Gene McKown

Gene McKown, 1950s

Does anyone ever attempted to tell the whole story of singer Gene McKown? The man who was responsible for such rockabilly favorites as "Rock-a-Billy Rhythm" and "Ghost Memories"? I don't think so. He is the kind of artists that, although being featured constantly on compilations, has been forgotten. Little did I know when first posting a very brief sketch about his career but now, I am happy to present a detailed look on McKown and his music career.

Eugene Edward McKown was born on July 16, 1932, in Liberty, Clay County, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City. He was the only surviving child of Thomas Rothwell and Virginia M. McKown, his older sister Shirley died at the age of two a month before McKown's birth. He attended North Kansas City High School in Clay County and, by 1950, McKown worked as an filling station attendant but was drafted shortly thereafter, serving in the US Navy on the USS Essex from ca. 1950 or 1951 until ca. 1955. He spent much of his time with the troops in California and reached the rank of a Sergeant. 

McKown made brief trips to Missouri during this time, already playing local dates there, but continued to make his home in San Gabriel, California, a part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. He was managed by his friend Nate Ryan during those years and had a band called the Tune Twisters. Those included guitarists like Don McFarland, Agnes Coates and names like Bill Wilburn. 

Valley News
April 13, 1958

It was in California when McKown made his first record. For Fable Records, a Los Angeles based company owned by local music business man Sandy Stanton, McKown and his band recorded "I'm Still Wondering Why", a duet with band member Fiddlin' Slim, and "My Heart Belongs to You" (#F-571/2) and both sides were composed by McKown and Coates. At that time, they were still playing country music, which is clearly hearable on this record, and it was released in 1957 by Fable.

By then, however, rockabilly and rock'n'roll music had taken over and McKown switched to this style for his next record. He and the Tune Twisters recorded again two Coates-McKown compositions, "Rock-a-Billy Rhythm" and "My Dream Girl", which were released on newly founded Aggie Records in very early 1958 (#1001). The South San Gabriel, California, based label was partly owned by McKown's manager Nate Ryan and might have also involved songwriter and record label owner Les Kangas, who also owned the Kangaroo label and his own publishing arm. Aggie Records was possibly named after Agnes Coates.

During those years, McKown performed on some of California's top shows, including "Town Hall Party" and "Country America", and shared the stage with such well-known names as Wynn Stewart, Wade Ray, Tex Ritter, Freddie Hart, Joe and Rose Lee Maphis, and others. He also appeared on Aggie label-mate Dick Miller's KXLA radio show and in a lot of clubs in the area, including the Palomino in North Hollywood.

"My Dream Girl" reached the regional Cash Box charts in February, so the record sold good enough to secure McKown another release, "Little Mary" and "You and I" (#1003). Two more rockabilly boppers, the A side was another joint effort of McKown and Coates, while the flip was supplied by James Karney (who had recorded for Fable as well). Released at some point in 1958 or 1959, it was the last release on Aggie under McKown's name. However, there were two more records on Aggie that probably bore his involvement. Don McFarland, a guitarist and singer with whom McKown worked at the time, recorded two Agnes Coates written gospel numbers for Aggie entitled "Jesus Is Coming" and "He Showed My the Way" (#1005, 1959). He was accompanied by the Tune Twisters. The band also backed Joe Sterling, who waxed two more Coates gospel songs for Aggie, "I'm Gonna Talk to My Lord" and "Rain Rain Rain" (#1006, 1960).

It seems that McKown and the Tune Twisters resolved their association with Aggie in 1960. The same year, he had a job at the Esquire Ballroom in Houston, Texas, playing in a band with Jimmy Dry, Pee Wee Davis, and a young Willie Nelson. While Dry went on to be Jack Green's guitarist, there is no introduction needed for Willie Nelson. McKown returned to Kansas City in the early 1960s and resumed playing local bars and taverns. He played the Frontiers Club in early 1963 with a band known as the Western Swingsters but re-established the Tune Twisters a year later. Also in 1963, he went into partnership with George Hodges, Jr. of the Pier Brass Company in Kansas City. Hodges had founded the Brass record label as an outlet for local talent. McKown not only released two singles under the Brass imprint but also carried out other functions for the label. The first of those two discs featured two great country cuts, "Oh Sorry Me" b/w "My Get Up and Go" (#205) from 1963, followed by "Ghost Memories" b/w "Incidentally" (#238) a year later. The minor-key "Ghost Memories" became one of McKown's best known songs eventually.

