WFMU's Beware of the Blog

The Life Magazine Internet Photo Archive

This is too cool for words, which is fine and also makes sense, since it is an incredible archive of photography. The work of Life Magazine's legendary photographers (artists like Allan Grant, Yale Joel, John Dominis, Gjon Mili, N.R. Farbman, Grey Villet, Peter Stackpole and countless others) is now available in a massive internet archive powered by a handy dandy search engine. Regulars to Beware of the Blog know I'm pretty much obsessed with anything having to do with old showbiz and these classic black and white Life stills really conjure up the walls of an ancient cigar chompin' Broadway agent. Find yourself lost for days in a Broadway Danny Rose world with this super cool development put together by behemoths TimeWarner and Google. I've organized some of my favorites on my own site - click on them to enlarge. Check out:

Ed Sullivan
Bill Cosby
Lucille Ball
Milton Berle
Woody Allen
Mort Sahl
Groucho Marx
Bob Hope
Jerry Lester
Edward R. Murrow
And the beautiful Yma Sumac

These are just some meager examples. There are thousands and thousands of amazing photos to unearth. Now go search for your own favorites.

Japanese Group Sounds

Yuji Koseki and The Peanuts - Mothra's Song (mp3)

Cougars - J & A

Spiders - Little Robby

The Carnabeats - Chu Chu Chu

The Mops - I'm A Mops

The Dynamites - Tunnei Tengoku

The Jaguars - Dancing Lonely Night

Outkast - Everything's Alright

Bunny - Hey Chance

Jimmy Takeuchi & The Exciters - Diamond Head

Dunny Lida And Paradise King - Surf City

Terry & The Blue Jeans - Squad Car

Gwilly Edmondez: New Music and Listener Hour (mp3s)

News from Gwilly Edmondez HQ, in anticipation of his WFMU Listener Hour tomorrow morning

"Ernst Epidermis" is the new album from Gwilly Edmondez. It will be posted as a free download from WFMU's Free Music Archive (via Gwilly's Kakutopia imprint). For this outing Gwilly revisits an old creative haunt, the East Coast main line train. Flinging samples and loops around like lead confetti, Gwilly re-integrates the vocal frontings of yore into a melée of popular anarchy. Four tracks from the album are posted here as a sneak preview...

Gwilly Edmondez - Gripes Cloy (Apparently) (mp3)  |   Scored For Ludo (mp3)  |   Walken's Kiss (mp3)  |   What Do People Do All Day? (mp3)

Also coming soon from Kakutopia is a brand new album from Tony Gage, his first since the Tall Pony split. Here is the whole of Tony Gage's "Bad Day At The Office" (mp3), which closed out Gwilly's Listener Hour but had to be cut short because he ran out of time.

Aaron Cometbus on Put the Needle on the Record TODAY

Fans of the excellent COMETBUS fanzine series will want to check out Billy Jam's show this afternoon at 3pm. Cometbus creator/writer Aaron Cometbus will be dropping by for a chat with BJ the DJ, who says,

"Veteran punk rock drummer & author Aaron Cometbus has been gaining notoriety since the early 1980's when his pioneering East Bay punk band Crimpshrine arrived on the scene. Around the same time he launched the now legendary, long-running Cometbus series, at first a rough, stapled, handwritten Xeroxed punk fanzine -now a soft cover book format that is available only at small independent bookstores and music stores and which the author insists on selling cheaply - only a few dollars per copy. Before he exits the New York area next week to head west for the winter, the artist will stop by WFMU...."

Listen live today at 3pm, or check out Billy Jam's archives if you miss the live show.

All of WFMU's special upcoming programs, including Michael Shelley's interview with legendary Beach Boy Brian Wilson tomorrow morning, are listed here.

The Mix Machine #12: DJ Red Alert - Goes Bazerk! (MP3s)

Hello and welcome back (a 1 2, a 1 2) to The Mix Machine.
Turning this week over to DAVO who shares with us...

Back in the day, when we were all babies, we were FRESH!!!!!! With no years of laurel to fall back on, we still had something to prove - we were hungry and always crying for food...

This slice of the DJ Red Alert pie is from a time early in his radio career on NYC's KISS-FM when he was growing and pulsating in ways that....WHOAA!!!!! Muthafukka could play the shit out of a record - no, really - PLAY THE SHIT OUT OF A RECORD like no one else on the NY airwaves - all to rokk the greater metro block party. If you smirk at the "pulsating" analogy, wait till Kool Keith's spit starts spinning around your ears like..... well - I'd better stop now...

