A view of the lights on the Dallas Highway beyond the city limits, 1950. Douglass, Neal. Stallion Drive-Inn Restaurant, photograph, October 4, 1950; accessed December 19, 2020, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

Beyond the City Limits: The New Dance Halls

Between 1940 and 1950, a host of music halls and bars popped up on the outskirts of Austin. Together, these new venues created a new performance environment for Western Swing bands and working class white audiences.

TextMichael Schmidt
PublishedDecember 28, 2020

Together, these narratives explain a historic change in sound.

The main sound of Austin’s music scene changed from this in the 1930s,

Henry Busse and his Orchestra, “Begin the Beguine,” Decca 1938

to this in the mid-to-late 1940s,

Melody Masters, “Dessau Waltz,” Lasso 1949

The difference between the two recordings above was more than just an evolution of Texas taste. The transformation from highly arranged big bands to small Western groups also represented a pronounced expansion in where Austinites could see music. One of the most important events in Austin’s early music history was the explosion of dance halls and bars just beyond the city limits. In the decade surrounding the Second World War, tumbledown Honky Tonks challenged college ballrooms and chic night clubs’ near monopoly over the city’s live music scene. And, as the venues altered, so did the music.

Gregory Gym
(UT Campus)
Texas Union
(UT Campus)
Driskill Hotel
Stephen F. Austin Hotel
Texas Federation
of Women’s Clubs
Austin Country Club
Varsity Inn
(Opened 1936)
The Tower
(Opened 1936)
Uncle Tom’s
(Opened 1936)
Villa Rosa
(Opened 1936)
The Avalon
(Opened 1937)
La Conga
(Opened 1938)
To Rocky Ridge Tavern
(Opened 1938)
American Legion
To Dessau Hall

By 1950, this map was quite different.

Gregory Gym
Texas Union
The Barn
The Owl Club
To The Star Club
Skyline Club
The Plantation
Price’s Hall
Threadgill’s
Top Hat
El Morocco Club
Club 81
The Windmill
Cinderella Club
Hollywood
The Village
Dessau Hall
(Established 1880s)
Elm Grove Lodge
Sunset Tavern
Hilltop Inn
Copenhagen Inn
Riverside Inn
Moosehead Tavern
Blue Goose

A few of these venues modeled themselves on the night clubs of the 1930s, showcasing dance orchestras and a dinner menu. Some, like the Skyline , started with big bands, but quickly shifted to Country music. From what the sources indicate, however, the vast majority were Honky Tonks and, as they were also known at the time, skull orchards.1

Honky Tonks radically changed the atmosphere and environment of dances in Austin. College events were in self-consciously sophisticated ballrooms or on the polished wood of Gregory Gym. The night clubs of the 1930s advertised their steaks, Mexican food, “modernistic furniture,” and elaborate floor shows. In stark contrast, most forties bands played in quickly built, spartan buildings which booked music to attract customers to buy alcohol.

A party at the Avalon Club, 1948.

Mears, Dewey G. [Jazz Band Playing at Law School Party], photograph, April 30, 1948; accessed December 19, 2020, University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

Cactus Pryor, one of the legendary radio personalities of Texas, emphasized that Honky Tonks and their music were core parts of Austin culture in the 1940s and 1950s. In his book of short memoirs, Inside Texas, he fondly recalled the look and feel of a regular weekday night at one of these area dance halls:

Every night the scene was the same, only the dancers changed. The wooden bandstand illuminated mostly by Pearl and Lone Star beer neon signs, the ice-slick dance floor, the long tables occupied by the city dudes and the country folks of Germanic, Slavic, or Scandinavian stock, drinking beer or pouring from the brown bag on the table. Often the newly born baby was placed on top of the table too and friends would watch the baby while mom and pop danced. Sometimes there would be a wedding party and the band would play ‘Anniversary Waltz.’ You’d see the bride dancing with her bridesmaids in their home-made flowing gowns while the groom stayed at the table to talk to poppa-in-law about crops and land. The band would play the Paul Jones and the Herr Schmidts and the “put-your-little foots” while everyone danced around the floor in a counterclockwise direction. Always counter-clockwise. If you knew the bandleader you could usually count on him buying you a round or two, because Pearl or Lone Star gave him a little budget to plug their products.2

