Louisiana Hayride

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The Louisiana Hayride was a radio broadcast from the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana that during its heyday from 1948 to 1960 helped launch the careers of the some of the greatest names in American music.

The show's creators took the name from the 1943 book with that title by Harnett Kane that was made into a Broadway show, also called "Louisiana Hayride." Within a year of its debut, the program was so popular that a regional 25-station network was set up to broadcast portions of the show. The flagship station of the program was KWKH in Shreveport.

From 1948 to the late 1950s, Horace "Hoss" Logan produced the Louisiana Hayride. In 1999 he published a book about the Hayride that received acclaim from reviewers such as Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. Beginning with the successful first show on April 3, 1948, for more than a decade the Louisiana Hayride ranked second only to the Grand Ole Opry in terms of importance. While both showcased established stars, the Louisiana Hayride was where talented, but virtual unknowns, were also given exposure to a large audience. Over the years, country music greats such as Hank Williams, Webb Pierce, Kitty Wells, Jimmie Davis, Will Strahan, Slim Whitman, Floyd Cramer, Sonny James, Hank Snow, Faron Young, Johnny Horton, Jim Reeves, Claude King, George Jones, John and The Three Wise Men, Johnny Cash, Tex Ritter, and Lefty Frizzell, amongst many others performed on the Louisiana Hayride.

By mid 1954, a special 30-minute portion of the Louisiana Hayride was being broadcast every Saturday on the AFN Pacific channel of the United Kingdom Scottish Forces Radio Network. On October 16th of that year, a teenager from Memphis, Tennessee named Elvis Presley appeared on the program. Presley's performance of his newly released song from Sun Records called "That's All Right Mama" brought a tepid response, according to former Hayride emcee Frank Page, but soon after Elvis was nonetheless signed to a one-year contract for future appearances. The immediate and enormous demand for more of Presley's new kind of Rockabilly music actually resulted in a sharp decline in the popularity of the Louisiana Hayride that until that point had been strictly a country music venue.

Within a few years, Rock and roll dominated the music scene and on August 27, 1960, the Louisiana Hayride put on its final performance, though there have been attempts in the years since to revive it, and some strictly local performances have been done in the Shreveport area under the name. Meanwhile, KWKH currently has a classic country format sounding reminiscent of the Hayride era.