Perpetually weathered and rustic, North Hollywood’s legendary Palomino Club helped birth California country swing and many a music icon’s career with its high-energy, inspirational atmosphere and down-home touches. Ranking second only to Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry as a country music showcase, the “Pal” provided a home to renowned singers and songwriters who captured the human condition and the area’s rural roots in their poetic lyrics and toe-tapping melodies. A simple honky-tonk with whiskey-stained floors, smoke-filled rooms and garish decoration, the Palomino provided rich entertainment and soulful music for more than 40 years.
From its earliest days, 6907 Lankershim Blvd. fed the hearts and souls of working-class Valley residents. The location had been a grocery store and carpentry/woodworking factory before new owners Penny Jones and Buster Weland opened the Penny Busters bar on Friday, June 13, 1947. They advertised in newspapers with the tagline “Maybe not the best, but the biggest ‘beer joint’ in town.” The two men told the Valley Timesthey opened their bar for the “average man,” featuring draft beer for a dime and a special French dip sandwich. Sadly, it closed after two years.
After sitting empty for a short time, the facility reopened as the dance hall Music Machine and Restaurant in April 1950, later changing its name to Mule Kick. Amand Gautier purchased the struggling location from James D. McGinnis in early 1951, updated and remodeled the site, and reopened it on March 10 as the Palomino, featuring dining, dancing and Western entertainment. Co-owner Hank Penny, star of The Spade Cooley Show, and his energetic house band provided Western swing music every night, save on Jam Session Monday, where musical variety reigned. As Penny later revealed to the Los Angeles Times, “When we established The Palomino, we felt the club just might be the place where Valley residents would go for good country music — in a location which didn’t require them to drive over the mountains to downtown or the beach towns.”
The Palomino flourished during a time when country music exploded in popularity in urban areas like L.A., spurred by Midwesterners who had arrived seeking better-paying occupations in war plants and assembly-line factories. Many early patrons were World War II veterans who had passed through the city on the way to the Pacific Front and then returned in peacetime. They sought refuge in the San Fernando Valley, where movie studios like Republic invented the singing cowboy, and barn dance shows and Western yodelers proliferated on the radio. After Texan Bob Wills migrated to California in 1943, Western swing and barn dances soared up the charts. Musical performer and entertainer Cliffie Stone told newspapers, “Just like the war brought these Southern boys into the armed forces and spread the music around, the people who worked out here in the factories brought their banjos and guitars — and a large number settled in the San Fernando Valley.”
New owners, brothers Tommy and Bill Thomas, built on the Palomino’s budding reputation as one of L.A.’s best dance halls in the mid-1950s, turning it into a home away from home as it nurtured fine musical talent. The brothers continued the popular weekly jam session, where professionals and amateurs alike improvised new sounds and songs. Their sizzling house band and large, cool beers helped pack the house. Drinking and partying sometimes gave way to rowdy fights and colorful altercations. Rodeo star Charlie Aldrich often rode his trick pony onstage during the 1950s, and a 300-pound doorman–bouncer named Tiny was once shot through the arm with an arrow after ejecting an irate customer.
While the look remained spartan and bland, save for the swanky new neon sign, the music grew increasingly rich and diverse, providing entertainment as well as food for thought. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Palomino expanded into L.A.’s largest country music venue and helped popularize the “California Sound” of electric and steel guitars with infectious beats and harmonies, turning it into the most influential club on the West Coast. Such rising performers as Hank Williams Sr., George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Marty Robbins, Buck Owens, Glen Campbell and Merle Haggard drew crowds and accolades for their work.
The 1970s and 1980s brought an eclectic range of performers as well, all offering soulful lyrics and a unique storytelling and singing style. Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Crystal Gayle, Gram Parsons, Asleep at the Wheel, