Nine years before he shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby booked Nat King Cole to perform at the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas.<\/p>\n
It was Sept. 30, 1954, and Dallas operated under strict Jim Crow laws that enforced segregated schools, public facilities and housing. But the Longhorn Ballroom, a 2,000-seat honky-tonk located less than a mile from downtown Dallas, was in Cedars, a largely industrial district where the Dallas police had no jurisdiction. The Longhorn was a room with a stage and a bar where anything could happen.<\/p>\n
For over five decades, the concert hall hosted music\u2019s biggest stars across genres, including Roy Orbison, Patsy Cline, Ray Charles, The Ramones and Patti Smith. But after it was sold in the mid-1990s, the 23,000-square-foot space, used for private events and an occasional concert, fell into disrepair. By the early days of the pandemic, the Longhorn was abandoned.<\/p>\n
An unprotected building with no historical status, the Longhorn sat on land with views of downtown Dallas. Developers were interested. Talk of demolition and apartment construction was rampant. Then, Edwin Cabaniss, a wealthy, fifth-generation Texan, stepped in to save the iconic music venue.<\/p>\n
Six years later, he has turned the Longhorn Ballroom into a six-acre creative campus, complete with a brand-new amphitheater, that is welcoming back Longhorn stalwarts and attracting a new generation of music lovers.<\/p>\n
If Only Its Walls Could Talk<\/p>\n
Nat King Cole\u2019s performance came four years after the Texas millionaire O. L. Nelms built the Longhorn Ballroom, then called Bob Wills\u2019 Ranch House, for country music legend Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. When the honky-tonk opened on Nov. 15, 1950, it was the largest dance hall in Texas.<\/p>\n
A few years later Jack Ruby was booking Black artists to play for integrated audiences. A photo taken on the night of Cole\u2019s 1954 performance captures Black patrons seated directly in front of the stage. The white guests stand behind them in a roped-off area. Ruby is in the center of that crowd, smirking at the camera.<\/p>\n
Douglas \u201cDewey\u201d Groom, who bought the Ranch from Mr. Nelms in 1967, added the building\u2019s Old West outpost front facade and the iconic \u201cLonghorn Ballroom\u201d neon sign at its entrance. A 40-foot-tall marquee advertised upcoming Country and Western acts, as well as blues, jazz and R&B artists.<\/p>\n
During the 1970s, the venue secured its status as the center of music counterculture. Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall visited the Longhorn, and the Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious famously played at the venue, covered in his own blood. \u201cHe was writing on his chest with his blood. It was gross,\u201d said Jeff Liles, who sneaked in to see the show when he was 16.<\/p>\n
A decade later Ira Zack, the owner at the time, hired Mr. Liles to book rock, punk and metal acts. He recalls taking Anthony Kiedis and Flea to his mother\u2019s house so the rock stars could do their laundry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Longhorn\u2019s niche is finding the stuff that\u2019s not mainstream,\u201d said Mr. Liles. \u201cIt might be part of the mainstream, but it\u2019s still the periphery. When the Chili Peppers played here in the \u201980s, or when the Butthole Surfers, the Sex Pistols, The Ramones and Patti Smith played here, they all recognized the counterculture aspect of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the Longhorn\u2019s heyday was already nearing its end. In 1996, Raul Ramirez bought the venue and booked Tejano acts like Selena and La Mafia. He put the property up for sale just five years later for $3.95 million. It sat on the market for 16 years, as Mr. Ramirez sought a buyer who wouldn\u2019t tear down the building. The Longhorn was mainly used for private events, and the concert hall slowly slipped off Dallas\u2019 radar.<\/p>\n
In 2017, Jay LaFrance, a Dallas entrepreneur, bought the building with plans to revitalize it as a music venue. But in 2019, those plans ended in bankruptcy and lawsuits.<\/p>\n
The venue soon resembled a ghost town. A storm had knocked down the Longhorn\u2019s landmark sign, and other signage was locked up behind a fence.<\/p>\n
By that time, the Cedars neighborhood was within the Dallas jurisdiction and was slowly being gentrified. Nestled along the banks of the original Trinity River, the Longhorn was on one of the last big pieces of land running alongside the perimeter of downtown Dallas. Bankruptcy trustees received bids from multiple real estate developers, and Preservation Dallas declared the Longhorn Ballroom one of the city\u2019s most endangered buildings.<\/p>\n
A \u2018High-Tech Redneck\u2019 Steps In<\/p>\n
Mr. Cabaniss, 56, tried to buy the Longhorn in 2015, but after several months of negotiations, Mr. Ramirez rejected his offer.<\/p>\n
