Border Radio: The Big Juke Box in the Sky

Live Show & Radio Special Taped Before a Live Audience to Take Place on Saturday, September 17 at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre in Austin

More information about the show and tickets!

Join us for a trip along the Rio Grande of the Mind with Austin’s own Rick Treviño, that handsome devil whose huge talent can deliver straight up country or bilingual ballads.  Rick’s most recent release, the acclaimed “Heard it on the X” with Los Super Seven, paid homage to border radio.  The Big Juke Box in the Sky also features special guests like Dallas “Nevada Slim” Turner, one of border radio’s original pitchmen and singers, as well as Kinky Friedman, who’s gubernatorial campaign slogan is “How Hard Could it Be?” Blues diva Miss Lavelle White, Joe “King” Carrasco, Patricia Vonne, “Mariachi Los Coyotes,” an international award-winning group from La Joya High School, author Jan Reid and many more fine Texas performers will create an unforgettable evening of live music and outrageous, but absolutely true, stories celebrating the legacy of border radio. The show will roam through our borderland heritage, with songs from the Carter family, Lydia Mendoza, and Bob Wills, and some of the bluesiest gospel to be heard this side of the Mississippi.

The Border Radio Show: The Big Juke Box in the Sky will be broadcast and distributed to Texas public radio stations by The Border Radio Show flagship station, KSTX, Texas Public Radio, San Antonio.  The Big Juke Box in the Sky is the first in an anticipated series of 13 specials for regional and national public radio.

This program is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Humanities Texas, The City of Austin through the auspices of the Cultural Contracts Division, and is possible through major underwriting from the Stephen F. Austin Intercontinental Hotel, the Hilton Austin, Ginny’s Printing, Texas Public Radio, KSTX San Antonio, KUT Austin and support from local businesses including Guero’s, Threadgill’s, Nuevo Leon, and Chez Zee restaurants, as well as the members and board of Texas Folklife Resources.

Before the Internet brought the world together, there was border radio.  As recounted in the book, Border Radio – Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves, by Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford, these mega-watt "border blaster" stations, set up just across the Mexican border to evade U.S. broadcast regulations, beamed programming across the United States and as far away as South America, Japan, and Western Europe.  Former Texas Governor Wilbert Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel used it as a political platform. Other entrepreneurs used it to promote everything from cancer treatments to the restoration of masculine virility.  And perhaps most famously, the likes of howlin’ Wolfman Jack, Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills, and the Carter Family used it to become some of the most listened to – and talked about – celebrities in the history of modern radio.

Mixed into these messages of salvation and physical health was a wild range of music that carried the voices and sounds of Mexico and the Southwest to a vast new audience. Border Radio cast the voices of Lydia Mendoza and Rosa Dominguez across the continent and beyond, and American music has not been the same since. 

Texas Folklife Resources, an Austin-based non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and presenting the diverse and living heritage of the Lone Star State, is pleased to present The Border Radio Show: The Big Juke Box in the Sky, an unforgettable evening of live music and stories paying homage to this influential and lesser known phenomenon.  The production will take place on Saturday, Sept. 17, at 8 p.m. at the historic Paramount Theatre in Austin.  For ticket information check the Texas Folklife Resources web site for details at www.texasfolklife.org.

Since 1998, Texas Folklife Resources has presented concerts that journey through the lively musical landscape of the Lone Star State.  In 2004, The Ultimate Cindy Walker Tribute, and Freddy Fender: Fifty Years of Music filled the Theatre and had the media buzzing for weeks afterwards.  In January 2005, As the Spirit Moves celebrated acappella singing in three distinct spiritual traditions. Texas Folklife Resources has a track record of success with such radio programs, having produced three other radio series that were carried regionally and nationwide.

Texas Folklife Resources is a private, non-profit cultural organization dedicated to preserving and presenting the diverse and living heritage of the Lone Star State.  TFR has celebrated and invigorated the arts in Texas through critically acclaimed exhibitions, performances, community residences, educational programs and media projects.

"For more than 40 years, stations located just over the U.S. Mexican borders beamed high-powered signals into the U.S. heartland, skirting American broadcasting regulations, and who knows how many health and safety laws.  All manner of religious hucksters, medical quacks and con men of every sort mixed their messages of salvation and physical health with hillbilly and gospel music."

Wolfman Jack, from the foreword of Border Radio – Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves Bill Crawford and Gene Fowler, Texas Monthly Press, Austin, 1987; Limelight Editions, NYC, 1991; University of Texas Press, Austin, 2002)

The book Border Radio – Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves traces the eventful history of border radio.  The first station was founded in the 1930s by "goat-gland doctor" J. R. Brinkley, who made a fortune selling an unusual, pre-Viagra operation to men that involved inserting slivers of goat glands into their prostates.  Dr. Brinkley was but the first in a whole parade of promoters, holy men, and seers who sold cures, preached religion, and built political careers with the aid of radio broadcasts.  Listen to co-author of the book, Bill Crawford, talk about these "border blaster" stations during his recent interview on NPR's "Fresh Air".  Much more to come from Bill and Gene's Border Radio Research Institute!