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Louisiana Hayride

LOUISIANA HAYRIDE
 
 
Louisiana Hayride  was a radio and later television country music show broadcast from the Shreveport Municipal Memorial Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana, that during its heyday from 1948 to 1960 helped to launch the careers of some of the greatest names in American country and western music.  Elvis Presley performed on the radio version of the program in 1954 and made his first television appearance on the television version of Louisiana Hayride on March 3, 1955.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
If nothing else had sprung from there, northern Louisiana would still be renowned as the home of the Louisiana Hayride radio show, the direct antecedent of the even more legendary show from WSM Radio in Nashville, The Grand Ole Opry.   However, this fertile musical landscape was also the home of artists as varied as the avant-garde (and anonymous) band the Residents, musical entrepreneur Dale Hawkins (whose song “Susie Q” was one of the first in the genre called “swamp rock” and was also the first hit song by Creedence Clearwater Revival), and a wealth of country stars like Trace Adkins (no relation to Hasil Adkins, as far as I know), Tim McGraw and Hank Williams, Jr. (father Hank Sr. was from Alabama).  The man born Thomas Johnson in Bastrop, LA – who became known as The Lonesome Drifter – was inspired by the founders of country and western like Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and Bill Monroe; and his dream was to appear on the Louisiana Hayride. 
 
So “Eager Boy” was released on the brand new label K Records, though it was actually the flip side “Tear Drop Valley” that finally won The Lonesome Drifter his spot on the Louisiana Hayride. 
 
(May 2011)
 
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YouTube has a number of Lonesome Drifter songs on its website.  The flip side of “Eager Boy”, “Tear Drop Valley”, is more in the country vein – at http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=-EzLcBWbqaY&feature=endscreen – and gave the man his goal as a recording artist:  a spot on the Louisiana Hayride (a direct predecessor to the Holy Grail of country music, The Grand Ole Opry).   
 
(May 2013)