This Week in Texas Music History, a dance hall dynasty springs up on the West Texas plain.
Written by Jason Mellard, Avery Armstrong and Alan Schaefer
The Stampede Hall opens
Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University
On May 8, 1954, Hoyle Nix and his brother Ben of the band the West Texas Cowboys opened the Stampede dance hall just outside of Big Spring, Texas. On that night, more than 1,000 Western swing fans and dancers squeezed into the 500-person-capacity venue. A long, narrow building with unfinished walls and exposed rafters, the Stampede featured stage murals of cattle-roping cowboys and, most importantly, a hardwood dance floor.
The Nix brothers formed the West Texas Cowboys in 1946, and the Stampede was a successful effort to capitalize on Hoyle Nix’s regional renown while providing a reliable venue for dances. Among Hoyle Nix’s claims to fame was writing and popularizing the Western swing standard “Big Ball’s in Cowtown.”
For 31 years, Nix and the West Texas Cowboys were the house band at the Stampede, and since 1985, Hoyle’s son Jody Nix has led his band the Texas Cowboys at the dance hall. A roll call of honkytonk and Western swing artists has played the Stampede, including Bobby Flores, T. Texas Tyler, and Johnny Bush.
The West Texas Cowboys were also intwined with the King of Western Swing, Bob Wills. The artists first toured together in 1952, and Wills cut a key version of “Big Ball’s in Cowtown.” Wills continued to perform and record with Hoyle Nix through the years, and in one of his final public performances in 1973, Wills returned to the Stampede to play a dance there one more time. The Nix family keeps boots shuffling on the dance floor there to this day, a stampede of two-step in a classic Texas hall.
Sources:
Joe Specht in Laurie E. Jasinski, Gary Hartman, Casey Monahan, and Ann T. Smith, eds. The Handbook of Texas Music. Second Edition. Denton, TX: Texas State Historical Association, 2012.
Mary Helen Specht. “An Iconic Dance Hall in Big Spring Hosts an Eclectic Crowd,” Texas Highways, August 2019. https://texashighways.com/culture/art-music/an-iconic-dance-hall-in-big-spring-hosts-an-eclectic-crowd/.