But the Honky Tonks were not just community centers. Johnny Bush, who got his start playing Central Texas Honky Tonks in the early 1950s, described another side of these places vividly:

When I was coming up, a honky-tonk was a bad place to be. They were on the outskirts of town. You didn’t want people to see you go in. They were made out of scrap lumber and tar paper. They had beer bottle caps thrown out in front of the place to serve as gravel or paving so you wouldn’t get that mud all over you or get your car stuck. This was a Honky-tonk. There’s two reasons why people went to honky-tonks. They were either looking to forget somebody or looking to find somebody. Men lookin’ for women, women lookin’ for men. It’s the music that brings ’em in there. The music… .3

Not only did they have a reputation as places where women and men picked each other up for pre-marital or extra-marital sex, the Cinderella Club or The Windmill could, in fact, be violent.

Again, Bush paints the scene well:

The safest place to be in a honky-tonk was on the bandstand. You’ve heard stories about chicken wire being around the bandstand to protect the musicians from flying beer bottles? That was true. That wasn’t no bullshit...I saw fights like you wouldn’t believe in honky-tonks. Imagine how, during World War II, a guy comes home on leave, or he’s just been discharged. He comes home to an empty house, he goes to the nearest joint, and there’s his wife in there dancing with a shipyard worker. All hell’d break loose. World War III.4

Pryor’s memory agreed:

On Saturday nights when it was so crowded there wasn’t enough room for the smoke, there would be a fight or two. But this was part of the routine, so the constable was there drinking his beer with the best of them, waiting to take control when it came time for him to go to work.5

The Austin American and Austin Statesman documented some of the more extreme local brawls and attacks.

In a recent interview with the author, steel guitarist Wayne Wood said that brawls were ”commonplace” at Honky Tonks in Austin in the early to mid-1950s: ”some of those places I played, you’d see the fights pretty regular.” He recalled a terrifying fight he saw while playing a gig:

Hilltop Inn, that’s where I took out the back door. I mean I ran through the kitchen, it was as big as here to there [gestures to the wall]...little old place...man, they started banging each other out on that dance floor, they started fighting [with] beer bottles, I just left my steel and took out that back door.

When asked what the band was supposed to do when people started swinging, he said, “they usually said ‘keep playing.’”6

If you didn’t get hit over the head with a chair in a brawl, you stood a good chance of losing something from your car while you drank, danced, and flirted. Stolen cars were routinely dumped by the clubs.

Performing on stage provided little protection from thievery. When Elvis Presley played the Skyline Club in 1955, he had to be warned about the constant thievery at Austin’s Honky Tonks. Maida Meredith, the wife of the leader of the Skyline Club’s house band in the 1950s, kindly instructed the then unknown singer to take his hubcaps off or risk leaving without them.7

The Windmill
(1945-1949)
Oh Johnnie Club
(1945)
The Owl Club
(1946-1947)
Trocadero Dinner Club
(1946-1947)
Cinderella Club
(1946-1954)
El Morocco Club
(1947)
Ranch Club
(1947-1948)
Twin Oaks
(1948)
Lytton’s Drive Inn No. 2
(1948-1949)
Lenzo’s Casino
(1948)
Blackie’s Drive-Inn
(1949)
Moosehead Tavern
(1949-1953)
Rudy’s Drive-Inn
(1949-1951)
Southern Club
(1951-1956)
Grouchy’s
(1954)
HoeDown Club
(1954-1955)
Hudson’s Place
(1954-1955)
Moosehead Tavern
(1955-1958)
Club 81
(1955-1973)
Gil’s Club
(1956-1972)
The Western Inn
(1958-1960)
Victory Grill
Hi-De-Ho
Dew-Drop Inn
Big Bell Night Club
El Internacional
La Calle 7