Kansas City Star
May 1, 1965

McKown continued to perform around Kansas City in such venues as the Starlite Club, Howard's Bar, the Silver Spur, and others. At the Starlite, McKown once performed a show with Ray Price. He also recorded for small independent labels throughout the 1960s and 1970s. During the mid- and late 1960s, he had a constant connection to Nashville, recording for Music City indies like Sims, Rich, Bilin, Castle, Rose, and Totem. He had a local hit with his song "Charlie O the Mule" on the Bilin label, produced by Bobby Sykes in Nashville. Another of his locally popular songs was "The Kansas City Royals Are on the Go" from 1977, a tribute to the successful baseball team of the same name. As a talented songwriter, McKown composed hundreds of songs and some of them ended up being recorded by Nashville artists like Autry Inman ("Six Rounds of Love and Hate"), Earl Scott, and Ken Springer (both "Tearin' My Head Up Again"). Local artists cut his tunes as well, including Jim Mansell & Sandy West ("My One for the Road"), Lee Holeman ("Hold On, I'm Coming" and "Mr. Bandleader"), and his old buddy Jimmy Dry ("No One Else").

Around 1978, rockabilly lover and musician Rockin' Ronnie Weiser reissued "Rock-a-Billy Rhythm" and "Dream Girl" on his Rollin' Rock label. "Ghost Memories" appeared on the Redita LP "Kansas City Country Rockers" around the same time and his rockabilly recordings were reissued numerous times in the following decades, securing McKown a place in the world of rockabilly music.

Gene McKown in 1993

He continued his performances in the Kansas City area well into the 1980s, then spent some time in St. Jospeh, Missouri, and stayed with his old friend Nate Ryan in Arizona between 1990 and 1992 following a depression. The following year, McKown and Ryan's family moved to Osceola, Missouri, where McKown continued working as a performer. He played the Two Mug Saloon regularly there. McKown was an active member of the local Friends of Jesus Christian Church and went into gospel music a few years later, recording hundreds of cassette tapes with his gospel songs. Music was not only a hobby for KcKown, it was a passion and occupation at the same time and he carried it out throughout his whole life.

McKown was married only for a short time in the 1950s and left behind no close relatives when he passed away on May 18, 2011, in Osceola from a heart attack. He was 78 years old. His final years had been troublesame as he suffered from a stroke in 2006, which ended his musical activities. He also had a gambling problem and in addition, he had to move out of his apartment shortly before his death as the building was demolished.

Discography

Fable 571: Gene McKown & Fiddlin' Sam - I'm Still Wondering Why / Gene McKown - My Heart Belogs to You (1957)
Aggie A-1001: Gene McKown & the Tune Twisters - My Dream Girl / Rock-a-Billy Rhythm (1958)
Aggie A-1003: Gene McKown & the Tune Twisters - Little Mary / You and I (1959)
Brass 205: Gene McKown - Oh Sorry Me / My Get Up and Go (1963)
Brass 209: Gene McKown - Ghost Memories / Incidentally (1964)
Brass 238: Gene McKown - Ghost Memories / Incidentally (1964)
Rich 106: Gene McKown - I'm Out on the Town / That Don't Make Her a Bad Girl (1965)
Sims 228: Gene McKown - Peace Corps / Keeper of Heartaches (1965)
Bilin BS-2200: Gene McKown - Charlie-O-The-Mule / Bobby Sykes - The Legend of a Mule (1965)
Peak P-103: Sandy & Gene - Stop, Look and Listen / River of Shame (ca. 1965)
Rose 101: The Little Green Men & Ray Petersen - U.F.O. / Happy as a Lark (1968)
Totem T-9: Gene McKown - U.F.O. / Happy as a Lark (1968)
Castle CR-2076/7: Gene McKown - Please Mr. Editor / Take It on the Chin (1972)
Column One: Gene McKown - The Kansas City Royals Are on the Go / Jim Martin - The Kansas City Royals Are on the Go (Instr.) (1977)
Rollin' Rock 45-042: Rockabilly Rhythm / Dreamgirl (ca. 1978)