Enjoy my scrappy old cassette recording, slightly enhanced - dated from early mid 80zzzz.

- Davo

DJ Red Alert - Goes Bazerk! (63:44)

Mommie Dearest Fashion Spread

Avant-fashion blog Foto Decadent has high quality scans of a very creepy Mommy Dearest inspired fashion spread that was featured in an issue of Numéro magazine.

The J's with Jamie: The Singles (MP3s)

1. Let's Not Be Sensible (2:15)
2. One Little World Apart (2:20)
3. Theme from a Summer Place (2:15)
4. Popsicles in Paris (2:04)
5. For the Last Time (2:10)
6. Your Dog (2:18)
7. MOA (1:29)
8. Laugh It Up (2:27)*
9. Nowhere to Go But Up (2:18)
10. This Ole House (2:14)*
11. London (Is a Little Bit All Right) (2:26)
12. Here's Love (2:13)*
13. Au Revoir (2:51)
14. The Sound of Money (2:28)*
15. Momma Momma Momma (2:01)
16. Yoshiko (2:13)
17. Everybody Says Don't (2:14)

*IMPORTANT NOTE: Because these 45s were all mono releases, these tracks link to stereo versions that were previously posted.

With the able assistance of Jim Maroney, here are the eight J's with Jamie singles released by Columbia in the early 1960s. Several of these A-sides appeared on full-length albums, including "Everybody Says Don't," which was part of the Columbia Special Products release, TWO SIDES OF THE J'S WITH JAMIE, which will be posted next week.

There's a tremendous variety of musical styles and moods represented in these tracks. "Au Revoir" is almost as heartbreaking as "Little Boy Blue" from THE REMARKABLE J'S WITH JAMIE, thanks to the sadness that flows from Jamie's voice. "London (Is a Little Bit All Right)" shows off the acting skills that had Broadway calling as the band slips into British character voices.

Two tracks deserve special mention. "Yoshiko" is the only J's with Jamie song ever released on CD, as part of the now-defunct Marginal Records release, WELCOME TO CHINATOWN - ORIENTAL "POPCORN" TRACKS VOLUME 1. It's also the song that Pizzicato Five fans often cite as an influence. If they ever make another Katamari Damacy game, Konami ought to license this one, as it fits beautifully with mainstream J-Pop.

"M.O.A." was included as a bonus track for the promotional release of "For the Last Time," added to the B-side. This salute to the Music Operators of America borrows the hook from "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and adds some upbeat jazz in the background.

A full list of the singles and songs appears after the jump.

From Birmingham to Obama

Received this email the other day:

Odetta, singer/songwriter known as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement," is seriously ill and in a New York hospital with kidney failure, according to a statement from her manager.

Odetta apparently went to the Lenox Hill Hospital over the weekend for a simple IV treatment but had kidney failure Nov. 9 and is listed in critical condition. An active supporter of President-elect Barack Obama, Odetta is determined to sing at his inauguration in January, according to manager Doug Yeager. The full statement follows:

Dear Friends of Odetta,
On behalf of Odetta's adopted daughter Michelle Esrick and her niece Jan Ford (in California), I would like to share with you - Odetta's large extended family of brothers and sisters - the current health crisis in her life. On Saturday, she went into Lenox Hill Hospital for a check-up and IV nourishment. However, on Sunday evening she went into kidney failure, and we were told that the next 24 hours would determine if she would survive.

Miraculously, she made it through that emergency, but is still listed in critical condition. I was on the road when she went in the hospital and rushed back on Sunday. Jan and I are thankful that Michelle was here and has been by Odetta's side every moment of this ordeal.

Odetta believes she is going to sing at Obama's Inauguration, and I believe that is the reason she is still alive. She has a big poster of Barack Obama taped on the wall across from her bed. Her old heart has already outperformed and lasted far beyond the expectations of the heart specialists who treated her in January-March 2007 when she had her last health crisis while touring out West. Now compounded with the kidney failure, the doctors at the hospital are trying to do everything possible to stabilize her system and prevent the weakening of her other organs. They have her on dialysis now to rid the body of the toxic poisons that have built up, and it seems to be slowly working. She is sleeping a lot, but after a dialysis treatment and some food, she is coherent and talking. She is not in pain. We are told that she will be in the ICU Unit for at least another week, and that we'll just have to wait and see after that.

