Hank Williams sang, "Hey, heyyyy, good lookin', whatchya got cookin'". Los Angeles "cooked" a lot to the images we, Americans, have of cowboys, western culture, western lore, country music and rockabilly, one of the foundations or rock and roll. At one time, from the 1950's-1980's, Van Nuys' Palomino Club was second only to Grand Ole Opry as the pinnacle of country and western success.
Van Nuys? Los Angeles? Land of palm trees, endless suburbia, and slick, hip acting/writing wannabees obsessed with pop culture trending and influencers, the pinnacle of country music success?
In 2020, not as much as it was even 20 years ago, the very industries that bring thousands of people to seek success in acting, writing, and producing entertainment brought forth the conditions that made Los Angeles "the Second Nashville": film, music, aerospace, farmers, and television.
One detail about Los Angeles culture is the long, strong but unknown infusion of Southerners and Southern customs (the birthplace of Western culture, country and western music) into Angeleno culture and civic life. Ever since California became a state, Southerners have been migrating to San Francisco and, particularly, to Los Angeles. Andrew Glassell, a native of Virginia and graduate of the University of Alabama, owned Rancho Tujunga and founded the city of Orange, where sizable numbers of Southerners, bought farm land and worked on nearby farms. So many transplanted Southerners were living in Los Angeles that President Abraham Lincoln ordered the creation of Drum Barracks, patrolling Southern California and Arizona for the Union, preventing Southerners from wresting control of the region and giving it to the Confederacy. Although abandoned after the war, Drum Barracks lives on as a museum in Wilmington, near the San Pedro Bay that it guarded.
Drum Barracks Today
From the end of the Civil War and up to today, Easterners and Mid-westerners flock to Los Angeles. Southerners have come in great numbers, too, with many populating the semi-rural outskirts of Los Angeles, resembling the often-rural Southern communities many of them came from. Much of the culture and political behavior of Inland Empire, Antelope Valley, and Orange County stem from their Southern roots.
TEXAS
Texas is uniquely Southern. It's Southerners were also farmers and cattle ranchers (later oil men), mixing with Spanish-speaking Tejano culture to create that world-famous variation on Southern folkways: Western or Tex-Mex Culture. Thousands of Texans have made Los Angeles their home over the last hundred years, following jobs in aerospace, oil, and, especially, entertainment. Tejanos brought the foods that have become synonymous (inaccurately) with Mexican food in Los Angeles: burritos and chili con carne. Though created in southern Texas, burritos got their greatest fame and their launch into one of the most ubiquitous of American foods in Los Angeles when Texan migrants brought Tex-Mex foods to Los Angeles. Texans brought their barbecue with them, making beef ribs as much of the Angeleno food scene as the burrito, although, for reasons that I'll reveal in a moment. Missouri and Oklahoma barbecues became the standards in Los Angeles restaurants. It is in entertainment that Texans have left their mark on the world of popular music and acting. Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin, T-Bone Burnett, among many others, worked in nightclubs and recorded some of their most famous music in Los Angeles. But it is western swing/rockabilly that developed in Los Angeles and catapulted it into international fame as one ingredient of rock and roll and through the film, tv, and records.
Jazz and country music began blending in dance halls in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas throughout the 1920's and 1930's. Enthusiastic fans of this new sound made their way to Los Angeles from those states, especially during the Great Depression, when migrants from those states were also victims of the Dust Bowl, re-creating their lives in southern and central California. After Nashville, Los Angeles became the mecca of country western music, especially, western swing. The film and recording studios of Hollywood created and spread the image of a singing cowboy around the world. Singing cowboys were needed and western swing bandleaders, such as Texan Bob Wills and Oklahoman Spade Cooley fit the bill, expanding the popularity of country music, generally, and ushering country AND western music as a new and essential sub-category of country music. That popularity became worldwide as Oklahoman Gene Autry and Ohioan (but from the very Southern Ohio River Valley) Roy Rogers singing country and western music in their films.
