Music and Mayhem on Main Street:
R.D. Hendon and his Western Jamboree Cowboys in Context
Part 11: "On Tour"
The main attraction of being a member of the Western Jamboree Cowboys was having the crowd come to you, rather than the other way around. While other musicians had to devote countless hours driving from town to town, setting up and tearing down equipment, sleeping in cars or buses (or, more typically, not sleeping at all), the Cowboys simply had to show up at 105 1/2 Main every day. Musicians coveted such "sit-down jobs," as they were known, and R.D. Hendon could have easily enticed the finest musicians in the state to play for him had his overbearing personality not made the job insufferable.
The group played six nights a week, every week, at 105 1/2 for at least five-and-a-half years. This would total 1,793 gigs from January 1, 1951 (and the club probably opened before this) through August, 1956. Subtracting vacation days and holidays, plus Bill Taylor's memory that in 1956 they would sometimes only be open on weekends, the actual total of shows at 105 1/2 was perhaps around 1,500-1,600.
We would also have to subtract some travel days, because the Cowboys did occasionally play elsewhere. We have already mentioned their 1951 appearance at the Louisiana Hayride. They also played the Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Festival in Meridian, Mississippi, every year from 1954 to 1956, and Hank Williams' Memorial Day in Montgomery on Sept. 20-21, 1954. These were most likely purely promotional appearances to generate publicity for the club.
When asked if they played outside of Houston much, Hamp Stephens replied, "Very little. We tried it. Nobody knew us." Joe Brewer had a somewhat different memory, stating that, at a certain point, R.D. "started booking in other bands to take our place, and then he would tape our radio show. One place I remember real well was the Officer’s Club in Amarillo. We’d go out like that occasionally. We’d have a guest band at the club. Then, the next day, coming back, we could hear our show on KLEE."
Thanks to the ongoing digitization of newspapers, added to the band's memories, 20 appearances by the Cowboys away from their home on Main Street can now be documented. There were undoubtedly more.