Like many of the Honky Tonks, black venues had a boom and bust cycle in the decade after 1945. The clubs of East Austin did fantastically well for the first five years after the war. Johnny Holmes recalled that “the good years were between ’45 and ’49...soldiers were asleep on the ground outside and we were all making money.” In 1950, however, the East Austin entertainment market collapsed and the “competition for the ever diminishing dollars on 11th street became fierce.” It became so bad that Holmes, one of the pioneer music club owners on E. 11th Street, left the Victory Grill to work odd jobs outside of Austin.8

White Western bands also appeared in East Austin clubs for black audiences. In an interview with the beloved Austin music critic Margaret Moser, steel guitarist Jimmie Grabowske recalled that Lavada Durst (the famed local DJ Dr. Hepcat) booked his band for a “Western Night” at the Victory Grill during this period:

[Doug and] The Swing Boys knew how to play a variety of music styles...there was country, Western swing, blues, and some rock songs. The folks were very friendly and didn’t seem familiar with steel guitar. They stood around me, watching me play and asking questions about it. When it was closing time, they wanted us to continue playing. We couldn’t because of curfew.9

Gregory Gym
Texas Union
Texas Federation of
Women’s Clubs
Stephen F. Austin Hotel
Driskill Hotel
The Tower
La Conga
Avalon Club
Club 81
El Morocco Club
The Village
Mrs. Elmer’s Ranch House
Elm Grove Lodge
Cedar Crest Lodge
Threadgill’s
Skyline Club
Riverside Inn
Top Hat
Hollywood
The Windmill
Cinderella Club
Moosehead Tavern
Blue Goose
Hilltop Inn
Copenhagen Inn
To Rocky Ridge Tavern
Sunset Tavern
The Plantation
The Owl Club
Dessau Hall
Price’s Hall
The Barn
To the Star Club
Victory Grill
La Calle 7
Dew-Drop Inn
El Internacional
Hi-De-Ho
Big Bell Night Club

Honky Tonks and rhythm and blues bars like the Broken Spoke and the Victory Grill are usually considered quintessential, if under-appreciated, parts of Austin’s local music identity. In a city that loves musical memory, they are the surviving remnants of the old old Austin, before it became the famous hippy/psychedelic/roots connoisseur city of the Armadillo World Headquarters, Vulcan Gas Company, and Antone’s.

In a lot of ways, that reputation obscures how radically these non-elite venues of 1940s changed the landscape of this city’s dances, its audiences, and the kind of music Austinites heard when they went out. Popping up in a city dominated by well-educated big bands and college ballrooms, they were really something very new. They catered to working class audiences interested in Country music, Rhythm and Blues, conjunto music, and sometimes modern jazz, genres often considered too rough, crazy, or unsophisticated for the educated circles of the university. Above all, they hired local musicians who did not play big band Sweet or Swing music, creating novel opportunities for a whole new class of local musicians to play professionally. Together, these things helped produced a new, competing world of music in Austin.

Notes

  1. Johnny Bush, Whisky River (Take My Mind): The True Story of the Texas Honky-Tonk (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 33.
  2. Cactus Pryor, Inside Texas (Bryan, TX: Shoal Creek Publishers, 1982), 49.
  3. Johnny Bush, Whiskey River, 36-37.
  4. Johny Bush, Whisky River, 37-38.
  5. Pryor, 49.
  6. Interview with Wayne Wood, Austin, Texas, November 2019.
  7. Maida Meredith told this story to the author in conversation in 2019.
  8. Ronald Powell, “It isn’t Easy Street” Austin American Statesman (July 2, 1978).
  9. Margaret Moser, “Hank, Harry, and Jesse James: Steel Player Jimmy Grabowske Saw it All,” Austin Chronicle (October 5, 2007).