Bob Wills and Gene Autry Singing Western Swing
Once nationally-famous but long destroyed L.A. nightspots like the Venice Pier Ballroom, Glendale's Riverside Rancho (next to Bette Davis' estate), and Compton Town Hall drew Hollywood Bowl-sized crowds weekends to see the cream of country and western swing performers. Los Angeles' preeminence in country music reached its zenith with the television shows Town Hall Dance Party, Melody Ranch, and the 37-year run of the legendary Palomino Club in Van Nuys. In 1951, music promoter, William B. Wagnon, took Compton's former town hall, which had long been a major country&western venue, and began broadcasting Town Hall Dance Party from there, quickly becoming a ratings explosion throughout the West, even more so when it went to television in 1953 on KTTV (today's Fox 11). Wagnon promoted Western Swing and championed rockabilly acts, like the Collins Kids and Wanda Jackson, and early rockers, like Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, along with Bob Wills, Tex Ritter, and Gene Autry. Screen Gems Television filmed a syndicated half-hour version, entitled Ranch Party from 1957-1961. It was shown to service personnel across the Armed Forces Network.
Cast of "Town Hall Party" (1951-1961) at old Compton Town Hall
The Collins Kids Performing "I Got Stung" on "Town Hall Party", 1958
Gene Autry
Gene Autry was, arguably, the man who brought country &western music to a national audience. One of the top film stars of the 1940's and early 1950's, Autry's singing cowboy persona in his films introduced dozens of hit songs that became anthems of country & western music: "Sioux City Sue", "From The Hills of San Antone" "Mexicali Rose" and his legendary theme song, "I'm Back in the Saddle Again". Ever the shrewd businessman, the Texas-born and Oklahoma-raised Autry bought a movie ranch in Newhall, renamed it "Melody Ranch", leased it to film and television companies, and produced "Melody Ranch", a radio and television show that ran for 25 years, featuring many of the top acts in country & western music, often broadcast live at the ranch itself.
Along with entertainers, the 1930's-1950's brought thousands of ex-Oklahomans, Missourians, Arkansonians, Texans and other white and black Southerners to Los Angeles to seek work in the aerospace, construction, oil, and finance industries. Along with them came Southern barbecue. Increasingly, the semi-rural suburbs around Los Angeles, such as El Monte, Pacoima, Compton, Canoga Park,Glendale, and Willowbrook resembled Texarkana and Little Rock more than they did Los Angeles. While Crenshaw boasted the most famous barbecue restaurants in Los Angeles, Pecos Bill's Pit BBQ in Glendale, the Bear Pit Barbecue in Mission Hills, and The Jolly Jug in El Monte all date from the 1940's and have had legions of faithful customers from Tennessee Ernie Ford to Tennessee transplants.
Pecos Bill's Pit BBQ, Glendale, California, across Bette Davis Picnic Area, across Griffith Park
The Jolly Jug, El Monte, CA
El Monte looked so Red River Valley-ish that it's leading movie theater, the Tumbleweed, was shaped like a windmill and named for tumbleweeds.
It had also, legitimately been the end of the Old Spanish Trail, a trail that brought some of the first Americans from the South to southern California. El Monte was proud of it.
Pacoima retained it's cowtown flavor well into the 1960's. Nearby Kagel Canyon has a bar, the Hideway, which can be reached by both car and horse, off a trail. Many is the time Mr. LA saw customers barely hanging on their reins of their horses on their way home.
Compton, 1950's but home to a 100+ year old equestrian area
"Straight outta Compton" in the 1950's not only meant the Town Hall Dance Party live and on tv, it also referred (and still refers) to the equestrian zone in Compton that lies along the Los Angeles River, a zone that has been a vibrant, if not well-known fixture, since the days of the legendary Sepulveda and Dominguez families, furthered by the Texan and Oklahoman migrants that came in the 1930's and, currently, by Mexican and Guatemalan immigrant families steeped in their own nation's equestrian traditions.
