Logan Horace - Elvis, Hank, and me: making musical history on the Louisiana Hayride

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The Louisiana Hayride holds a special place in the history of American popular music. It also holds a special place in my heart. I was born in Shreveport while my daddy and the Hayride were helping each other gain national prominence.

When it first started out in the spring of 1948, nobody expected the Hayride to be anything more than just another Saturday night country music show, like any number of others across the southern United States. But it turned out to be a whole lot more. Between the late forties and the late fifties, it became an innovative force that changed the style and sound of country music and its impact on the American listening public.

The Hayride was a star maker. It built hundreds of careers in country musicmore than any other show of its kind. All told, it produced about two dozen of the centurys premier country music artists. My daddy was the first of these, but there were many more to follow: Webb Pierce, Slim Whitman, Jim Reeves, Johnny Horton, Faron Young, Floyd Cramer, Kitty Wells, Johnny Cash, George Jones, and others. Even Elvis Presley used the Hayride stage in Shreveports Municipal Auditorium as his launching pad to musical immortality.

At the same time, the show provided steady work for lots of people who never became major stars but who wanted the opportunity to make a living doing what they loved bestplaying music.

The Hayride never displaced the Grand Ole Opry as the promised land of country music, and the majority of stars developed on the Hayride moved on to Nashville within a relatively short time. But if the Opry was the promised land, the Hayride was heavens gate. It never saw itself as a mere stepping-stone to the Opry, or advertised itself that way. It had its own role and it played that role proudly and with class. It had a fun-loving spirit and was never afraid to try something different.

It more than earned its title as The Cradle of the Stars.

The Hayride also did a lot to refine and redefine what was then called hillbilly music and make it a respected part of Americas musical culture. It helped make it possible for country artists like my daddy to break out of the narrow hillbilly category and cross over into the mainstream of popular music.

Im personally grateful for the opportunity the Hayride gave my daddy. And if he changed the Hayride, it changed him, too. The Shreveport days represented a fresh start for him, and he did some of his best and most creative work in the ten months he was there before moving on to the Opry. In a sense, though, he never really left. In his farewell Hayride performance, he told his friends in Louisiana hed be back, and sure enough, three years later, he did return.

As producer of the Hayride, Horace Hoss Logan was the big daddy of all the stars who played there. But he was more than just the bossmore even than the guy who made the final decision on who went on the show and who didnt. He was also a good friend to many of his performers, my daddy included, and he never stood in the way of an artists success or tried to hold somebody back for selfish reasons.

Horaces book on the Louisiana Hayride is long overdue, and it brings the old show back to life. Its an important addition to the musical history of America. The Hayride was a fast-moving stream that fed the big river of country music. It lives on in the music of the people who played there and in the hearts of the folks who listened and yelled for more.

This book will help keep the legend alive for generations to come. My daddy wouldve loved it. Thanks, Hoss!

H ANK W ILLIAMS J R .

When I was first invited to appear on the Louisiana Hayride, very few people outside the Memphis, Tennessee, area had ever heard of Johnny Cash, much less heard me sing. Ill never forget how excited I was as I stepped up to the microphone on the stage of Shreveports Municipal Auditorium that Saturday night in 1955. Besides the live audience of thirty-eight hundred people out beyond the footlights, I knew that thousands of radio listeners across the whole country were about to hear my voice for the first time.

It made this old Arkansas farmboy mighty nervous, I can tell you. The biggest audience Id played for up to then had been maybe two or three hundred folks, and the idea of performing for so many people all at once filled my stomach with butterflies.

But when I finished my first number and heard the cheers and applause from the crowd out front, it made those butterflies go away and gave me the greatest feeling anybody could imagine. Ive had many unforgettable moments in my career since then, but that first night on the Louisiana Hayride has always been in a class by itself.

The man responsible for giving me my big chance that night was Horace Logan, the Hayride s producer. He invited me to sing on the Hayride which ran a close second to the Grand Ole Opry in those days as Americas favorite country music radio showat a time when I probably couldnt have gotten a shot at a national audience anywhere else.

Just a few months earlier, Id finally talked Sam Phillips at Sun Records into recording and releasing a couple of my songs. That first singlewith Hey Porter on one side and Cry, Cry, Cry on the otherhad sold fairly well in Memphis. But the rest of the country didnt know me from Adam, and Id never done but a handful of public appearances when Hoss Logan heard my record and put me on the Hayride. At the time, I still had to work a Monday-through-Friday job as a door-to-door salesman to feed my family.

But Hoss and the Hayride had made stars out of long shots and unknowns beforenot once but lots of times. And when he gave me a job as a regular member of the cast, it changed my life forever. The nationwide exposure I got on the Hayride, via the CBS Radio Network, was the key factor in making my early records successful. Within a year, my name and voice were familiar to country music fans from coast to coast. The Hayride gave me the boost every successful recording artist has to have, just as it had with Hank Williams, Kitty Wells, Webb Pierce, Faron Young, Slim Whitman, Jim Reeves, and Elvis Presley before me.

The Hayride was also a place where I made some of the deepest, most meaningful friendships of my lifewith Elvis, Johnny Horton, Merle Kilgore, and many others. One of the longest-lasting friendships that grew out of those days was with Hoss Logan.

Ive waited almost forty years for the chance to mention these things about Hoss and the Louisiana Hayride and say how much they meant to a struggling young singer named Johnny Cash.

Actually, I did express my gratitude publicly once before. It was in an ad I ran in Billboard magazine after my final appearance on the Hayride, in which I thanked Hoss and the show for all theyd done to further my career. But that message was aimed primarily at my fellow show business professionals. Now I finally have an opportunity to express my appreciation in a permanent way to everybody who loves country music.

If that includes you, this is your kind of book. If youre a country music fan, I dont think youll read a more fascinating book this year. Elvis, Hank and Me is the complete inside story of the Hayride and the people who made it what it wasas only the man who created and produced the Hayride could capture it.