Johnnie Leach on Round Up

Johnnie Leach and the Country Gentlemen - Faded Love (Round Up No.#), 1971

Here we have some fine Tulsa western swing, from a local outfit Johnnie Leach and the Country Gentlemen. "Faded Love" is of course the 1950 Bob Wills hit, a standard in western swing and one of my favorites. Naturally I had to buy this record.

The Round Up label (no connection to a label of the same name from Nashville) had at least three releases, all of them by Leach. It was based in Catoosa, a suburb of Tulsa, and it seems all of its releases were manufactured by Rite Record Productions from Cincinnati.

I could not really find out much about Leach or the label. Judging from a fitting Find a Grave entry, he was probably Johnnie A. Leach, born on July 2, 1926, and passed away on February 5, 2002. He is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Claremore, also near Tulsa. I suspect him to be the leader of a local western swing act, the Country Gentlemen. Leach was not the vocalist but co-wrote at least two of their songs, "Home Maker" and "Three Empty Chairs". Vocalists in the group included Robert Hill and Bob Bintliff.

Discography

Round Up 28531/2: Johnnie Leach and the Country Gentlemen - Three Empty Chairs / Lone Star Rag
Round Up 28533/4: Johnnie Leach and the Country Gentlemen - Home Maker / Under the Double Eagle
Round Up 28535/6: Johnnie Leach and the Country Gentlemen - Faded Love / Maiden's Prayer

Sources
• Find a Grave entry
• Information on all three Round Up discs thanks to Western Red

Carl Blankenship

Source: Al Turner

The Country Cut-Up from Muskogee

The Story of Carl Blankenship

Although hailing from Oklahoma, mandolinist and singer Carl Blankenship was a driving force in the Fort Smith, Arkansas, area's music scene. Apart from his work as a performer, he was also a radio DJ, a songwriter, and record label owner throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Homer Carl Blankenship was born on January 11, 1924, in Wagoner, Oklahoma. At that time, Wagoner was a small city with a population of about 3.000 people, located near Tulsa and Muskogee - and the Oklahoma-Arkansas state border is not far away either. Blakenship was born to William Louis and Edna (Stewart) Blankenship, who owned a farm outside the town, where he and his three siblings grew up. He first attended Star School and after graduating from Wagoner High School, he worked for the Katy Railroad company.

He then joined the US Army's Signal Corps and during Word War II, he spent time overseas, including in France. While on home leave in 1943, he married Leota Anderson. Upon his return to the United States, he was honorably discharged and worked briefly for the Veretans Administration. Blankenship and his wife moved to Muskogee in 1949 and in the 1950s, he began working as a salesman for Herzfeld's Beauty Supply.

Around 1951, Blankenship met singer-guitarrist Cliff Waldon through a mutual befriended salesman and they soon formed a duo, subsequently known as the "Country Cut-Ups". Their first appereance took place at a Sunday School event from Muskogee's First Baptist Church. By June 1956, the duo was performing on KWHN's Saturday Night Radio Center Jamboree in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and had made guest appearances at radio live shows such as the Big D Jamboree in Dallas, Texas, the Cowtown Howdown in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Barnyard Frolics in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Around the same time, Blankenship and Waldon managed to secure a recording deal with Dale Siegenthaler's Stardale label out of Morris, Oklahoma (about 30 miles southwest of Muskogee). Around spring of  1956, they travelled to Dallas (possibly while they were appearing at the Big D Jamboree) and held their first recording session at Jim Beck's studio. Accompanied by a studio band featuring Jim Rollins on guitar, Bob Meadows on steel guitar, Billl Simmons on piano, and Fred Scott on bass, the duo recorded "A Rose for Mother" and "It Takes Money", both written by Siegenthaler with the help of Stardale recording artist Carl Tilton. 

Both songs were released on Stardale #13 in June 1956. It remained their only joint release, though, and soon, Blankenship and Waldon went seperate ways. Waldon had recorded two solo songs probably at the same session, which saw release at the same time on Stardale (#12) and in Canada on Ampex a year later. Following their breakup, Waldon went rock'n'roll and recorded two discs for the Mark label.

