Skyline Club

The Skyline Club was a live music venue located at 11306 North Lamar Boulevard (near Braker Lane) in Austin. Opened in 1946 by Warren Stark, the Skyline Club was a popular dance hall that featured some of the most prominent country, western swing, honky-tonk, and rock-and-roll artists of the era. The club, which had a capacity of about 500 people, was frequented by a broad cross section of Austin’s population, from blue-collar workers to state legislators, lobbyists, and assorted political figures.

Jody Meredith and the Roundup Boys performed as the club’s house band for a number of years, but many nationally-touring artists also played at the Skyline, including Hank Williams, Johnny Horton, Webb Pierce, Ray Price, Ernest Tubb, Bob Wills, Marty Robbins, Hank Snow, and Jimmy Dickens. Of particular note is the fact that both Hank Williams and Johnny Horton played their last public performances at the Skyline Club prior to their premature deaths. The “King of Rock and Roll,” Elvis Presley, also performed at the Skyline Club on October 6, 1955.

For a brief period during the mid-1970s, the building in which the Skyline Club had been located served as the home for a popular venue known as the Soap Creek Saloon, which hosted a new generation of artists, including Willie Nelson, Delbert McClinton, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Asleep at the Wheel, and Jerry Jeff Walker. In 1989 the entire building was demolished in order to widen the intersection of Lamar Boulevard and Braker Lane and to make room for new commercial construction.