisiana hayride : radio and roots music along the red river /
Tracey E. W. Laird.
p. cm.—(American Musicspheres)
Includes bibliographical references.
Discography: p.
ISBN 0–19–516751–1
1. Country music—Louisiana—History and criticism.
2. Louisiana hayride (Radio program) I. Title.
ML3524.L29 2005
781.642′09763′99—dc22 2004014612
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Sir B, and a future great
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Preface
T
his book is about music, race, media, commerce, and place. As the
title suggests, the narrative comes to fruition with a discussion of the
Louisiana Hayride, Shreveport’s radio barn dance on station KWKH from
1948 to 1960—a forum for musical innovation that shaped the future of
both country music and rock-and-roll. But the book covers more ground
than that. In my consideration, the Hayride acts as a centerpiece for the
larger ethnomusicological question of how intersecting forces of geography,
history, demography, and economics shaped the character of the region
and, thus, set the stage for this unique radio program of singular influence.
The seeds for this book first took root during my graduate study in Michi-
gan. As a native Louisianan, I found the intangible differences of speech
rhythms and body language in the Midwest unsettling. This sense of
disquiet led me to questions of place: What molds the personality and cul-
ture of a particular locale? More specifically, what about my hometown of
Shreveport informed my perspective on music in a regionally definitive
way? Two answers came to mind: the Red River and the close proximity of
Shreveport’s black and white citizens.
The Red River midwifed Shreveport during the nineteenth century and
remained the focus of business and pleasure there for several decades
afterward. Although the river’s role was slight for most of the 1900s, that
role metamorphosed twice over at century’s end. Casino riverboats arrived
at Shreveport, permanently docked on the Red River, and gave rise to a
new riverfront entertainment district. And the Army Corps of Engineers
completed a decades-long lock and dam project, which reopened the river
as a working commercial port. Whether active or not, the Red River in-
delibly marks the spirit of the region and its people’s sense of place.
Place in the South inexorably invokes race. As a child of integration in a
region where blacks and whites live in near equal numbers, I grew to real-
ize that the two groups share much in common—most importantly, a
twisted and tragic history apart, along with a hope for a better future to-
gether. I would not presume that a small exploration of one aspect of roots
music might help to heal the social or political wounds that are slavery’s
legacy; but if my work were perceived in a spirit of healing, I would be
pleased. In the same year I was born, Tony Russell wrote the following in
Blacks, Whites, and Blues: “Indeed, the only way to understand fully the
various folk musics of America is to see them as units in a whole; as tradi-
tions with, to be sure, a certain degree of independence, but possessing an
overall unity.1Russell’s words stayed with me as I wrote this story about a
white country music barn dance in postwar northwest Louisiana, and they
return every time I encounter music and musicians who refuse to stay neat
and tidy in the black-and-white musical categories handed down from
commerce to academic discourse. In the following exploration of roots
music, I always try to call attention to places where the boundaries be-
tween white and black musical cultures have subtly, surely eroded.
In addition to place and race, this book addresses twentieth-century
media, specifically the Shreveport radio station KWKH. When I returned
to Shreveport in 1995 to begin studying the musical history of the river
town in which I grew up, I knew the Louisiana Hayridewould figure promi-
nently. Therefore, I began tuning into the still-vital 50,000-watt “Voice of
the Ark-La-Tex” KWKH, the station that broadcast the historic show. One
day I won a call-in radio contest and joined the KWKH morning announc-
ing team as “DJ for a Day.” I emphasized my best microphone low tones,
regaled the announcers with ideas about my project, and with great de-
light took a part-time job as a disc jockey, mostly weekends and fill-ins for
regular deejays, and mostly on the AM side of the AM-FM station.
KWKH-AM broadcast the old-time country music, as well as regular
local and farm news. Larry Scott, one of country music’s best-known disc
jockeys, still hosted his night-fly country show, keeping bleary-eyed truck-
ers awake on Interstate 20. I recall him lugging in milk crates full of his
personal album collection every night. Although I worked at the station
only six months, I was thrilled by spinning old Floyd Tillman and Bob
Wills wax and by feeling a part of history at the radio station whose im-
portance in country music I was only beginning to understand. I grew up
familiar with much of the music I played on KWKH, but had never given
it much thought before then.