Sources

• Find a Grave entries for Gene McKown and Thomas R. McKown

• Richard Sunderwirth: "Osceola's Candy Man Was the World's Music Man" (St. Clair County Courier), May 27, 2011

• Official census records accessed through ancestry.com

• 45cat entry

• Discogs

• Rockin' Country Style entry

Sandy Sans on Throne

Sandy Sans - What Made Nashville Famous (Made a Poor Man Out of Me) (Throne 51118), 1968

G.W. Sanderford, better known in the late 1960s as “Sandy Sans”, recorded two records for the independent Throne label, which was based in Independence, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City. Sanderford might have been originally from Arkansas and the song featured today, "What Made Nashville Famous (Made a Poor Man Out of Me)", featured the involvement of two more Arkansas natives, brothers Keith and Elmo Lincoln Kissee, better known as Jimmy Dallas and Elmo Linn.

The Kissee brothers hailed from Mammoth Springs, Arkansas, near the border to Missouri. By the late 1940s, they had relocated to Kansas City, Missouri, where both started a career in country music. Keith Kissee performed as Jimmy Dallas and Elmo Lincoln Kissee as Elmo Linn. They would be active in the city as musicians for decades, recording, performing, and working on radio and TV.

The Throne label was started in 1968 by Bud Throne, who also produced Sandy Sans’ session. It featured Jimmy Dallas on bass and probably musicians from his band - Larry Roberts on lead guitar, Gene Dunlap on piano, and Bob Meyers on drums. Elmo Linn was the A&R men for this session and possibly had a hand in picking the song material. A newspaper article from 1968 cited Sandy Sans that he had high hopes in this record, especially in the top side “What Made Nashville Famous”. However, the single became not a hit.

Billboard November 2, 1968
DJ Ted Cramer's listeners on KCKN in Kansas City loved
Sandy Sans' "What Made Nashville Famous"

Sans had one more single out on Throne the same year, "It's All Over Now" b/w "To Heck With Love". I don't known what happened to G. W. Sanderford alias Sandy Sans after 1968. Jimmy Dallas and Elmo Linn continued their musical activities throughout the years. Elmo Linn died in 1994, Dallas passed away in 2004.

See also
• Jimmy Dallas on Westport

Sources
• 45cat entry
• Discogs

Johnny Nace on Rimrock

Johnny Nace - Blue Notes (Rimrock 271), 1968

Johnny Nace was a Missouri based artist that enjoyed a long career in country music during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. He was regionally well-known and had a few records that sold good regionally. He is also known to rockabilly audiences for his 1950s and early 1960s singles.

John Percy "Johnny" Nace was born in Knob Noster, Missouri, in 1934, and grew up on a farm outside of nearby Warrensburg. His father was a musician, as had his grandfather and great-grandfather been, so music was rooted deeply in the family. Naturally, Nace started playing guitar and got his first job at age 15, playing square dances with a fiddler. He then became part of the radio show “Hillbilly Jamboree” in Sedalia, Missouri. Nace also worked as a DJ on KOKO in Warrensburg, on KDRO in Sedalia, and later hosted the "Circle Six Ranch" on KMOS-TV.

By 1956, Nace was part of the Missouri Valley Boys that performed on KSIS in Sedalia. The group also included Joe Lender, Goodson Merriott, and F.D. Johnson, who became a recording artist in his own right. Nace, Johnson and the band recorded their first singles in 1958 for the local Marshall, Missouri, based Jan record label. From that point on, Nace continued to record for various labels throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

Johnny Nace and the Midnighters, 1960s
with Nace (guitar) and Joe Greene (steel guitar)

In the early 1960s, he formed his band called “The Midnighters” and began recording for Nashville Records in 1962, a subsidiary of Starday Records. He then switched to Topic, another Nashville company, and had a regional hit in 1966 with his first release on the label, “Midnight Train to Georgia”, selling about 20,000 copies. Country Song Round-Up called him a "promising vocal talent" in 1965: "Johnny is one of country music's most promising vocal talents. He is a former star of central Missouri's very popular television show 'The Circle Six Ranch', which was originated from the studios of KMOS-TV, channel six [...]." The promising sales also got him a guest spot on Ernest Tubb's Midnight Jamboree on WSM.