Riding in Compton, in the Los Angeles River
Newhall
Nowhere is Southern/Country & Western more a part of daily life in the northeastern Los Angeles community of Newhall, 5 miles from the Los Angeles city limit (by way of Sylmar). Here is fused all the real and mythic Southern and Southwestern influences, playing out in a community close to 150 years of age. Named for Henry Mayo Newhall, who leased part of his vast cattle and agricultural ranch to build a train station in 1876 for the Southern Pacific Railroad line to Los Angeles, the first transcontinental link to the rest of the United States. Naturally, a community grew around it: a farming and ranching community, full of cowboys. As the 20th Century dawned, the earliert film companies used nearby Placerita Canyon for filming westerns. As a cowboy fits a horse, some of the local Newhall residents became extras and behind-the-scenes crews for these film companies. As the film industry developed in Los Angeles, Warner Brothers, Disney,and, especially, Republic Pictures. transformed Newhall into a living, breathing Country &Western theme park.Many of Gene Autry's, Roy Rogers' and other Western film stars' films were filmed in Placerita Canyon and in the Newhall area. Oil was first discovered in Newhall in 1877, unleashing an oil boom in the area and the creation of a town, Mintryville, that lasted until 1933, bringing in lots of workers from Texas and Oklahoma, familiar with oil work and bringing their culture to the Newhall area. As workers that worked on Westerns retired, Newhall was their choice to retire to their own ranches and retire like the Western kings they worked with in films. For decades, the Way Station Coffee Shop in downtown Newhall has played retirement home to extras, grips, anyone that had worked on a western film or worked on the neighboring ranches ( https://www.zomato.com/santa-clarita-ca/way-station-coffee-shop-newhall/menu). Even stars retired to Newhall. One of the first legendary Western stars, William S. Hart, built his retirement ranch on San Fernando Road, in Newhall. Deeded in Hart's will to Los Angeles County, it is now the William S. Hart Museum, open to visitors (www.hartmuseum.org). From 1940-1962, Gene Autry built his Melody Ranch in Newhall, from which he broadcast his longtime variety show, "Melody Ranch". Although Westerns in film and television have lessened greatly in recent years, Newhall and Placerita Canyon have studios and outdoor sets attracting those Westerns produced more recently.
The Late, Great Palomino Club
Los Angeles came to become "The Second Nashville" with the career-making power and success of the late but legendary Palomino Club. Founded in 1949, as musicians on Gene Autry's and other western actors' films looked for a place to jam after hours, owners Bill and Tom Thomas also invited L.A.-based jazz artists to jam. The cross-pollination of jazz and western swing players led to a unique music venue that compelled major country& western artists visiting the West Coast vying to play at the Palomino Club. Patsy Cline, Eddy Arnold, Faron Young, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash were some of the multitude of stars performing country&western music but, from the beginning, western swing, rockabilly, and other genres of music emanating from country music found a home, a laboratory, and greater visibility from playing at the Palomino Club. The Flying Burrito Brothers, Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, and Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, among others, developed their musical styles and grew their fans from their many Palomino appearances. Until 1995, with the death of the Thomas Brothers, changing music technology, and the diminishing profits from a venue that cost ever-more to operate, the Palomino Club made Los Angeles the West Coast capital of American regional music, like the ballrooms and Western movie musicals before it.
All Country Roads in Los Angeles Lead Back to Gene Autry
Gene Autry appears many times in this article. His importance in popularizing country&western music to an international audience through his films, recordings, and television shows (made in Los Angeles) and how he both was influenced by the Southern cultural imprints that he encountered when he moved to Los Angeles and the legacy he left in expanding and enriching Southern cultural imprints on Los Angeles culture cannot be overstated. In professional sports, real estate, and in television programming, Autry also cast a long shadow over life in Los Angeles. Towards the end of his life, he was adamant that Los Angeles showcase Western lore and traditions. In 1988, the Gene Autry Heritage Museum opened across from the Los Angeles Zoo, in Griffith Park. Absorbing other museums with similar missions of purpose, especially, the iconic Southwest Museum of the American Indian, in Los Angeles' Mt. Washington, it is now known as the Autry Museum of the American West, the largest and most comprehensive museum in the United States, detailing the totality of how the American West developed; how different ethnic groups played roles in developing the American West; how media influenced the development of the West and how the West influenced American media and culture. It's wide-ranging theater, art, native and ethnic studies, music, and community outreach programs bring awareness and, hopefully, interest and fascination with how many cultures shaped the American West which, in turn, shaped modern American culture. In the vastness of the Autry's offerings, Autry did not forget to honor his Texan, Oklahoman, and by extension, his Southern roots. In the gallery that features his memorabilia and in the mural in the museum's rotunda that chronicles the development of the American West, front and center are depictions of the Southern American's move west and the cultural legacies the Southerner brought to American culture. Those legacies incubated, took root, and were shaped in Los Angeles. Just as Gene Autry left this world a richer human being, Southern traditions and customs left Los Angeles a richer landscape and culture.
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