By the time I ended my brief disc jockey career, I newly appreciated the
significance of KWKH, its unique geographic location in Shreveport, and
the singularity of its postwar barn dance, the Louisiana Hayride. From this,
my interest spread to the background of the area itself, the context in which
theHayridedeveloped, the history of media of which KWKH was part, and
the revolution in American culture that followed World War II. Only against
this backdrop do the details of the Louisiana Hayride’s operation and the
procession of key players across its stage take on their full meaning.
More than anything else, I hope that I have presented a model for a
study of a southern river city, the way that the facts of its history relate to
the musical products of its culture. In researching the history, listening to
the music, and talking to the people who were there, I know how many
viii Preface
more stories are left to tell in cities like Shreveport, Louisiana, outside
of the established music meccas of Nashville, New York, and Los Angeles.
Shreveport is just one of many maverick cities with a history of nurturing
influential musicians who have, in turn, made enduring contributions to
U.S. music and culture. Country music is the most obvious example of this
but, again, it is only one of the complex creations born from the whole of
southern culture. Like every other aspect of the South, country music on
the Louisiana Hayride is not easily reduced to its geographic or cultural
origins, its racial and social milieu, or its importance in U.S. society. My
study here hopes to be faithful to the cultural gestalt of the South and, in
so doing, cast a new die.
Many people have helped see this project through and I would like to
mention some of them here. I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the
writers and researchers cited in these pages, whose individual efforts in-
formed my current understanding of country music and rock-and-roll. The
scholars who more personally directed my education each strengthened
and guided my work in immeasurable ways. They include University of
Michigan professors Judith Becker, Rich Crawford, Steven Whiting, and
Paul Anderson. I also thank my Ann Arbor colleagues and friends includ-
ing Laird and Rose Pruiksma, Kit and Denise Taylor, Amy Beal and Ralf
Dietrich, Kyra Gaunt, H. K. Chae, Susan Walton, and Jennifer DeLapp.
I am grateful to Mark Slobin for overseeing this project—it is a great
honor to be associated with his work and the work of other contributors
to the American Musicspheres series. I especially appreciate the patience,
clarity of thought, and insightful feedback from Kim Robinson at Oxford
University Press and the gracious assistance from Eve Bachrach as well. I
thank the production team who saw the book through its final stages, and
especially Bob Milks, who guided the process with a strong eye for detail.
The professionalism and responsiveness of everyone I encountered at Ox-
ford have made this undertaking a pleasure.
In addition, I am grateful to all the individuals who agreed to personal
interviews, offering the insights one can only gain from being there: the
late Stedman Gunning, Frank Page, Jerry Kennedy, D. J. Fontana, Stan
Lewis, Sleepy Brown, Tillman Franks, Jean and Ruth Harkness, Homer
Bailes, Sonny Harville, Billy Walker, Jimmy C. Newman, Joe Osborn, Ray
Bartlett, Jim Ed, Maxine, and Bonnie Brown, Tony Douglas, Jimmy Lee
Fautheree, Ernest Ferguson, Ray Hendricks, James O’Gwynn, Roy Sneed,
Mallie Ann Stilley, Ann Stuckey, Margaret Lewis Warwick, Johnnie Wright,
Kitty Wells, and Bob Sullivan.
I deeply appreciate Rachel Stone, who, at a critical early stage of my re-
search, entrusted me with a box of tapes from her Sunday Stage radio
show, including her own interviews with significant players in Shreveport’s
local music scene. Her conversations with Homer Bailes, Sleepy Brown,
Jimmy Lee Fautheree and “Country” Johnny Mathis, Tillman Franks, Mur-
rell Stansell, Felton “Preacher” Harkness and Jack Green, and Joe Osborn
helped me to develop my thoughts and prepare some of my own inter-
views. I appreciate further help from KWKH deejay Barney Cannon. I
Preface ix