Blankenship stayed true to his country roots and by early 1958, had found a new duet partner in Arkansas native "Little" George Domerese. They gained a spot on KWHN in Fort Smith and began performing the Arkansas-Oklahoma border region. 

Inspired by Siegenthal's entrepreunism in the record business, Blankenship decided to establish his own Razorback record label in early 1958. Possibly intended to be mainly an outlet for his own discs, he nevertheless found several local artists that recorded for him in the years to come. The debut release, however, was reserved for Blankenship's own recordings of "What's Another Broken Heart" and "The Kind to Cheat" (Razorback #101) in March 1958.

For the next years, Blankenship would appear on local radio, spinning the discs also on KOLS in Pryor, Oklahoma, in 1960, did live shows, played personal appearances in the region, as well as recorded for and led his own Razorback label well into the 1960s. He closed down Razorback in 1962 and his KWHN show with Domerese ended in 1964. It seems that he ceased musical activities from that point, although he performed with his own bluegrass band at festivals, church meetings as well as family gatherings and led the the singing class in the local church's Sunday School.

Besides all that, Blankenship held down his day job as a salesman and finally, he and his wife bought the Herzfeld company in 1973, changing the name to Blankenship Beauty Supply. He retired in 1987 and sold the business.

Carl Blankenship passed away on November 19, 2006, at the age of 82 years at Muskogee Regional Medical Center. He is buried at Fort Gibson National Cemetery. His wife Leota followed two years later.

Discography

Stardale 13: Carl and Cliff /  The Country Cut-Ups - A Rose for Mother / It Takes Money (1956)
Razorback 101: Carl Blankenship - What's Another Broken Heart / The Kind to Cheat (1958)
Razorback 105: Carl Blankenship - I Can't Live to See Tomorrow / I'd Like to Set You to Music (1959)
Razorback 108: Evay and Gene Travis with Carl Blankenship - The Kings Highway / Loved Ones Are Waiting in Heaven (1960)

See also

• Little George Domerese: A Giant in Johnson County Country Music

• Linda Flanagan on Razorback

Sources

• 45cat entry

• Find a Grave entry

• Hillbilly-Music.com entry

• various Billboard and Cash Box news items

Linda Flanagan on Razorback

Linda Flanagan - Street of No Return (Razorback 45-107), 1959

There was a time in the early to mid 1960s when it seemed that Linda Flanagan was heading for stardom. Obviously, she never achieved that, although working with such top names as Webb Pierce or Ernest Tubb, but she graced the world with a series of fine country singles. Her debut record on Razorback Records is featured in today's post.

Linda Flanagan hailed from Arkansas, although I could not find details on her birth place or birth date. Her father was Harold Flanagan, who was a local country music performer in his own right. A 1956 Cowboy Songs article mentions that she started her professional career at age 13 (although she started singing even earlier at age 3), which puts her birth date into the early 1940s. By 1956, she was performing over KFSA in Fort Smith, Arkansas, on both radio and television. She also dabbled in songwriting around this time, penning songs with Louisiana Hayride member Jimmie Helms.

From Fort Smith, located on the Arkansas-Oklahoma state border, she made her way to nearby Muskogee, Oklahoma, where she not only appeared on a local TV show entitled Big Red Jamboree, but also recorded for Carl Blankenship's Razorback label. "A Life That's Hard to Live" b/w "Street of No Return" (Razorback #107) was released in late 1959. The top side was co-written by the duo of Jerry Roller and Hershel Parker, the latter being also an Arkansas born singer and songwriter, who recorded a few singles in his own right and worked with Flanagan during this time frame.

From left to right: Linda Flanagan, Charlie Walker, Herschel Parker
at the 1956 Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Day in Meridian, Mississippi
(courtesy of Western Red)

Flanagan's next stop in her career was Nashville, Tennessee, where she was given the opportunity to appear on Ernest Tubb's Midnight Jamboree. Likely from this appearance resulted a recording session on June 29, 1961, at the Bradley Film and Recording Studio with a top band behind her, including Grady Martin, Buddy Emmons, Hargus Robbins, and producer Owen Bradley. The result was only one song, "Pass Me By", which in fact saw release in 1962 on a various artists Decca album simply entitled "Midnight Jamboree" featuring different artists that appeared on the show. The LP was also released in the UK and New Zealand. Flanagan's "Pass Me By" was furthermore issued on a special DJ 45rpm with the flip side filled by Webb Pierce's "Sweet Lips". 

