''Town Hall Party'' was an American

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

program, firstly broadcast on

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a tr ...

and then

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

The first radio broadcast was in Autumn 1951 by stations KXLA-AM in Pasadena, California and

KFI-AM KFI (640 AM) is a radio station in Los Angeles, California, owned and operated by iHeartMedia, Inc. It began operations in 1922 and became one of the first high-powered, clear-channel Class A stations. It was the first U.S. station west of Chi ...

in Los Angeles, California The television series was broadcast over Los Angeles network KTTV.

Founding and synopsis

Promoter William B. Wagnon, Jr., had been booking such acts as

Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys James Robert Wills (March 6, 1905 – May 13, 1975) was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the founder of Western swing, he was known widely as the King of Western Swing (although S ...

in ballrooms between Bakersfield and Sacramento for several years when he decided to extend his operations to Los Angeles. Burt "Foreman" Phillips, himself a bandleader had been promoting

country and Western A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while t ...

barn dance programs at the old Town Hall building, situated at 400 South Long Beach Boulevard in Compton, near Long Beach. Wagnon acquired Phillips' lease and commenced promoting a combined dance-and-show, featuring any and all country & western recording artists working in the area and available on Saturday nights. An estimated 3,000 patrons could be accommodated in the Town Hall Ballroom. Wagnon instructed the performers to play only music which could be danced to, and to keep individual songs short and plentiful, in order to satisfy everyone's tastes.

NBC radio broadcasts

A Friday night radio version of ''Town Hall Party'' was heard on KXLA, and Wagnon approached KFI with a proposal for a Saturday night broadcast. The latter was carried by portions of the

NBC Radio The National Broadcasting Company's NBC Radio Network (known as the NBC Red Network prior to 1942) was an American commercial radio network which was in operation from 1926 through 2004. Along with the NBC Blue Network it was one of the first tw ...

network. Country singer Wesley Tuttle was hired as director/musical director of the series, and Johnny Bond was contracted to write the scripts for the KFI/NBC series. The cast featured

Tex Ritter Woodward Maurice Ritter (January 12, 1905 – January 2, 1974) was a pioneer of American country music, a popular singer and actor from the mid-1930s into the 1960s, and the patriarch of the Ritter acting family (son John, grandsons Jason and ...

, Johnny Bond, Buddy Dooly, Wesley and Marilyn Tuttle, Tex Williams, Roy Klein, Joe Maphis, Rose Lee Maphis, Jenks "Tex" Carman, Eddie Kirk,

Jim Pruitt The 2020 United States House of Representatives elections in Texas was held on November 3, 2020, to elect the 36 U.S. representatives from the state of Texas, one from each of the state's 36 congressional districts. The elections coincided ...

Merle Travis Merle Robert Travis (November 29, 1917 – October 20, 1983) was an American country and western singer, songwriter, and guitarist born in Rosewood, Kentucky, United States. His songs' lyrics often discussed both the lives and the economic exp ...

, Fiddlin' Kate (Margie Warren),

Freddie Hart Frederick Segrest (December 21, 1926 – October 27, 2018), known professionally as Freddie Hart, was an American country musician and songwriter best known for his chart-topping country song and lone pop hit "Easy Loving," which won the C ...

Mary Jane Johnson Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also call ...

, Les "Carrot-Top" Anderson,

Pee Wee Adams Pee or PEE may refer to: *Slang for Urine *Slang for Urination * P, the 16th letter of the English alphabet *Peeblesshire, historic county in Scotland, Chapman code * Penny or pence * Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble, a North Korean electronica grou ...

, Shirley Adams, comedian

Texas Tiny Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by b ...

, and other prominent country entertainers. TV and radio announcer Jay Stewart, who had worked with Bond on an earlier West Coast country & western show, ''

Hollywood Barn Dance ''Hollywood Barn Dance'' is a 1947 American film starring Ernest Tubb. It was based on the CBS radio program of the same name, which was originally hosted by Cottonseed Clark, which, in turn, was a "replacement" for Gene Autry's ''Melody Ranch'' ...

,'' was hired as master of ceremonies.

Television program

From 10:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. PT on Saturday nights, Los Angeles television station KTTV carried the live ''Town Hall Party'' series. By September 1953 the show was "a regional NBC TV'er," and "the longest c.&w. West Coast TV'er, with net plans in the works. The Armed Forces Television Service made 16mm

kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...

s of the shows and broadcast them on stations throughout the world, from Greenland to Saudi Arabia to the Canal Zone. As the show expanded, new talent joined the cast - with

Lefty Frizzell William Orville "Lefty" Frizzell (March 31, 1928 – July 19, 1975) was an American country music singer-songwriter and honky-tonk singer. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1982. Frizzell released many songs that char ...