In 1968 he recorded two songs that eventually wound up on Wayne Raney’s Rimrock Records from Concord, Arkansas. Nace recorded both tracks in Kansas City with the Woodchoppers, a band that he had founded earlier that year and included Nace on vocals and guitar, Doug Mastin on steel guitar, Bill McCanally on piano, Bill Acres on bass, and Chuck Addleman on drums. The two songs were “Blue Notes” and “The Kind You Find Tonight”, which were initially released on C.A.R.S. Records – a Kansas City based label. The tracks were then leased to Rimrock and issued again the same year on that label. "Blue Notes" was co-written by Delores (or Dolores) Tolbert, who recorded around the same time for Sonny Deckelman's Van-Deck label out of Harrisburg, Arkansas. She later managed the Jonesboro, Arkansas, bluegrass band "Shady Hill".

His 1969 single on Throne Records, "Sherry Ann", was a good seller as well and Billboard predicted it to reach the Hot Country Songs - which it did not, unfortunately. Nevertheless, Nace continued to perform and record throughout the next decades. By the 1970s, his band was again called the Midnighters and performed in Missouri. His sons Dave and Jimmy also became musicians, leading a rockabilly band in the 1980s that sometimes included their father. Johnny Nace passed away from a heart attack in 1990 at the age of 56 years. 

Sources

• Find a Grave entry

• Show Me the History - Johnson County-West Central Missouri History

• Nace Brothers website

• 45cat entry

• Discogs

• Rockin' Country Style entry

• Praguefrank's Country Music Discographies entry

Cowtown Jubilee (Kansas City)

Kansas City Star
September 19, 1952

The Place to Go Is the Ivanhoe!

The Cowtown Jubilee from Kansas City, Missouri

By the time the Cowtown Jubilee show was launched, Kansas City audiences were already used to hearing a similar program, the "Brush Creek Follies". The Follies had been on air since 1938 and proved to be quite popular for its radio station, KMBC. Rival station WHB started its own live stage show, however, and the Cowtown Jubilee was born.

Kansas City Star
November 24, 1950

The first show took place on September 23, 1950. Initially, WHB, one of Kansas City's oldest radio stations, was home to the Cowtown Jubilee. However, the show switched to KCMO in 1952. The Jubilee was sponsored by the Sunny Slope Chapter of American War Dads, a charity organisation. The show was held on Saturday nights at the Ivanhoe Temple, an auditorium in Kansas City that had a capacity of nearly 2,000 seats. After the stage show portion had ended, a square dance took place at the auditorium. The Ivanhoe Temple had been previously home to the Brush Creek Follies for many years, which had moved to another venue by then, however. 

One might think that two shows of the same format would include the same musicians but that was not the case. Kansas City's pool of country musicians was big enough to furnish both shows with different entertainers. The Cowtown Jubilee offered a stage for a younger generation of singers, including Jimmy Dallas and Elmo Linn, Milt Dickey, Balin' Wire Bob Strack, the Sons of the Golden West, Peggy Clark, Cora Rice, Betty Riley, Neal Burris, Don Sullivan, and many more. Hobie Shep was also a featured act on the show, he also led the house band, the Cowtown Wranglers, and helped out as an emcee. In the early years of the Jubilee, local comedian Frank "Whizzo" Wiziarde was the emcee but he was replaced with Dal Stallard (probably with the move from WHB to KCMO).

When TV became the more popular medium, the Cowtown Jubilee ended its broadcast over KCMO, instead switching to television air time on WDAF-TV. It appears that the show was also carried by radio KCKN during this time. While the cast remained, the show was now hosted by Roch "Uncle Virgil" Ulmer, a local radio and TV personality. This incarnation of the Cowtown Jubilee remained on air until 1959, when the final episode was broadcast in October that year.

