Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Trek to Wheeling brings back fond memories of Jamboree
From the Newark Advocate
Once a year I make my annual deposit at one of West Virginia's dog tracks. This year I decided to travel to Wheeling over the long Fourth of July weekend.
While sitting in the Terrace Dining Room at Wheeling Downs, I saw a large white building a few yards beyond the dog track fence. The building triggered my memory. I believed this boarded-up, theater-like structure was a part of Wheeling's entertainment past. The dining room host who was forty-something remembered the building as a skating rink when she was in high school in the early eighties.
I was certain that I was looking at the once-famous jamboree hall, home to the WWVA weekly radio hoedown. A quick trip online confirmed my suspicions. The jamboree is still in existence, though not weekly. It originated at a downtown Wheeling movie theater but moved to the exhibition hall on Wheeling Island in the 1960s. Later, the show returned to the Capitol music hall in the downtown area.
I attended the jamboree one Saturday in the '60s. The jamboree originated in 1933 and became the second largest weekly country music show. Unfortunately, WWVA has adopted a talk news format, so the country music show is only heard on FM. The AM radio broadcast was audible on the 50,000-watt giant for over 500 miles on Saturday nights.
Jamboree Hall held 3,000 country music fans and was sold out most Saturday evenings. Tickets ranged from $8 for the best seats to $2 for the back of the hall. The show I attended featured many of the regulars plus the headlining Osborn Brothers and Little Jimmy Dickens.
Read the article
The Newark Advocate
Once a year I make my annual deposit at one of West Virginia's dog tracks. This year I decided to travel to Wheeling over the long Fourth of July weekend.
While sitting in the Terrace Dining Room at Wheeling Downs, I saw a large white building a few yards beyond the dog track fence. The building triggered my memory. I believed this boarded-up, theater-like structure was a part of Wheeling's entertainment past. The dining room host who was forty-something remembered the building as a skating rink when she was in high school in the early eighties.
I was certain that I was looking at the once-famous jamboree hall, home to the WWVA weekly radio hoedown. A quick trip online confirmed my suspicions. The jamboree is still in existence, though not weekly. It originated at a downtown Wheeling movie theater but moved to the exhibition hall on Wheeling Island in the 1960s. Later, the show returned to the Capitol music hall in the downtown area.
I attended the jamboree one Saturday in the '60s. The jamboree originated in 1933 and became the second largest weekly country music show. Unfortunately, WWVA has adopted a talk news format, so the country music show is only heard on FM. The AM radio broadcast was audible on the 50,000-watt giant for over 500 miles on Saturday nights.
Jamboree Hall held 3,000 country music fans and was sold out most Saturday evenings. Tickets ranged from $8 for the best seats to $2 for the back of the hall. The show I attended featured many of the regulars plus the headlining Osborn Brothers and Little Jimmy Dickens.
Read the article
The Newark Advocate
# posted by Dave Sichak @ 9:06 PM 
