Country sound gone from radio in Los Angeles
Country sound gone from radio in Los Angeles
By: Bill Mead
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Posted by editor Tue Nov 30, 1999 00:00:00 PST
Viewed 830 times
0 responses 0 comments You might not have noticed that the last country music radio station in Los Angeles has switched to another format, leaving the city with nothing on the airwaves for good old boys.
I'm sure this reflects changes in the city's ethnic makeup due to immigration as well as the preference of younger people for acid rock, hip hop, rap and whatever else passes for music these days.
Actually it was immigration that fueled the west coast's country/western craze in the first place. Immigrants from other parts of the country poured into California at the end of World War II, bringing with them a fondness for what we used to call cowboy or hillbilly music. I came from Iowa where we grew up savoring the sophisticated sounds of dance bands led by “serious” musicians such as Benny Goodman and Vaughn Monroe. We laughed at primitive hillbilly performers who, as we used to joke, “sang through their noses by ear.”
After arriving in California, I soon developed a taste for the rollicking country music that had been brought here by the likes of a cigar-chomping Texan named Bob Wills, the gifted fiddle player and showman Spade Cooley and literally hundreds of other talented country musicians who seemed to pop up in every beer hall from San Diego to Sacramento.
Some of the best country music during that mid-century period was called western swing. The innovative Wills had come up with this highly-salable style by adopting the instrumentation of the popular mainstream bands of the 1930s and 40s. For the first decade following World War II this danceable country music packed ballrooms all over the Southland. Ones I remember included Pop's Willow Lake near San Fernando where Hank Penny and his band became legendary; Town Hall in Compton, presided over by Cliffie Stone and where big names like Tennessee Ernie Ford stepped into the limelight; Riverside Rancho on the edge of downtown Los Angeles which headlined Tex Williams, a popular country singer who had been fired by the unstable Cooley; and Spade's own venue, Santa Monica Ballroom, where he produced Southern California's most-popular TV show in the days before Lawrence Welk took over the tube.
Later, Hank Penny established the granddaddy of all country/western cathedrals, The Palomino Club in North Hollywood. You can still see it in the Clint Eastwood comedy “Every Which Way But Loose.”
But even before Clint brought his cameras into the Palomino Club the era of pure country music was rapidly losing out to guys in blue suede shoes who exploded onto the scene with a style known as rock and roll. These hip-swivelers soon forced country musicians to move toward small combos performing ballads that sounded like the slick popular songs of earlier times. That's how today's “cross over” music was born.
I'm no expert, but I look back at the 25 years between 1945 and 1970 as the golden age of genuine country music in America. It's never been as good since. That may be the true reason why the last country/western station in L.A. has gone another direction. The last fans of real country have died off or left town.
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