Step Right Up

Ever wonder what happened to the good old country dance halls, where the floors are packed with boot-scootin’ couples, the beer costs two bucks, and the folks at the table in the corner can tell stories all night? It’s all still out there. Follow me . . .

by John Spong

December 2009

(Page 3 of 4)

But the real distinction at Floore’s was the man himself, who, despite coming to own much of the town, chose to live in the store’s office, which he shared with his basset hound, Bridget. He was a huge man, some six and a half feet tall and over 250 pounds, with slicked-back hair and thick black glasses. He greeted patrons at showtime in a suit and tie, though if you encountered him during the day, he’d be sitting in front of a swamp cooler in just boxers and suspenders. He made his own rules; selling whiskey by the glass was illegal, so he sold bottles out of a chicken-wire cage near the door that he called a liquor store. He promoted performers by hanging their boots from the rafters and their photos on the walls, along with signs like “If you’re going to drive your old man to drinking, drive him here.”

In the sixties he got tight with Willie, who was then struggling in Nashville. When Willie needed money, he would play Floore’s. And when Willie moved the Family to Bandera, in 1970, John T. served as, among other things, their lookout. If heat was headed their way from local lawmen, John T. let Willie know. He also loaned Willie $5,000 to start his own publishing company. “We later sold that company for $2.2 million,” remembers Paul English, Willie’s longtime drummer.

The outside world knows John T. from Nelson’s song “Shotgun Willie” and its line connecting him to the Ku Klux Klan. The second-most-asked question at Floore’s, right behind “Did Willie really used to play here every Saturday night?”—a reference to another of Floore’s jokey signs—is “Was John T. really a Klansman?” Some old-timers deny it, but others say that when he was growing up in East Texas, that was just part of doing business. And they say that he really did sell sheets to the Klan. They add that he was married two times, to a Native American and a Jew. “The Klan was just another vehicle to sell something,” says Willie’s bassist, Bee Spears, who grew up in Helotes.

In 1973 John T. sold out to his right-hand man, Joe M. Algueseva, with two understandings. First, that he be allowed to keep living in the office, where he would die two years later. Second, that the building never be changed, a condition that has been passed down to two successive owners. The other constant at Floore’s is Willie, who still plays once or twice a year. Seeing him there is one of the greatest pleasures a Texan can know. 14492 Old Bandera Rd (17 miles northwest of San Antonio), 210-695-8827, liveatfloores.com

The Stampede, Big Spring

Who To See: Jody Nix and the Texas Cowboys
Secret Tip: Bring your own beer.

The original plans for the stampede, built in 1954 by western swing bandleader Hoyle Nix and his brother and bandmate Ben, called for a ceiling and Sheetrock. But in the rush leading up to opening night, they never got around to finishing it out, and after playing that night to 1,100 dancers, they ultimately decided not to fuss with it—or anything else. The Stampede still has the same raw rafters and bare walls, same propane heaters and Coke box for sodas, same calf-roping mural behind the bandstand. It also still hosts semimonthly dances by Hoyle’s band, the Texas Cowboys, now led by his son Jody, who inherited the band when his dad passed away, in 1985, and the hall when his uncle died, nine years later. “We’ve never polished the floor or smoothed it back out,” says Jody. “You can see ripples in it from years of dancing. But occasionally I drive a nail back down.”

When I attended September’s annual Homecoming Dance, the featured guests were a hundred nostalgic locals celebrating a sixtieth high school reunion. But most of my evening was spent with some hard-core dancers who’d come in from Midland and Ruidosa, not for the reunion but the dance floor. The four Davis siblings and their cousin Russell Welch had been shuffling and waltzing for nearly two hours when I pulled up a chair during their first collective breather. April, aged fourteen, was the only one at the table whose feet reached the floor. The rest of the bunch—Cody, twelve; Brittany, eleven; Russell, seven; and Cacey, six (who had two short blond pigtails sprouting from her head like bug antennae)—swung their feet and fidgeted. Apparently talking about dancing is not as much fun as actually dancing.

“So y’all can all dance?” I said.

“Our grandfather taught me when I was four,” said April. “We all waltz, but I prefer a two-step or a shuffle.”

“What if you wind up with someone who doesn’t know how?”

“I just start over,” said Cody, who wants to be a Marine and a cop when he grows up. “I take my first step this way . . .” he stood and took a step forward with his left foot, “and then three more this way . . .” he demonstrated the shuffle that completes the two-step. “Then I look down to see if their feet are in the right place.”

“If they’re not?”

“I never say they made a mistake. I just start over. They’ll get it.”

As I scribbled some notes, Cacey climbed on my shoulder. “Can you draw a picture of me?”

Before I could explain that I’m not a very good drawer, she was gone, dragging a lucky young buck in a bright-blue cowboy hat—he’d apparently gotten it for his recent fourth birthday—onto the floor as Jody kicked into “Across the Alley from the Alamo.”

“So Jody’s pretty good, right?”

“The older people used to come when his father played here,” said April, “Hoyle Nix. Our mom used to come all the time too. And she met our dad dancing in Lubbock.”

Brittany piped in. “Our parents got married last month and had the reception here. We danced until twelve-thirty.”

“That’s pretty late,” I said, “but it was a special night. Do y’all ever sleep at the dances?”

Each head cocked back, and each face adopted the same sour expression, like I’d just slid them bowls of muesli.

I explained. “There’s this old tradition where the parents would bring blankets for the kids to sleep in the corner when it got late.”

“Um, no,” said Brittany. “We came to dance.”

At that, Cacey reappeared on my shoulder. She looked at the others, and then she cocked her head back too. But she was smiling.

“Oops,” she said. “I just burped in your ear.” 1610 E. Texas Highway 350, no phone, jodynix.com

Club Westerner, Victoria

Who To See: Little Joe y la Familia, Ruben Ramos and the Mexican Revolution
Secret Tip: If you want to eat at the dance, pick up dinner to go at Mumphord’s Bar-B-Q or Fossati’s Deli.

The Westerner is one of the few halls without a wall of fame; no show posters or autographed publicity stills hang on the wood paneling, chiefly because of the hall’s historically split personality. Opened in 1929, it hosted whites-only country dances until 1956, when John Manuel Villafranca, a 31-year-old rural-route postal carrier, talked the owner into letting him lease the place out for Sunday tardeadas, or afternoon dances. As many as eight hundred people would show up each week, Hispanic families from all over south Central Texas who came and danced to orquesta tejana acts like Beto Villa and Isidro Lopez, the Tex-Mex equivalent of big-band western swing. By the early sixties Villafranca was managing the place and had replaced Saturday night’s country bands with conjuntos. But he kept Fridays for the white crowds, for “Teen Age Dances” featuring Roy Head and the Traits and BJ Thomas and the Triumphs, parties that were nominally hosted by a white couple he knew. He’d have tipped his hand if he’d put photos of Mexican Americans on the walls.

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