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Claire Osborn
| Austin American statesman
More than fifty years of honky-tonk at Austin’s Broken Spoke
In 1964, James White stuck nails in a rustic building and called it The Broken Spoke. The iconic Texas “honky-tonk” celebrated 50 years in 2014.
Reshma Kirpalani / American statesman
James White, owner of the legendary Broken Spoke dance hall in South Austin, and a tower in Austin’s live music scene, has died after a recent illness, his family confirmed Sunday. He was 81.
White, who suffered from congestive heart failure, died at his home in South Austin, according to his daughter, Ginny Peacock.
“It’s a big loss for Austin,” she said.
White founded the Broken Spoke on South Lamar Boulevard in 1964 and it’s been more than 50 years since he turned it into one of the city’s most famous venues.
More: 50 years later the Broken Spoke still stands
Your memories and photos: 50 years of the Broken Spoke
“He gave us a place to perform the music we wanted to do in the atmosphere we wanted – a dance hall in Texas,” Benson said. He met White in 1973 when White discussed his band at the Broken Spoke. “James was one of the most generous and generally gifted people – with a capital letter ‘in this world.’
Peacock said her father, a fifth-generation Texan, wanted the Broken Spoke ” a place like no other, where people can come and listen to country music and have fun. ‘
One of White’s cousins, musician Monte Warden, said only when his band Wagoneers was on the Broken Spoke headline in 1994 did his father finally stop asking him when he was going to college.
“Every major star in the last half century has played at the Broken Spoke,” Warden said. The stars include Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks, Warden said.
White was talkative, active and “never knew a stranger,” Warden said.
“He always wore a cowboy hat, a western hat, jeans and boots,” he said. He looks like a honky-tonk owner from the central cast. He knew that many people’s only experience of a honky tonk in Texas would be at the Broken Spoke. ‘
White was also extremely patriotic, Warden said. Every time before the Wagoneers performed at the Broken Spoke, White raised the American flag of his family.
“He would lead 600 people to the packed Broken Spoke in the promise of fidelity,” Warden said.
Austin musician Alvin Crow said White was one of his best friends. “One thing James did when it came to dance halls was put red necks and long hair in a dance hall in Austin for the first time,” Crow said.
Crow said the groups merged when James first invited him to play in favor of U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett in 1972, who was in favor of a Texas Senate seat at the time.
“James was one of the friendliest people I’ve ever met,” Crow said. “He was always interested in people and people who enjoyed themselves and had a good time.”
White spent his early childhood just south of the Broken Spoke site in an old family home near the current Burger Center. The country has been in the family since his great-grandfather, John Eaton Campbell, traveled from Texas to Tennessee in 1851.
White attended Becker Elementary and Fulmore Junior High and graduated from Travis High School in 1957.
After high school, James joined his father in California and worked in missile and aircraft factories there and in Nebraska. In 1961 he joined the US Army. After leaving the army in 1964, he decided to open a honky tank. In an interview with the US statesman in 2013, White said that September 25, 1964 was the groundbreaking date on the site of an old wooden yard next to South Lamar on land owned by local businessman Jay Johnson.
White began establishing the Broken Spoke’s honky tonk bona fides by discussing local country orchestras over the weekends. DG Burrow & the Western Melodies was the first band hired to play at the Broken Spoke, which initially existed only in the space that is now the leading restaurant room.
White and his wife, Annetta, were married to the Broken Spoke in 1966, and the same year James discussed Western swing legends Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys for the first of three shows over the next three years.
In 1967, White hired a Nashville songwriter named Willie Nelson to play with the Broken Spoke and paid him $ 800. Future country legend George Strait and his crew also spent a number of years in the Broken Spoke in the 1970s and 1980s.
Additional material from American statesman author Peter Blackstock.