Kansas City Times
November 9, 1968

It was especially Hobie Shep who kept the memory of the Cowtown Jubilee and Brush Creek Follies alive. He organized a reunion show of both casts in November 1968 at Memorial Hall in Kansas City and would do so infrequently well into the 1990s.

Sources

• Hillbilly-Music.com entry

• Various newspaper items (incl. depicted ads)

Brush Creek Follies

Stage of the Brush Creek Follies, ca. 1947

The One...the Only...the Famous... Don't Miss the

KMBC Brush Creek Follies

KMBC's "Brush Creek Follies" was Kansas City's longest running and probably most imported country music show of all time. Kansas City was a music city. Jazz being the most prominent example but country music was very popular in the "Heart of America" as well. With clubs, radio stations, and record labels offering artists exposure, the city had a lively country scene for decades. Of course, there had to be a country music live stage show, which was a popular format in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and Kansas City's own "Brush Creek Follies" became one of the nation's early radio favorite radio programs.

The Brush Creek Follies show originated from radio KMBC (Midland Broadcasting Company), which was located many years at the Pickwick Hotel in Kansas City. The station's founder and president was Arthur B. Church, Jr., who had programmed old-time folk and early country music since the early 1930s. He was well aware that KMBC also reached a rural audience outside of Kansas City. In 1938, he picked up the popular barn dance radio format for this market and launched KMBC's own live stage show, which became known as the Brush Creek Follies.

Kansas City Journal January 8, 1938
Ad for the first episode of the "Brush Creek Follies"

The first show took place on January 8, 1938, at the Ivanhoe Temple with portions being broadcast live on KMBC. This large auditorium would be the home of the show for many years, although the Follies were briefly staged at other locations as well. In usual manner, the stage was constructed to look like an old barn in order to create a rural atmosphere. The cast featured not only musicians but a variety of entertainers like comedian Jed Starkey, a blackface guy called George Washington White or magician Tim West. The show was emceed by Hiram Higsby, who had previously worked at WLS' National Barn Dance in Chicago. Singers and musicians included some of KMBC's mainstays such as Colorado Pete (real name George Martin), Kit and Kay, the Oklahoma Wranglers, Tex Owens (writer of "Cattle Call"), the Prairie Pioneers, Charlie Pryor, and many others. Of course, the cast would change over the years and featured many performers of local and national fame.

The show became an instant hit with the live audiences and radio listeners. During the early years of the Follies, the Columbia Broadcasting System carried portions of the show, beaming it out across the United States and thus making it the second most-popular show of its type right after the National Barn Dance. The Grand Ole Opry would not become the nation's number one country music show until after World War II.

The war affected the show's run, which was suspended for a brief time from March 1942 until November 1942 due to the US government's appeal to save tire rubber. Since many of the show's attandees came from rural areas outside of Kansas City and traveled far distances, manager Arthur B. Church decided it would be better to sign off until the situation improved. However, KMBC aired a studio version of the show without a live audience.

After returning to the big stage, the Follies were not broadcast by CBS anymore. The Follies were replaced another time with a studio version from November 1947 until January 1948 due to a conflict between the KMBC management and the American Guild of Variety Artists. A studio version replaced the live stage show but the Follies returned to its usual format on January 17 and remained a popular outlet for live country music in the next years.

In 1950, the Brush Creek Follies received competition in form of the Cowtown Jubilee, a similar format produced initially by WHB and soon thereafter by KCMO. The Cowtown Jubilee was staged at the Ivanhoe Temple, once the home of the Follies, which had moved to the Memorial Hall earlier. In 1951, KMBC moved to facilities on 11th and Central Street (formerly the Ararat Temple), where the station staged the Brush Creek Follies in their own auditorium from that point on.