Years earlier, Mr. Cabaniss\u2019s company, Kessler Presents, bought and restored a movie theater in Dallas\u2019 Oak Cliff neighborhood. Built in 1941, the Art Deco building was once owned by the singing cowboy, Gene Autry. It had been vacant for 17 years before Mr. Cabaniss turned it into the Kessler Theater, a 577-seat concert hall in 2010. He convinced Mr. Liles, 63, to return to Dallas to be the venue\u2019s artistic director. At the time, Mr. Liles was living in Los Angeles and managing Sunset Strip\u2019s Roxy Theatre.<\/p>\n
Initially, preserving old buildings was a side job for Mr. Cabaniss, who built his wealth working for various finance behemoths, including Merrill Lynch and Salomon Smith Barney. After amassing a small fortune, he decided he needed a \u201clifestyle change\u201d before he turned 40. \u201cI wanted to do something creative,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what my muse was going to be, but I wanted to be hyperlocal about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A self-described \u201chigh-tech redneck who loves music,\u201d Mr. Cabaniss saw the Longhorn as a space where artists who played at the Kessler Theater could perform to larger audiences. \u201cI love music because it\u2019s nonpartisan,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is not conservative. It is not progressive. It\u2019s for all people.\u201d<\/p>\n
When developer interest in the Longhorn waned because of the pandemic, Mr. Cabaniss got a second shot at owning it. He bought the venue in 2021 for an estimated $4 million. \u201cThe pandemic drove the competition out because I was looking at this as a building and they were looking at it as dirt,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In 2022, with $4 million in city subsidies, Mr. Cabaniss spearheaded a three-phase restoration of the historic concert hall and its property. The total cost was just over $20 million.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the restored Longhorn Ballroom opened its doors with the Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel as the first headliner. The new venue featured a revamped stage, updated bars and restrooms and a curated museum showcasing the Longhorn\u2019s musical legacy. Mr. Cabaniss also repaired the original Longhorn Ballroom neon sign, which had been stored in a warehouse for over a decade, and reinstalled it above the venue\u2019s entrance.<\/p>\n
An unopened safe that Ruby left behind sits outside a V.I.P. area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that there are some contents in there,\u201d said Mr. Cabaniss. \u201cWe\u2019ve done a little X-ray. We are going to open that and have our Geraldo Rivero moment if things get dicey, but in the three years we haven\u2019t been slow enough to need to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back and Bigger Than Ever<\/p>\n
In March, La Mafia, Grammy Award winners who began their career playing at the Longhorn Ballroom, kicked off the inaugural concert season of the Longhorn Backyard Amphitheater.<\/p>\n
Directly behind the Longhorn Ballroom, the new 6,500-capacity outdoor stage is the latest in Mr. Cabaniss\u2019s three-part revival of the property. By the end of the year, the third and final phase will take shape: Three restaurants will open inside a 20,000-square-foot old motel that once housed touring bands and has already been partially converted into live-work spaces for artists and co-working spaces for creative professionals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the same way Edwin wanted to revitalize the Longhorn, he wants to revitalize people\u2019s connection to this space,\u201d Mr. Liles said.<\/p>\n
Armando Lichtenberger Jr., La Mafia founding member and keyboardist, said the return to the Longhorn was like being in a time capsule. \u201cSame place, but brand-new and amazing,\u201d he said, \u201cSo many memories came back to me, including playing a New Year\u2019s Eve show here in 1985.\u201d<\/p>\n
Memories are what the Longhorn, now a federally protected heritage site, is all about.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people don\u2019t remember what they had for dinner three nights ago, but people remember a really incredible live music show they went to 20, 30, 40 years ago,\u201d Mr. Liles said. \u201cThat\u2019s what this is all about. Providing experiences for people that last a lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n
That, Mr. Cabaniss said, \u201cis the most rewarding part of all of this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nine years before he shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby booked Nat King Cole to perform…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[100387,102,43498,104,103,100385,278,100384,100386],"class_list":["post-269518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-bars-and-nightclubs","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-tex","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-historic-buildings-and-sites","tag-music","tag-real-estate-commercial","tag-restoration-and-renovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}