All of you are well aware of Odetta's indomitable spirit. Accordingly, I wouldn't bet against her singing for Barack in January! If you would like to send a card, I know that she would love to hear from you (address of the hospital is below).

Ms. Odetta Gordon
Room # 719, 7th Floor ICU Unit
LENOX HILL HOSPITAL
100 East 77th Street
New York, NY 10021

Thrash Videos of Varying Levels of Stupidity

I can't top that incredible Confessor video Brian posted a few weeks back.  But at least I can post something stupider.  Madness Reign (top left) is definitely the dumbest thing I've seen in a while and the finest example of bedroom metalhead parody I've heard.  From muttered "sound effects" and cheesy graphics to pointless chugging guitar and malinformed vocals, Madness Reign is like the road trip that Bruce Dickinson, Weird Al and Jandek took together last spring break.  I'm also a fan of this guy's dadaist stand up comedy bits - below is a sample.  I'd strongly recommend checking out the webpage - he's got 14 (!) albums out and a ton of music videos, all in the same vein and pretty hilarious.  Top right is Axemaster's "Slave To The Blade."  No explanation necessary.

Madness Reign - Les 26 Caracteres from "Les Divines Jokes Du Diable"

I mentioned this Dum Dum Bullet (bottom left) video before, but it's really hit me how awesome it is.  The guitarist is totally great, they've actually got a pretty unique sound and the singer keeps on showing up in different guises throughout the video!  The song title is "Hey Mum, Who's The Junk?"  Who indeed!  Purgatory (bottom right) is the sort of band that makes me wish I owned a car, just so I could blast this shit while driving over the speed limit.  Heavy midtempo thrash via Slayer with Iron Maideney fist pumping action.  Add a healthy amount of progressive time changes, a bit of falsetto vocals, occasional shredding guitar solo-age and you're JUST under the level of smartness required to be ACTUALLY good.  But this was only the beginning of a bright future: vocalist Jeff Hatrix went on to sing for seminal nu-metal giants Mushroomhead.  Now that's smarts.

Steven R Smith Live on WFMU + Interview w/ Daniel Blumin (mp3s)

DJ Daniel Blumin writes:

With Thanksgiving fast approaching, many are going to want to do some fortifying before embarking on "the journey home". Some may turn to drink, whilst others may consider more sensible pursuits, such as catching up with recent live sessions in the bountiful archives of WFMU. Of course, those choices are not mutually exclusive, but if one just absolutely had to choose, I'd heartily recommend the latter. Here's one perfectly dapper reason: a few weeks ago, Steven R. Smith, best known for his work in Mirza, Thuja and solo as Hala Strana, recorded a corker of a solo session for my show at his Worstward Studios in L.A.

Smith has been affiliated with San Francisco's Jewelled Antler collective since its inception in the mid 90's. More recently, he has been recording solo as Ulaan Khol and under his own name. Smith has released haunting re-imaginings of Eastern and Central European folk music and experimental psych excursions for a wide array of labels such as Emperor Jones, Digitalis Industries, Important and Soft Abuse. Though parallels can be seen in the work of Alastair Galbraith, Flying Saucer Attack, and Popol Vuh, Smith is brewing up his own brand of hazy, big-sky worthy rumble. The session tracks were recorded to a 4-track cassette without any overdubs or post-production. Smith played a couple of electric guitars and a spike fiddle and used loops of an organ, a hurdy gurdy, and a piano to glue it all together. The live recording begins with overdriven guitar and drifts and coils along slowly evoking a ghost town in the American West where the desolation itself is the badass hero. Beautiful!

Steven R. Smith - Live set recorded at Worstward for Daniel Blumin's show Oct 12, 2008 [playlist]
Untitled 1 (mp3)   |  Untitled 2 (mp3)   |  Untitled 3 (mp3)   |  Untitled 4 (mp3)

What’s more, you can read on for my interview with Steven where we talk about the WFMU session, Jewelled Antler, instrument building, forthcoming releases, and sundry other topics for those young and old who need a little pick-me-up before plunging headlong into the abyss of distant cousins, Uncle Frank's inappropriate innuendo, and gluttony. Godspeed! (interview w. Steven R Smith after the jump)

National Country Music Week (1961)

Here is a 1961 disc of radio spots, recorded by various country stars, hyping National Country Music Week.  These 45 rpm platters were shipped to radio stations in the hopes that they'd hop on the bandwagon and help persuade listeners to get even more enthused about country music.

