SPH Presents: LIGHT CRUST DOUGHBOYS 90th ANNIVERSARY BIG WESTERN REVUE: Christmas Special!

We have a treat indeed for you here! We will let them tell you about themselves - join us for a full evening. Bar service available for your enjoyment, and pickin' party afterward - bring those instruments!

The Enduring Legend of The Light Crust Doughboys

The world’s longest continually performing and recording country band

This is a story about a band and its members that reads like a classic American novel and contains all the poignant elements that demand the eventual telling of the tale in some epoch feature film.

It is a story of music and politics, perseverance and commitment, talent and luck. This is a Texas story that all Texans will be proud to tell from generation to generation. It is a story that everyone can personally relate to, and it has a series of happy endings despite the many challenges that all successful organizations encounter on their journey to the top.

In 1931, a man who would become a Texas music legend named Bob Wills brought a band soon-to-be-called The Light Crust Doughboys to the Burrus Mill Flour Company. It was the beginning of the great American Jazz age, and the glorious time of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Gene Krupa. Bob Wills and his band, The Light Crust Doughboys, introduced the music genre of Texas Western Swing. Though most of the other great “big bands” disappeared along with the flour company, The Light Crust Doughboys are still performing, recording and “On The Air.”

The band initially performed live on the high tech phenomenon of that generation – the radio – and sang commercials for the Burrus Mill Flour Company. W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel ran the company and the flour company owned the band. Although he fired Wills a couple of years after the tremendous initial success of the band, The Light Crust Doughboys continued performing for huge audiences around the country for decades. Despite O’Daniel’s rise to political fame by becoming Governor and U.S. Senator from Texas, and the only politician who ever defeated Lyndon Johnson, O’Daniel believed he would best be remembered for starting The Light Crust Doughboys, one of the most popular bands in music history.

Some of the premier country and western musicians in the world have filled the ranks of the Doughboys, and hundreds of musicians claim to have played with the band when it came through their towns. Over the years, the band boasted its own touring buses and private planes. As with all stories in history, the sad times came with the passing of the once bright stars into their years of illness and ultimate deaths. But somehow, new members came along, and the band would reorganize itself into a cohesive crowd pleaser that just would not disappear. Each new generation of musicians had a cadre of even brighter stars to lead the upward way.

Enter music prodigy, Art Greenhaw, a Mesquite, Texas native who began his musical calling at age 3. A master of several instruments with a vocal range that is the envy of his peers, Greenhaw started working professionally with the band in 1983. By 1993, he had become the youngest official member and co-bandleader of The Light Crust Doughboys. Upon the death of perhaps the greatest four-string banjo player in history, Smokey Montgomery, Greenhaw became the bandleader. In 2003, he produced and won the Grammy Award for "Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album of the Year" for the album WE CALLED HIM MR. GOSPEL MUSIC: THE JAMES BLACKWOOD TRIBUTE ALBUM. This album featured The Light Crust Doughboys, the Jordanaires and Larry Ford. The Light Crust Doughboys also hold the world record for Most Grammy Award Nominations by a Group in the southern-country-gospel Grammy category.

No two Light Crust Doughboys concerts are ever the same, each one is created for and inspired by the individual audience. Because of this, the numbers will be announced by Art Greenhaw and Larry Gordon. And for tonight's program, sit back and enjoy yourself...you are in for an evening of unique, Texas-style country music entertainment that makes memories of today and recalls the best parts of many yesterdays. You are witnessing The Light Crust Doughboys 90th Anniversary Big Western Revue—an Americana roots music experience unlike anything else in Texas music history.

What makes all this a true, American, dream story is that Greenhaw Records is a small independent label succeeding without the financial marketing power of the major labels from Nashville and Los Angeles and New York. Though the industry titans said it couldn’t be done, Greenhaw’s knack for collaboration and outside-the-box concepts have jettisoned The Light Crust Doughboys' fame to new heights year after year.

Entire books have been written about The Light Crust Doughboys and there are many exciting chapters yet to be told. If you would like to learn much more of the history of Texas music, visit The Light Crust Doughboys Archives at Hill College Library, Hill College, Hillsboro, Texas.

Here's a taste:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mm_Qu98tog