The release of the LP in the UK was to some historical importance. Not for Ernest Tubb or any of the other better known artists on the record but for Flanagan. At that time, the Beatles were making their first steps and the band's drummer Ringo Starr was introduced to Flanagan's "Pass Me By" by his best fried Roy Trafford, who was a big country music fan, owned the "Midnight Jamboree" album and was especially fond of "Pass Me By". He even learned it for performing and the song inspired Starr to take up songwriting and he wrote his own "Don't Pass Me By", similar in its lyrical content but otherwise different, as Starr put a piano boogie beat behind it. The song probably wasn't even a minute long and band mates Paul McCartney and John Lennon dismissed it as a "rewrite of a Jerry Lee Lewis B-side". The song, if you can call it even a song, never made it far but Linda Flanagan's recording was an early influence on Ringo Starr's songwriting.

Unknown to Flanagan back then, she tried to find her own way to success. A second Decca session was not arranged for her until October 3, 1963, this time at the Columbia Recording Studio but again produced by Owen Bradley. Four songs were recorded that day and released by Decca in late 1963 ("Hold on to Happiness" b/w "The Keeper of the Key", Decca #31569) and July 1964 ("There's Love All Around Me" b/w "Mama Kiss the Hurt Away", Decca #31647). However, none of her two singles released by the label seem to have caught on with the public.

Although Decca dropped her, the independent and much smaller Boone record label gave Flanagan a chance once more. She recorded for the label in 1966 and 1967, releasing two singles, but these did not chart either. She had one more record out in Nashville in 1970, a duet with Lex Thomas entitled "South Bound Train," which was produced by guitarist Howard White for Spar Records - again without much success.

She left Nashville in the early 1970s and worked the Western Lounge club in Creve Couer, Illinois, with her husband Pete Blue from 1973 until 1975. She held one more session in Nashville in late 1985, which resulted in another record for the tiny Password label. At some point afterwards, she dropped out of the music business but was still residing in Nashville as late as 2017.

See also
• Arkansas-Oklahoma Jamboree

Sources
• 45cat entry
• Hillbilly-Music.com entry
• Steel Guitar Forum
• Praguefrank's Country Music Discographies entry
• Mark Lewisohn: "Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years" (2013), Crown, page 691

Arkansas-Oklahoma Jamboree

Downtown Fort Smith, Garrison Avenue, 1950s

The Arkansas-Oklahoma Jamboree was held in Fort Smith, Arkansas, located (as the show's name suggests) in the Arkansas-Oklahoma border region. The show was the brainchild of wrestling promoter Jimmy Lott and we only find mention of this show in November 1956 in both the Billboard and Cash Box publications. Linda Flanagan, a local country music singer still in her teens, was slated to be the star of the show. It was held at the Sports Arena, sometimes also billed as Jimmy Lott's Sports Arena.

Jimmy Lott

James Newman "Jimmy" Lott was born on January 31, 1908, in Jefferson County, Alabama, and grew up in Birmingham. He was active in both football and boxing during high school and after graduating, he became a professional wrestler, known as "Kid" Lott in the early and mid 1930s. In the early 1950s, he relocated to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and gave up wrestling in favor of promoting. He promoted mostly for LeRoy McGuirk's Tri-State Wrestling organization and many of its events were held at the Sports Arena.

In 1956, he briefly branched out promoting other kind of events, including his Arkansas-Oklahoma Jamboree. However, it is not known if this show was a one-shot or if it became a regular feature in Fort Smith. It was neither mentioned if it aired on radio. The same year, there is mention of a show entitled "Saturday Night Radio Center Jamboree" on KWHN that could have been the successor of Lott's show. In 1958, Billboard told its readers about the "Country Music Jamboree" that took place on Thursday nights (eventually changed to Friday nights) at the Sports Arena. It aired live over KWHN and also featured Linda Flanagan as well as local artists like Little George Domerese, Jerry Roller, and Carl Blankenship. Though it is not clear if this was the same show, a successor or an entirely new program.

