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| 1946 souvenir album/song folio cover from the Hoosier Hop |
WOWO's Famous Hoosier Hop
Indiana's Most Popular Barn Dance Show
Country music was a popular music style in the state of Indiana, which was boosted by the fact that the state was widely populated by people coming from the South. As radio grew, barn dance live shows popped up all over Indiana, which housed quite a few of those. Among the most popular shows was WOWO's Hoosier Hop from Fort Wayne.
The roots of the Hoosier Hop show date back to 1932. That year, WOWO introduced a show of that name to its listeners and it proved to be popular enough to be carried through the CBS network for several months. It is not clear whether this show was a studio production or a live venue broadcast. However, the show soon came to an end - initially.
WOWO revived the Hoosier Hop in 1943, when they started the program anew on July 17 with a cast of about 15 folk and country music singers and musicians. At that early stage of the show's run, it was live broadcast from the studio. Again, the show became a favorite among the listeners and the cast grew to 30 performers. At that point, it moved from the WOWO studio to the Shrine Auditorium in Fort Wayne, which had a capacity of 4,000 seats. The first show at the new venue was staged on October 8 that year. The show was supervised by Harry K. Smythe of WOWO and his wife Eleanor.
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| The Shrine Temple (also known as Shrine Theatre or Shrine Auditorium) in Fort Wayne, Indiana |
Beginning in 1944, the Hoosier Hop was carried nationally through the Blue network. Summer seasons brought the show to places outside of Fort Wayne, including Smythe's newly opened Buck Lake Ranch in Angola, Indiana, with a capacity of 5,000 seats. The Hoosier Hop was on the air throughout the 1940s and by 1946, was part of the ABC network programming, which lasted until around 1948 (formerly Blue network). It remained popular throughout the decade and attracted a lot of different performers, both locally and nationally known.
Happy Herb Hayworth was the announcer of the show. Cast members included the Blackhawk Valley Boys, the Hoosier Cornhuskers, Billy Starr (alias Bill Stallard), Nancy Lee and the Hilltoppers, Judy & Jen, Dean Maxedon, Penny West, Kenny Roberts, and many others. By 1944, a group entitled the "Down Homers" had come to the Hoosier Hop. Its bassist and yodeler was Kenny Roberts, who temporarily left in late 1944 for the US Navy. He was replaced by Bill Haley, who was still at an early age of his career (though some sources claim Haley did not join the group until a year later). Haley remained with the Down Homers and the Hoosier Hop for about two years. In early 1946, several Hoosier Hop cast members made recordings for the Detroit based Vogue label, including Nancy Lee and the Oregon Rangers, Judy & Jen, and the Down Homers (probably without Haley). These recordings were released throughout 1946 and 1947 on Vogue Picture Discs.
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| The Hoosier Hop cast around 1946 as pictured in one of the show's souvenir album |
I found mentions of the Hoosier Hop as late as July 1947 but public mentions in Billboard end by that time. By then, some of the mainstay performers like Kenny Roberts and Fred Oliver had left WOWO and the cast. If anyone as additional information on the show or its ending, please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email through the formula at the right of this site.
Sources
• Otto Fuchs: "Bill Haley" (Wagner Verlag GmbH), 2011, page 62
• Bart Plantenga: "Yodel-AY-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodeling Around the World" (Routledge), 2004, page 198
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