The Kansas City Times December 8, 1950
Ads for Brush Creek Follies and Cowtown Jubilee

In September 1954, the Kansas City Star announced that both the Follies and the Cowtown Jubilee were held as one show at the Ivanhoe Temple, merging both casts into one. However, this fusion did not last long as KMBC discontinued the Brush Creek Follies at the end of the year due to another labor disput with the union, which demanded to double the performers' salary due to simultanous broadcasts for radio and TV. The station's management refused and ended the Brush Creek Follies. Regardless of the moral nature of this decision, the Follies ended shortly after the "Golden Age" of both radio and country music ended, too. TV and rock'n'roll would soon end a lot of similar shows all across the United States. 

There has been considerable effort put into the preservation and documentation of the Brush Creek Follies. The University of Missouri-Kansas City maintains a website for the show's history and several items are part of the ArchiveGrid database. Magazines have written about the long-time gone radio show and performers like Irene Diercks (one half of Kit and Kay) were interviewed. There are a few episodes available for listening on YouTube.

Recommended reading

• Midwest Geonology Center

• ArchiveGrid

• Charlie Pryor and the Brush Creek Follies

Sources

• University of Missouri-Kansas City Brush Creek Follies website

• Hillbilly-Music.com entry

• The Story Behind the Legendary Local Radio Show Brush Creek Follies (KansasCityMag)

• Fountain City Frequency

Westport Records (Kansas City)

Westport Records

The Wagon Wheel Label from the Port of the West

Kansas City had never the reputation as a big recording center but in the late 1940s, the 1950s and early 1960s, there were a lot of country and rock'n'roll artists in the city. Clubs and bars gave artists countless oportunities to entertain audiences on stage, radio stations like KCMO and its live programs boosted local talents popularity and small record labels were willing to release locally recorded music. One of those labels was Westport Records, which issued a string of more than 20 singles between 1954 and 1962.

Westport Records was formed in 1954 by Dave Ruf and his brothers as an outlet to record both their children's family band known in Kansas City as the Westport Kids. The first single released by the new label was Westport 125 by the Westport Kids called "Right Or Wrong" / "Hold Me My Darling". Westport started out as a country label, recording also such artists as local radio performers Milt Dickey and Jimmy Dallas. The label's headquarters was located in West Port, once an indepentend town but by the 1950s already a city district of Kansas City.

Westport Kids promo card

Rockabilly singer Alvis Wayne came to the label in September 1956. He became the label's most successful artist, though he never visited Kansas City. Wayne was Texas based and recorded all his sessions in Corpus Christi and Houston. The recording contract was set up by Tony Wayne, who was Alvis Wayne's mentor and background musician along with the Rhythm Wranglers. Alvis Wayne's first record on Westport was "Swing Bop Boogie / Sleep Rock-a-Roll Rock-a-Baby", which got only little airplay in Texas and sold about 2,000 copies. Wayne's next record, also recorded in a little studio on Corpus Christi, was Westport's and also Wayne's biggest record. "Don't Mean Maybe Baby" was issued in 1957 and got good reviews by Cashbox and charted in South Texas at #1, leaving behind Elvis Presley. Though, the national top 100 charts were still far far away.

Billboard March 9, 1959

Wayne's last record on Westport came out in September 1958 on Westport 140, the slightly pop oriented "Lay Your Head On My Shoulder" / "You're the One". During the years of 1956, 1957 and 1958, Westport had continued to release singles by Milt Dickey, one record by Alvis Wayne's back-up band Tony Wayne & the Rhythm Wranglers, the Westport Kids, Big Bob Dougherty, and Jimmy Dallas. The label releaed another rockabilly single in early 1959 with Lee Finn's "High Class Feelin'" / "Pour Me a Glass of Wine" (#141), which became a local hit in Kansas City.

The company's last issue came out on Westport 145 by Gene Chapman, probably in 1962. After that, the label was closed down by the Ruf brothers. Westport never gained a national hit, just releasing singles for the local market and having fair success with it during the 1950s. The total output were only about 22 singles in seven years. There has been two unofficial CD reissues with the complete Westport catalogue so far.

See also

• Tony Wayne on Westport

• Alvis Wayne on Westport

• Jimmy Dallas on Westport

Sources

• 45cat entry and 45cat/78rpm entry

• various Billboard issues