Lott retired from promoting in the early 1970s and passed away on January 3, 1979, in Panama City, Florida.

See also
• Linda Flanagan on Razorback

Sources
• Wrestling Data
• Jimmy Lott Find a Grave entry

Marvin McCullough on Boyd

Marvin McCullough - Mayby My Baby (Boyd BB-3383), 1961

Tulsa has been a city full of music for long and it was especially a hot bed for western swing music since the 1930s, mainly due to the presence of Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys and the various bands that developed out of it, led by Wills companions like his brother Johnnie Lee Wills or his former steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe. One of Tulsa's later stars was singer and DJ Marvin McCullough, who enjoyed great popularity in the area in the early 1960s.

McCullough was born on September 13, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama, and collected his first experiences in the radio business on Alabama stations WGAD out of Gadsden and on WANA in Anniston. Nothing else is known about this early stage in his career.

Probably his first recordings were made in the mid 1950s with the Acme record label from Manchester, Kentucky. Today, the label is best remembered for its traditional bluegrass, gospel, and country music releases and it is probable that McCullough's first sides were in a similar style. Acme #1210 was his first release and coupled "I Think I'm Falling in Love with You" with "I Can't Tell My Heart". It was followed by Acme #1215, two religious song performed with support by the Keck Brothers, "The Bible in Song" b/w "My Lord Is Coming Home from Heaven". Although these cuts seem to be McCullough's earliest recordings, no exact release date has been documented or can be traced as Acme releases are hard to date.

In 1950, McCullough joined the staff of KWHN in Fort Smith, Arkansas, near the Arkansas-Oklahoma state border. He remained with the station for five years but also had a very popular morning program in 1953-1954 on KFSA in Fort Smith. In 1955, switched to KRMG in Tulsa, which broadcast out of Leon McAuliffe's Cimarron Ballroom. By 1958, McCullough was appearing regularly with Gene Mooney's Westernaires, a local Tulsa western swing combo that was around for many years, appearing in Northeastern Oklahoma and Northwestern Arkansas. McCullough formed his own band in 1961.

By the early 1960s, McCullough had become the top country music DJ in town. By then, he performed western swing, the predominant style in that region. Billy Parker, steel guitarist and band leader himself, remembered that at one time in the early 1960s, McCullough had three shows daily: one in the morning, a lunchtime show (a slot he had taken over from Leon McAuliffe), and a midnight show. "People would come in as a studio audience and watch him when he was on the radio. The studio room probably had seats for 40 people, but there was never enough room. People would standing around against the walls. Even on his midnight show, he had a studio full," remembered Ira "Rocky" Caple, McCullough's steel guitarist and band leader in his own right, in a 1990s interview with John Wooley.

In 1961, McCullough began recording for local Oklahoma labels, first for Carl Blankenship's Razorback label from Muskogee, located near Tulsa. Blankenship had been a DJ on KWHN in Fort Smith, too (McCullough knew him likely through their mutual days at the station), and had booked Mooney and the Westernaires into several places during the late 1950s. McCullough and his band released "Bitter Tears", sung by Jimmy Hall, and "Sawed Off Shot Gun", an instrumental spotlighting the steel guitar skills of Rocky Caple. 

Billboard May 15, 1961, C&W review

His most popular record came that same year with a song called "Just for a Little While", which saw release in May on the Boyd label (#BB-3383) from Oklahoma City. Both the A side and the B side, "Mayby My Baby", were written by successful songwriter Eddie Miller. "Just for a Little While" was a top seller and saw national distribution by United Artists. Following the success, Boyd released another single by McCullough in 1961.