MP3s:

Side A
Roy Drusky  (:23)
George Hamilton  (:24)
Ferlin Husky  (:27
Buck Owens  (:29)
Minnie Pearl  (:29)
Tex Ritter  (:32)
Faron Young  (:30)

Side B
Roy Drusky  (:29)
Ferlin Husky  (:29)
Buck Owens  (:30)
Minnie Pearl  (:28)
Webb Pierce  (:24)
Tex Ritter  (:30)
Faron Young  (:15)

Some Things to See

I hate the New York Times, (aka the Big Grey Pack o' Lies) so when some guy tried to hand me a free copy of a “special edition” last Tuesday, I almost refused to take it. Usually the free ones are sponsored copies, with a big ad wrapping the outside. But this one just had a headline that said, “Iraq War Ends.” So I took it, and walked away reading it, and every story was about how Condoleezza Rice was apologizing for lying about the weapons of mass destruction, and President Bush had been indicted for high treason. The whole thing was a brilliant, 14-page parody. I turned around and went back. “Who are you guys?” I asked.

“We’re the New York Times Special Edition,” one guy said. Well, I knew they weren’t from the real NYTimes because even though they spelled Condoleezza wrong, the rest of the writing was really good. Then some guys with a video camera stopped me and asked what I thought of the paper, and I told them how fantastic I thought it was. It wasn’t until a few hours later that it occurred to me that I didn’t know who the video guys were either.

Today I finally got around to trolling Youtube for footage of me holding the Special Edition, and I didn’t find any, but I did find a pretty funny video called “Killing Time with Bronwyn C.”  by Listener Devtrash. I watched a bunch of Listener Devtrash’s videos and really liked them, and not just because of the Bronwyn C. one.

Listeners still send me notices about their upcoming events and shows, although all I can do is pass them on to the station’s “Upcoming” list or tell you about some of them here. Listener Bill K. let me in on the Kim Deitch retrospective at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA), and Sluggo and I went to see it on Saturday. (It costs $5 and is there until Dec. 5.) We’re old fans of Kim’s and it was nice to see work from various points in his career all on display in one place. But the real revelation, for us, was “Dial M for Monster,” the silent monster movie he and his brother and friends made when they were kids. Mummies! Aliens! Vampires! Giant rubber lizards! The H-bomb! It was pretty great.

Then, as long as we were having Art Day, we stopped by Spencer Brownstone Gallery on Wooster Street to see the new Tessa Farmer show. Farmer’s sculptural installations, made up of dead things and crap she’s found lying around, hover on the rusty tin-can edge of kitsch. We were looking at the skeleton of a Whippet dog with a dried-out wasp nest inside it and an upside-down roadkill frog sticking out of a hole in the side of its skull. “Like a turducken!” Sluggo said. But then there are all the insects, and the itty-bitty skeleton “fairies” made of bladderwort fiber and termite wings, incredibly tiny, and some with horse-skull heads. In 2007 Farmer had a residency at the Natural History Museum in London, and the best of her work is like the specimen’s revenge. At least it makes you look, and think. We liked it a lot, and I recommend you see it if you get the chance. The show will be up until December 13.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.

Bobby Christian (MP3)

Here are three interesting 45's which all came out, most likely in the '60's, under the name Bobby Christian. Whether they are all by the same Bobby Christian is not clear to me, although they do share a certain offbeat style.

During the 365 days project, I shared an unusual record that I had found, an 45 rpm acetate, uncut from its 12" size, and with a label from the recording studio. That story can be found here, but as this was the first time I had come across this artist's name, I'm also including the tracks here. As I wrote before, Jumpin' Jack appears to have been released at some point, while I can find no reference to "South Seas Beach House" having ever been released:

1.) Bobby Christian - South Seas Beach House (MP3)

2.) Bobby Christian - Jumpin' Jack (MP3)

I subsequently heard the following Halloween favorite, which appeared on the Wing label. I don't have the flip side of this one, as this recording is made from an old radio broadcast of the song:

3.) Bobby Christian and the Allen Sisters - The Spider and the Fly (MP3)

Finally, a recent discovery, yet another "Bobby Christian" release, on yet a third label, in this case, Salem. I particularly like "Crickets On Parade", which "Enough Man" sounds like someone trying to recreate one of David Seville's b-sides.

