Beginnings The creators of the show took the name from the 1941 book with that title by
Harnett Thomas Kane. First broadcast on April 3, 1948, from the
Municipal Auditorium in downtown Shreveport,
Horace Logan was the original producer and emcee. The musical cast for the inaugural broadcast included the Bailes Brothers,
Johnnie and Jack, the Tennessee Mountain Boys with
Kitty Wells, the Four Deacons,
Curley Kinsey and the Tennessee Ridge Runners, Harmie Smith, the Ozark Mountaineers, the Mercy Brothers, and Tex Grimsley and the Texas Showboys. Nonetheless, Presley was signed to a one-year contract for future appearances. Presley became so popular that after his final appearance on
Hayride in 1956, emcee Horace Logan announced to the crowd a phrase that would become famous: "
Elvis has left the building." The immediate and enormous demand for more of Presley's new kind of
rockabilly music actually resulted in a sharp decline in the popularity of the
Louisiana Hayride that until that point had been strictly a country-music venue. On March 3, 1955, Presley made his first television appearance on the TV version of
The Louisiana Hayride, carried by
KSLA-TV, the
CBS affiliate in Shreveport.
Cancellation and revivals Within a few years,
rock and roll had come to dominate the music scene, and on August 27, 1960,
Louisiana Hayride ended its primary run. However, KWKH continued to use the
Louisiana Hayride name for packaged music tours throughout the 1960s on a biweekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, finally ending operations entirely in 1969. As of May 31, 2012, KWKH had changed to a sports format and ceased producing the classic country-music format reminiscent of the
Hayride era. ==
At the Louisiana Hayride Tonight==