, Skeets McDonald, Dortha Wright, and The Collins Kids being among the most popular. Guest stars were plentiful, with an appearance by

Gene Autry Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was an American singer, songwriter, actor, musician, rodeo performer, and baseball owner who gained fame largely by singing in a crooning s ...

breaking all attendance records during a 1954 performance. Other notable guest stars included

Johnny Cash John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American country singer-songwriter. Much of Cash's music contained themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially in the later stages of his c ...

, Eddie Dean, Smiley Burnette, Jimmy Wakely,

Sons of the Pioneers The Sons of the Pioneers are one of the United States' earliest Western singing groups. Known for their vocal performances, their musicianship, and their songwriting, they produced innovative recordings that have inspired many Western music perf ...

and

Jim Reeves James Travis Reeves (August 20, 1923July 31, 1964) was an American country and popular music singer-songwriter. With records charting from the 1950s to the 1980s, he became well known as a practitioner of the Nashville Sound. Known as "Gentlem ...

. The 10-piece ''Town Hall Party'' band featured Joe Maphis,

, superb steel guitarist Marian Hall, Billy Hill and Fiddlin' Kate on violins, PeeWee Adams on drums, Jimmy Pruitt on piano, and other excellent musicians who created a ''Town Hall Party'' sound also heard on many country sessions produced by

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the A ...

in Hollywood in the 1950s. Wagnon's series continued to expand in the 1950s. Billed as ''Town Hall Ranch Party'', Sunday afternoon and holiday performances were held outdoors at Sierra Creek Park in the Santa Monica Mountains beginning in the summer of 1955. A daily version began airing on another Los Angeles television station. Then, in 1957, Wagnon arranged with Screen Gems to film a series of 39 half-hour television shows featuring the ''Town Hall Party'' cast. A close friend of

Art Linkletter Arthur Gordon Linkletter (born Gordon Arthur Kelly or Arthur Gordon Kelly; sources differ; July 17, 1912 – May 26, 2010) was a Canadian-born American radio and television personality. He was the host of ''House Party'', which ran on CBS radio a ...

, Wagnon had named his series after Linkletter's popular radio/television program, ''House Party''. He opted to capitalize on the TV Westerns craze of 1957 by calling the syndicated series, ''Ranch Party''. While many traditional country and Western musicians had been mainstays of the radio and television cast for years, the series readily embraced rock ´n roll and enthusiastically presented singers from the new genre.

Carl Perkins Carl Lee Perkins (April 9, 1932 – January 19, 1998)#nytimesobit, Pareles. was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. A rockabilly great and pioneer of rock and roll, he began his recording career at the Sun Studio, in Memphis, Tennes ...

and his combo were brought in to film guest spots on the Screen Gems series, and The Collins Kids were given co-star billing with host

. Traditional country entertainers, singing cowboys, and rock singers never shared the spotlight in a more harmonious manner than on the ''Town Hall Party'' and syndicated ''Ranch Party'' shows.

1958 to 1961

released a ''Town Hall Party'' LP album in 1958, featuring many of the regular cast members of the series. That same year, however, brought changes to the program. NBC radio had discontinued carrying the Saturday night shows, and rising union scale rates made it impossible for Wagnon to keep the huge cast of recording artists on the Compton stage week after week. The band was made smaller and many regular cast members departed in 1958.

Billy Mize William Robert Mize (April 29, 1929 – October 29, 2017) was an American steel guitarist, band leader, vocalist, songwriter, and TV show host. Biography Mize was born in Arkansas City, Kansas, United States, but raised in the San Joaquin Valley ...

and Cliff Crofford, talented vocalists/instrumentalists/composers, joined the much smaller cast as band members and soloists. The Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team began playing in Los Angeles in April 1958, drawing many ''Town Hall'' patrons to the nearby Coliseum. In 1959, the new Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series. In late December 1958 the newly opened Showboat Hotel in Las Vegas began to put on ''Town Hall Party'' shows featuring Tex Ritter, The Collins Kids, and Town Hall regulars, thus drawing them away from the KTTV Saturday night telecasts. Competition for television viewers was more intense as the new decade began, and KTTV gave notice that ''Town Hall Party'' was to be dropped in December, 1960. The final performance at the Compton Town Hall was on January 14, 1961. Other live country and Western music shows were seen on California television at various points in the 1960s, but none featured the large cast of recording artists which Wagnon assembled in the 1950s, glimpses of which may be seen today on films of the syndicated ''Ranch Party'' series and on DVD releases of the surviving kinescopes of ''Town Hall Party''.Bond, Johnny. ''The Tex Ritter Story'', 1976, Chappell.

Performers

References

External links

Hillbilly-Music.com

{{DEFAULTSORT:Town Hall Party American country music radio programs Country music television series 1953 American television series debuts 1961 American television series endings