Billboard November 6, 1961

Capitol Records, which had a noteworthy country roster with the likes of Buck Owens, Ferlin Husky, Tommy Collins, Hank Thompson, Wanda Jackson, and many more, saw enough potential in McCullough to sign him to a recording contract. Though, only two records without significant success saw the light of day on the label. The first came out around September 1962, comprising "Just Inside Your Arms" and "Where Else Could I Go" (Capitol #4820) from a May or June 1962 session. A November session the same year remained unreleased and McCullough's next single was not released until August the next year, "Stranger In My Arms" b/w "'If' Is a Mighty Big Word" (Capitol #5030). For most of the material, McCullough relied on Eddie Miller's songwriting talents.

The unsuccessful run at Capitol seems to have stopped McCullough's career as a recording artist but he continued to work as a DJ. He began working for KFMJ (Tulsa) in 1968 and worked as the station's music director.

In 1971 or 1972, McCullough returned to Alabama and continued to work in radio. "I believe Marvin came to Anniston, Alabama, because his parents were retired there," remembered Fred Azbell, who was a 22 years young radio DJ in the early 1970s, and whom I found through my researches on McCullough. While Azbell was the nighttime announcer on the station, McCullough took over the afternoon shift. Azbell continued: "I got to know Marvin when I worked with him at WANA in Anniston [...]. He had a really wild lifestyle and could not maintain his pace without help from amphetamines. He made more money doing radio remote broadcasts than most people made all week in radio. He was a born entertainer. I was only about 21 or 22 in those days and I always got a kick out of his stories of working in Tulsa."

McCullough played ocassional gigs in Anniston but obviously had stopped recording. "He had lots of old recordings on the Capitol label. He would always claim they were a brand new release, though it was obvious that they were old," Azbell recalls. McCullough's life would take a serious turn, when he went to jail in 1975, as he had shot WANA morning announcer Randy Carter at a gas station between Anniston and Oxford late one night. Apparently, he did not spent too much time behind prison bars: "I have no idea how he beat that attempted murder charge. [...] He was definitely in jail for a while. I don't know the whole story but a mutual friend visited him in jail in Talladega and said he was in pretty bad shape," retells Azbell the story. "I have no idea where he went after that," he concludes.

McCullough was out already the following year and continued to work as a DJ. Though, he had to change stations and wound up on WKSJ in Mobile, Alabama. Though, this was probably for a short time only. Unfortunately, there is no documentation about how he spent the following years.

McCullough had a stroke in 1991, by then he was in his mid 50s. In the late 1990s, he had returned to his old stomping grounds, the Arkansas-Oklahoma border region, and hosted a gospel music radio show in Oklahoma. His turbulent life came to an end in 1998 in Fort Smith, Arkansas, just two weeks after his wife had died.

Discography

Acme 1210: Marvin McCullough and Band - I Think I'm Falling in Love with You / I Can't Tell My Heart
Acme 1215: Marvin McCullough and the Keck Brothers - The Bible in Song / My Lord Is Coming Back from Heaven
Razorback 45-113: Bitter Tears (with Jimmy Hall) / Sawed Off Shot Gun (with Rocky Caple) (1961)
Boyd BB-3383: Just for a Little While / Mayby My Baby (1961)
Boyd UA-345: Just for a Little While / Mayby My Baby (1961)
Boyd BB-111: Are You Still in Love with Me / Pillow To My Right (1961)
Capitol 4820: Just Inside Your Arms / Where Else Could I Go (But to Her Arms) (1962)
Capitol 5030: Stranger In My Arms / "If" Is a Mighty Big Word (1963)

See also

• Gene Mooney on Rocket

Recommended reading

• SecondHandSongs

Sources

• 45cat entry and 45worlds/78rpm entry

• Hillbilly-Music.com entry

• Gospel Jubilee entry

• Discogs

• Praguefrank's Country Discographies entry

• Billy Parker, John Wooley, Brett Bingham: "Thanks -  Thanks a Lot" (Babylon Books), 2021
• Special thanks to Fred Azbell and John Strauss for providing their memories and recollections about Marvin McCullough.