4.) Bobby Christian - Crickets On Parade (MP3)

5.) Bobby Christian - Enough Man (MP3)

Bob

train I ride

We all know that President-elect Obama has an awfully huge job ahead of him in the next few months.  I suggest he brainstorm with Burt Lancaster's character from the 1964 film "The Train" for a few tips.  In Hollywood-land Lancaster plays a French train engineer by day and Resistance hero by night. In MacGyver-like fashion he manages to halt a Nazi-led train of French artwork hightailing it for the border.  In the moments leading up to D-Day, the real French resistance was a well-oiled machine plotting details as minute as how much draining of oil would be needed to cause a Nazi train to stall just as it rolled onto a soon to be blown up bridge.  Director John Frankenheimer mines the wealth of Nazi stereotypes for full glory, creating bad guys who kill in the interest of leaving Nazi "good-will" in their wake.  Of course, pre-CGI FX films compel you to shout along at the characters as they stumble and fall into plot twist after le plot twist.

I am bringing up this film because of an e-mail I received the day after the victorious Obama election.  A pro-democracy organization urged me to stay vigilant after Obama's victory as even now someone, somewhere was plotting our downfall.  Drat!  Not one 24 hour period had passed and already the Hollywood-like bad guys were crawling out from under their nearby rocks.  I wondered if, similar to the very young witch Tiffany in Terry Pratchett's  The Wee Free Men, I was hopping through hallucinogenic bad dreams, except all of mine were semi-germinating from the plots of early 1960's John Frankenheimer movies?

Follow along with my theory:

1. Manchurian Candidate nightmare. Been there, done that.  Phew, we made it through the election with nothing horrible happening. 

2. Seven Days in May, where perhaps a maniacal never say-die Ted Stevens, in a last ditch effort to be forgiven by the Republican Party, attempts a coup on the Obama White House lawn.  Ted's excuse: he took a wrong turn while big game hunting from a helicopter.

3. Seconds with Pat Robertson as the ailing oldie who mentally inhabits the young body of Jenna Bush, in an attempt to gain the 2012 Republican Nomination.

4. Hopefully these dreams end with Grand Prix and I jet off to race car camp. Now that the price of gas is shrinking it's the only American thing left to do...

Items found in record sleeves

Recently Mac brought up a topic on WFMU's e-mail list that spawned a flurry of great responses:

Did you ever find anything unusual in a used record you bought?

Here are some stories from WFMU DJs, please share yours in the comments section.

Mac:
I was just putting away some records and ya never know what you will find in the jackets. I have an AUTOGRAPHED copy of Ethel Merman's Disco Record and inside is a polaroid of her standing with some guy. Perhaps who she autographed it for?

Mike Lupica:
Shortly after buying my copy of Syd's "Barrett" double LP at the WFMU Record Fair, I discovered a crisp twenty dollar bill stuck inside of it.

Marty McSorley:
I found hand written lyrics to Prince's "I Would Die 4 U" on blue lined school paper. (But I found them in a copy of Thriller.) And there is just something about the handwriting that screams "look at me please, I sit next to you in 8th period math everyday. Why don't you notice me." I really love it it's been stapled to my wall through 4 moves.

John Allen:
I found a copy of Quicksilver Messenger Service "Happy Trails" with the R in Trails blacked on the front cover. I pulled out the record to check the condition, and several photos fell out. The pics were vintage 70's shots of women on women w/ toys, and guy on gal oral action.

Joe Belock:
I found a copy of a 7-inch (unrelated to the album I found it in), 6 years after I accused an ex-roomate of stealing said 7-inch. Whoops!

Jan Steele / John Cage (MP3s)

Brian Eno's Obscure Records label released only 10 albums during its existence from 1975 through 1978. Some of these have been reissued on CD (among them Eno's own 1975 masterpiece Discreet Music), but for some reason the album Voices and Instruments (Obscure No. 5, 1976) only exists on out-of-print vinyl. It is a very quiet and beautiful record, featuring three compositions by Jan Steele on one side, and five compositions by John Cage on the other side. Lyrics are by James Joyce and E. E. Cummings, performers include Jan Steele, Richard Bernas, Steve Beresford, Fred Frith, Robert Wyatt, and Carla Bley. It is not just mellow, it is avant-mellow...

