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Texas radio station sets country music standard
On this day in 1923, radio station WBAP in Fort Worth established the
basic format for country music variety show broadcasting (a format
subsequently taken over by Nashville's "Grand Ole Opry" and Chicago's
"National Barn Dance") with a program that featured a fiddler, a
square-dance caller, and Confederate veteran Capt. M. J. Bonner. The
familiar mélange of wisecracks, music both lugubrious and jolly, and
country costumes became immensely popular all across the nation. WBAP,
established by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram under Amon G. Carter
in 1922, was looking for its programing forte. Under call letters
derived from the words "We Bring A Program," the station was an
innovator in Texas radio. In addition to its "hayride" program, it
featured the Light Crust Doughboys, legendary fiddler Eck Robertson,
crossover musician Al Stricklin (who began as a jazz pianist and joined
the Bob Wills Fiddle Band), and other country stars. But it also had its
own "serious" studio orchestra in which such musicians as Don Gillis
played. WBAP and the other leading Texas radio stations broke the ground
in the 1920s and 1930s for a flourishing music industry.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- RADIO
- FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM
- CARTER, AMON G., SR.
- ROBERTSON, ALEXANDER [ECK]
- STRICKLIN, ALTON MEEKS
- WILLS, JAMES ROBERT
- GILLIS, DONALD EUGENE
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Landscape artist Ida Weisselberg Hadra born in Castroville (1861)
- Versatile writer dies (1992)
- Black cowboy Bose Ikard dies (1929)
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