The son of a newspaperman, Thaxton was born in
Memphis, Tennessee. He grew up in
Toledo, Ohio. On graduating from high school, Thaxton enlisted in the Navy, "barely hours" before he would have been drafted. After starting his radio career in Toledo, he moved to Los Angeles in 1957, becoming, in his words, a "freelance announcer" and host of the highly rated
Leave It to Lloyd talk show on
KHJ-TV. He casually coined the term "freelance announcer" since his work in
commercials was most active toward the end of the era of live television; Thaxton would go from venue to venue performing the commercials live, since
videotape was not in wide use then. Many of his commercials for
KHJ and
KNXT were for the now-defunct
Southern California discount chain,
White Front. His career at
KCOP began in 1958 both as a commercial announcer and as announcer for
The June Levant Show, an afternoon
talk show starring the wife of celebrated pianist
Oscar Levant. This led to his own afternoon show, ''Lloyd Thaxton's Record Shop,'' in 1959. In 1961
The Lloyd Thaxton Show (sometimes known as "The Lloyd Thaxton Hop") debuted on KCOP as an hour-long presentation from 5 to 6 p.m. The format, much along the lines of
American Bandstand, featured local high school students dancing on the
soundstage to the latest records. The show was almost totally unscripted and spontaneous. Thaxton's description of the idea: "No one told me what I had to do. I was producing it myself. I was writing it myself." Thaxton frequently clowned around on stage to the music,
lip-synching the vocals and accompanying the records on
guitar or
piano. One favorite recurring
skit had the costumed Thaxton on his knees, impersonating painter
Toulouse-Lautrec, while lip-synching a current song. He also occasionally "performed" on an odd contraption made from a tennis racket and a bow and arrow that roughly looked like a guitar and "play-synked" popular early-1960s instrumental tunes like "Scratchy" by
Travis Wammack and various
The Ventures and
Link Wray guitar songs.
The Lloyd Thaxton Show, with its mix of new music and
comedy skits, gained a viewership of at least 350,000 homes, including those on the
East Coast. Thaxton would end each show by saying, "I'm Lloyd Thaxton," followed by the teen audience shouting, "So what," whereupon the
Bill Black Combo instrumental of the same name would play. Although some cities carried his show almost from its inception, like
KPTV in
Portland, Oregon,
The Lloyd Thaxton Show went into national
syndication in late 1964. Thaxton's face appeared at the top of the newly launched
Tiger Beat magazine (then known as "Lloyd Thaxton's
Tiger Beat"), for which he did a column. According to IMDB, Thaxton was a co-founder of
Tiger Beat. During the late 1960s Thaxton hosted two short-lived
game shows for
ABC: ''
Everybody's Talking (1967) and Funny You Should Ask'' (1968–69). He also was a radio talk show host on
KABC-790 in Los Angeles from 1972 to 1974. Moving behind the scenes, in 1977 he created the syndicated game show
Pro-Fan, which he also announced.
Charlie Jones hosted the series. He also served as producer and director of the weekly consumer advocate show
Fight Back! With David Horowitz from 1976 to 1992, as well as producer for NBC's
The Today Show. In 2003 Thaxton and motivational speaker John Alston co-wrote
Stuff Happens (and then you fix it), published by Wiley & Sons. Thaxton met his second wife, Barbara Snyder Whitman, on the set of the NBC summer series ''Showcase '68.'' They were married August 11, 1969. They had no children but remained married until his death from
multiple myeloma in October 2008; the disease had been diagnosed in May of that year. He lived in
Studio City, California, and was the head of his own entertainment firm, LT Productions. ==Legacy==