David & Darlene Robinson on Bejay

David & Darlene Robinson with the Eldon Valley Boys - Green Country (Bejay 1353), 1971

The "Green Country", about which David and Darlene Robinson sing, is the Northeastern part of Oklahoma. The term is used since the early 20th century but became well-known during the 1960s through a campaign initialized by the Oklahoma Department of Tourism and Recreation. Sometimes, the term "Green Country" also refers to the Tulsa metropolitan area, which lies within Northeast Oklahoma.

The copy I bought carried a little handwritten note within the record sleeve, which gave me a little bit of info about the record. "Green Country" as well as the flip "If You Step On Her Hear, You're Walking On Mine" were recorded in June 1971 by David and Darlene Robinson and their band, the Eldon Valley Boys, for Ben Jack's Bejay custom label.  The session took place at Jack's recording studio in Fort Smith, Arkansas. It was the Robinson's debut record, followed by two more releases on what was likely their own imprint, Big Green Country (pressed by Rimrock). One of these discs was solely credited to the Eldon Valley Boys. The Eldon Valley was likely a name for the small community of Eldon, Cherokee County, Oklahoma (in "Green Country"), located in the valley of Baron Fork of the Illinois River.

Unfortunately, I couldn't turn up any info on neither David and Darlene Robinson nor on Raymond "Ray" Robinson, the writer of both sides and likely a family member. I suspect all three to be siblings, however.

Discography

Bejay 1353: David & Darlene Robinson with the Eldon Valley Boys - Green Country / If You Step On Her Heart, You're Walking on Mine (1971)

Big Green Country BS 413: David & Darlene Robinson and the Eldon Valley Boys - Green Country / The House That We Live In (1974)

Big Green Country BS 414: The Eldon Valley Boys - It's His Spirit / I Am a Christian

Sources

• 45cat entries of David & Darlene Robison and Big Green Country Records

• "Green Country" Wikipedia entry

Bobby Whittaker on Bejay

Bobby Whittaker - Man and a Woman (Bejay 1355), 1971
I bought this record not because I liked the music on it - actually, I bought it without ever hearing it - but because it is one of Ben Jack's productions from Fort Smith, Arkansas. It's surprisingly good, especially "Man and a Woman", the top side for me. Ben Jack founded his own Bejay label and recording studio in 1962, eventually also opening different music stores in Northwest Arkansas. On his Bejay label, Jack produced hundreds of local artists on both 45rpm and 33 1/2rpm formats.

Bobby Whittaker, heard here with a Buffalo Spring/Gordon Lightfoot soundalike "Man and a Woman", was probably Bobby Charles Whittaker, born on August 15, 1938, in Des Arc, Arkansas. He owned the Interstate Club and the Country Exit Club in Fort Smith and performed at both venues with his band. He passed away January 30, 2019.

See also
• Ben Jack on Bejay
• Red Yeager on Bejay

Sources
• 45cat entry
• Bobby Whittaker obituary

Gene Mooney on Rocket

Gene Mooney with the Westernaires - Trouble with the Blues (Rocket 45-911), unknown year
Gene Mooney, a cousin to famous steel guitarist and composer Ralph Mooney, led a country and western swing band for many years, it seems. He is not quite a well-known name in historian or collector circles. He recorded around a handful of records in the 1960s and 1970s and appeared steadily around Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the same time frame.

Mooney was born Eugene H. Mooney on November 21, 1926, in Borger in the northern corner of Texas, not too far away from the state of Oklahoma. Apparently, he made the move to Oklahoma at some point in his life and began a career in music. By the late 1950s, Mooney fronted a local country and western swing outfit he called "The Westernaires" that appeared around Tulsa and other areas in Oklahoma. By Novemver 1958, Mooney and the band became regulars at Leon McAuliffe's Cimarron Ballroom. In addition to his personal appearances, Mooney also appeared on local radio and in August 1960, Mooney took over a morning DJ show over KMUS in Muskogee, Oklahoma. His band became a long-running act in the Tulsa area and over the years, featured many different musicians, including well-known steel guitarist Billy Parker.

Billboard October 20, 1958
Marvin McCullough was a local Oklahoma
DJ that regularly appeared with Mooney
during the late 1950s. McCullough later replaced
Leon McAuliffe and Johnnie Lee Wills
on local radio.