Side A:
1 Jan Steele - All Day [ lyrics by James Joyce, vocals by Janet Sherbourne ]
2 Jan Steele - Distant Saxophones
3 Jan Steele - Rhapsody Spaniel

Side B:
4 John Cage - Experiences No. 1
5 John Cage - Experiences No. 2 [ lyrics by E. E. Cummings, vocals by Robert Wyatt ]
6 John Cage - The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs [ lyrics by James Joyce, vocals by Robert Wyatt ]
7 John Cage - Forever and Sunsmell [ lyrics by E. E. Cummings, vocals by Carla Bley ]
8 John Cage - In A Landscape

Tom Snyder Meets The Radio Jagoffs

Watch the rest of it here.

Free Music Archive preview: SF Bay Area (mp3s) (video)

With one month to go before the launch of WFMU's Free Music Archive, we'd like to offer a preview of some of the sounds that we'll be hosting from that progressive hub of foggy creativity known as the San Francisco Bay Area. This post is part of a series of Free Music Archive regional previews that has so far hit Portland OR, Los Angeles CA, Chicago IL, Providence RI, Philadelphia PA, and Columbus OH.

Now we head to the Bay Area in honor of Billy Jam/Put The Needle On The Record's second remote broadcast from Oakland CA, which is going live at 3pm east coast/12pm pacific on these here airwaves. We'd also like to shout out Creative Commons, the San Francisco based non-profit that adapts intellectual property law to fit the digital era. Creative Commons licenses help make the Free Music Archive possible, as they do for the SF-based archive.org and Creative Commons' own ccMixter.

Read on to find mp3s from some of the many Bay Area artists who'll be sharing some of their work via the Free Music Archive: Chief Boima, Citay, Cryptacize, Death Sentence: Panda!, Thomas Dimuzio, Gigante Sound, Hank IV, Kowloon Walled City, Negativland, Nodzzz, Oaxacan, Thee Oh Sees, Bob Ostertag, The Pets, Sic Alps, Sir Lord Von Raven, Kelley Stoltz, T.I.T.S., Wildildlife, Wooden Shjips, Xiu Xiu, AND MORE!!!

Nice #4, the Zine You Could Play on Your Turntable

Several weeks back, while preparing for my contribution to WFMU's week-long celebration of the 7" known as Singles Going Steady, I rifled through the comps & splits 7" drawer and found the most frustratingly unknowable pair of records. They were clear flexis, seemingly torn from a magazine, bearing the word "Nice", the attribution "BarDor Productions", and a number (5, 6, 9 and 10), and that was it.  These records were anonymous, and possibly orphaned.  With such a near-complete lack of info, I had no choice but to listen.

I dropped the needle on one side... and heard some twisted gamelan-like orchestra recorded through 20 years of gauze; flipped and dropped it again... a disaffected woman's retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood" as though it had all just happened to her, on the Lower East Side; switched to the other disc and it's like The Inflatable Boy Clams hitched a flying saucer ride.  Everything I heard I absolutely loved.  All the voices sounded familiar but alien; all the music seemed trapped in time, though not in the dated sense.  I asked everyone in the WFMU office what it was - no one knew. 

Googling "Bardor Productions" yielded 2 hits, one of which blew the case wide open: a link to a single Irwin Chusid playlist.  I got on the horn to my ol' pal pronto, and within minutes the mystery was both solved and deepened.  Within a week, the record was mine - a gift.  Nice!  Keep reading, and it's yours.

Longhorn Ballroom, Dallas, TX

The Dallas Observer's music blog offers a fine article by author Jeffrey Liles detailing the history of the Longhorn Ballroom, one of the most storied nightclubs in Dallas.  Built by eccentric millionaire O.L. Nelms in 1950, the building was sold to Bob Wills, who named it Bob Wills Ranch House and used it for his home base for a time.  When mismanagement turned it into a financial burden, Wills sold the club to Jack Ruby, who in turn sold it to Dewey Groom, the club's longest-term owner.  In the 1950's and 60's, the club was a Dallas cornerstone for Western Swing and Country bands like Ernest Tubb & The Texas Troubadours, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Loretta Lynn and many others.

By the latter half of the 1960's, the Longhorn Ballroom was also playing host to soul and rhythm and blues acts like James Brown, Otis Redding and Bobby Bland.  In January 1978, 1500 people paid $3.50 each to see the Sex Pistols unleash their brand of chaos at the Longhorn. 

Thanks to  T54Channel for the YouTube clip below, which is a tv news report on the Sex Pistols' appearance at the Longhorn Ballroom.