75 years of Tulsa ballroom explored
Tulsa is home to one of the nation's iconic music venues, and now readers can find out more about the first 75 years of Cain's Ballroom in “Twentieth-Century Honky Tonk,” the new book by John Wooley and Brett Bingham.
Wooley, a member of the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Cartoonists Hall of Fame, may be best-known to readers of this column as the author of “The Twilight Avenger,” the comic book hero created by Wooley and artist Terry Tidwell. Two volumes of the pulp hero's adventures remain in print, set during Oklahoma's Dust Bowl era.
“Twentieth-Century
Honky Tonk” draws back even further into Oklahoma's history, beginning in 1924 and tracing the ballroom's history until 1999.
After some tumultuous years as an auto showcase, a school, and a rough-andtumble dime-a-dance dance hall, Madison W. “Daddy” Cain purchased the building in 1930 and attempted to class up the place, banning alcohol, charging for dance lessons, and naming the establishment
Cain's Dance Academy. Cain, an Illinois native, spent time in Oklahoma City before establishing Cain's in Tulsa, working as a dance instructor in 1907 in OKC. Despite founding dance academies in Oklahoma City and Drumright, Tulsa is where Cain's name would make its most famous mark.
The era of the 1930s and 1940s were important to Cain's, as the location came to prominence as Bob Wills and
His Texas Playboys performed daily radio broadcasts and twice-weekly dances.
The building became known as the home of Western swing as Willis, followed by his brother, Johnny Lee Wills, kept the ballroom swinging into the 1950s.
As ownership changed, the focus shifted to a new kind of country music. After some down years, Cain's in 1977 became the penultimate stop on the Sex Pistols' American tour, and in the New Wave era hosted notable names including U2 and the Police.
“For the first 75 years of its life, the Cain's Ballroom showed a remarkable ability to adapt to changes, a resiliency that kept it bouncing back like its alleged and legendary spring-loaded dance floor,” the authors write in the book.
That resiliency has made Cain's one of Tulsa's most enduring musical hot spots. This musical piece of Oklahoma history is brought to life with flair by Wooley and Bingham in “TwentiethCentury Honky Tonk.”