Mooney's first record release probably came in early 1962 on the short-lived Flat-Git-It label, featuring "Half a Chance" b/w "Talking to My Heart" (Flat Git It #701). The label was actually based in California and also featured releases by brothers Fred and Cal Maddox of Maddox Bros. & Rose fame.

In 1972 and 1973, Mooney had two releases on the local Tulsa based Merit Records and somewhere in between - or even before the Flat-Git-It release - his Rocket disc came into existence. Rocket Records was a custom label from Nashville, Tennessee, that issued discs in the late 1950s and probably early 1960s. Mooney's release featured "Trouble with the Blues" b/w "No One" (Rocket #911) but no release date can be given or estimated, as the Rocket releases followed no systematical pattern.

Since at least 1971, Mooney and the Westernaires sometimes appeared at Cain's Ballroom, a now legendary venue in Tulsa known for appearances by western swing stars such as Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan. At that time, the ballroom was still owned by Jim Hardcastle, who sold it to a 83-years old lady named Marie L. Myers in February 1972. Myers had shown up one night at Cain's and obviously fell in love with Mooney's singing. "She went down there one night and asked him to sing 'Hello Darlin'' to her. That was it," remembered Hardcastle how Myers and Mooney first met. Myers bought the venue and made Mooney and the Westernaires the house band of the ballroom. From Hardcastle's statements, it seems that she made the decision on her own to buy Cain's, although she later said that Mooney talked her into buying the place.

Freddie Hart played Cain's early in 1972 - he had been still booked by Hardcastle - and Mooney and the Westernaires were supposed to be Hart's background band that night. Hart had sent records to Hardcastle to learn for Mooney and the band. The night Hart performed there, the place was packed but as it turned out, Mooney and the band had only practiced Hart's big hit "Easy Lovin'", believing the rest of the set list would be easy enough to handle with improvisation, which was not the case and made Hart mad.

Catalog of Copyright Entries 1973

However, under Myers' ownership, only few people attended Cain's when the Westernaires played solo, although Myers kept it open every Saturday night with Mooney and the band performing. There may have been more than one reason for the small crowds that attended. One reason was missing promotion. Though she got better advice from Hardcastle, Myers never advertised on local newspaper. In addition, it seems that Mooney was not a favorite of the audiences. Hardcastle recalled Mooney singing "a different type of country song" and although he seemed to be not a bad singer, his style of singing appeared not to be a crowd-drawer.

Mooney left Cain's in late 1973 to unknown reasons. Several witnesses indicate that Mooney's and Myers' relationship was more than business-based (whatever that means), it seems that they perhaps had a fall-out over some issue. What Mooney did after he left Cain's is unknown. Myers sold the venue not long after Mooney's departure to Larry Shaeffer, a part-time steel guitarist who had auditioned earlier unsuccessfully for Mooney's band and managed to establish the ballroom as one of the city's top live music venues again.

Gene Mooney passed away June 14, 1982, in Tulsa at the age of 55 years. He is buried at Cookson-Proctor Cemetery in Cookson, Oklahoma.

If anyone has more information on Gene Mooney, please feel free to contact me.

Discography

Flat-Git-It FGI-701: Half a Chance / Talking to My Heart (1962)
Pla-Me 666P-4953: Will You Ever Get Lonesome for Me / You Won't Even Let Me Talk to You (1967)
Merit 11686: I've Got Everything I Need / I Just Can't Forget You (1972)
Merit MS 1235: Give Me a Drink, Bartender / Especially, for, You (1973)
Merit No.#: A Place Where Broken Hearts Can Go / Conscience (Don't Let My Heart Tell a Lie) (1977)
Rocket 45-911: Trouble with the Blues / No One

Sources
• 45cat entry
• Find a Grave entry
• John Wooley, Brett Bingham: "Twentieth-Century Honky-Tonk" (Babylon Books), 2020
• Billy Parker, John Wooley, Brett Bingham: "Thanks - Thanks a Lot" (Babylon Books), 2021