TV's Midwestern Hayride started out as 'Boone County Jamboree'
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Once-popular show started out as 'Boone County Jamboree'

The show started on WLW radio in 1937 as Boone County Jamboree and ended on TV in 1972 as Midwestern Hayride



A popular regional show in its time
started out as the 'Boone County Jamboree'



Midwestern Hayride was an American country music show originating in the 1930s from radio station WLW and later from television station WLWT.

Inspired by the Shreveport-based Louisiana Hayride, the show was originally called Boone County Jamboree.

Midwestern Hayride was first broadcast before 1937 and was carried live on radio each Saturday evening through the early 1970s, notes Wikipedia which used a variety of news sources.

A former downtown Cincinnati Elks building eventually became the originating studio for the regional network Crosley Broadcasting Corporation, which included WLW-A in Atlanta, WLW-D in Dayton, WLW-C in Columbus and later WLW-I in Indianapolis (after WLW-A was sold) when the program moved to television in the early 1950s.




Then originating from WLWT, Midwestern Hayride was simulcast on WLW radio until the early 1960s, then was revived in the mid-60s. At the show's peak, there was a one-year waiting list for tickets to be in the audience (100 people was the limit for each weekly show).

By the early 1970s, then-16 year MH veteran Kenny Price, a popular musician and comedian nicknamed The Round Mound of Sound, had a string of country hits for RCA Records including local favorite "The Sheriff of Boone County".

On the strength of those hits, Price was picked to be the new host of the show, which by then had shortened its name to Hayride (Louisiana Hayride had succumbed to rock and roll's popularity and left the airwaves by 1960).

Like many other locally produced shows of the day, Hayride become increasingly more expensive to produce, and WLW-TV executives decided to bring the show to an end in 1972.

Kenny Price became a regular on Nashville-based Hee Haw four years later and remained there until his death in 1987, Wikipedia noted using a variety of sources.


For most of the shows lifetime, it was called the Midwestern Hayride