The Light Crust Doughboys Are on the Air: Celebrating Seventy Years of Texas Music

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE 154 CHAPTER FIVE Texas after World War II was a rapidly changing place. The economy, jolted from the Depression by the demands of war production, continued to boom as thousands of young men returned home from the service. The massive migration from the farm to the cities, which began before the war, resumed, with country people being attracted by lots of goodpaying jobs. Radio, dominated in the prewar years by a handful of powerful regional stations, began to see an expansion into the smaller cities, as dozens of new stations went on the air (Head and Sterling, 40). Texans, flush with optimism , with money in their pockets, and more leisure time than ever before, were ready for life to return to normal, only better. All of these developments pro- “I’m going back to work for the Doughboys” “I’m going back to work for the Doughboys” “I’M GOING BACK TO WORK FOR THE DOUGHBOYS” 155 moted the return of the Light Crust Doughboys. The influx of people from the countryside influenced the programming on Dallas-area radio stations, and also paved the way for the return of the Doughboys. The Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area became a country music hotbed. WFAA and KRLD radio carried live country music programs that featured local, regional, and national performers. The Big D Jamboree, held in a large barn of a building called the Sportatorium on the edge of downtown Dallas, attracted some of the best-known names in country music and drew crowds of 4,000 people each Saturday night (Govenar and Brakefield, 161). The war had brought a temporary end to the Light Crust Doughboys, but some members of the group continued to play together . Announcer Parker Willson got a job with the Duncan Coffee Company and hired several members of the Doughboys to play on a radio program as the “Coffee Grinders” from September 1942 to April 1946. Kenneth Pitts, Zeke Campbell, Cecil Brower, and J.B. Brinkley played with the Coffee Grinders at one time or another. Marvin Montgomery played sporadically on the program. Other members of the group included Red Woodward, Ted Graves, and Pappy McClough (Coffee Grinders). Zeke managed to keep a job at the Swift Packing Company and play with the group on the side. “I went to play early in the morning , and then I would go to work out at Swift. Later, they changed the time of the program from about 8 A.M. to noon, and I couldn’t get off, and had to quit playing with the ‘Doughboys’ [actually the Coffee Grinders]” (Oral history, 13). Knocky Parker, who left the Doughboys just before World War II put an end to the existing group, entered the Army, and never returned to “hillbilly” music. “When I left to go into the Army, that was the end of all that,” he said. “[After coming out of the Army in 1945] we took off right for Los Angeles, and left the [Western swing] scene entirely, forever, never to go back again. It couldn’t have been the same.” Although Knocky never returned to the Doughboys’ style of music, he retained a great respect for Western music players . “The good hillbilly musicians fit easily into any good ensemble anywhere,” he said. “Swing, jazz, either one, rag[time]. The same in CHAPTER FIVE 156 reverse also.” In LA, Knocky worked with drummer Zutty Singleton , clarinetist Albert Nicholas and trombonist Vic Dickenson in a jazz group at the Cobra Club. “I was the only white musician in the band,” he said. Knocky said the Los Angeles Board of Equalization asked him to leave the club because of a dispute that had arisen between Japanese citizens who had been detained during the war and the blacks who had moved into the neighborhood. But it turned out well because he ended up teaching at the University of Nevada in Reno and then moved on to Columbia University in New York where he earned his master’s degree (Oral history, 6, reel three). During the war, Montgomery worked full-time as a supervisor in a defense plant, leaving relatively little time for music. “I made shells for the Navy,” Montgomery said. He was the supervisor of the swing shift at Crown Machine and Tool. Montgomery, who had attended what is now Iowa State University with the idea of becoming a highschool shop teacher, took a refresher course...