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"20th-Century Honky-Tonk: The Amazing Unauthorized Story of the Cain's Ballroom's First 75 Years"

Aired on Wednesday, June 24th.

We're pleased to welcome our friend John Wooley back to StudioTulsa. A longtime Tulsa-based music and pop-culture writer -- and the host, of course, of the popular Swing on This program, heard every Saturday night here on KWGS -- Wooley is the co-author, along with Brett Bingham, of a new book about the historic Cain's Ballroom. That book is "Twentieth-Century Honky-Tonk: The Amazing Unauthorized Story of the Cain's Ballroom's First 75 Years." Talk about stylistic range -- the so-called Carnegie Hall of Western Swing was also the second-to-last stop on the Sex Pistols' riotous American tour of 1978. The venue has hosted countless music legends over the years: Bob Wills, Johnnie Lee Wills, Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, Van Halen, U2, The Police, Elvis Costello, Wilco, and on and on...and now, finally, we have a book in which the many compelling stories from (and secrets of) the Cain's Ballroom are being revealed.

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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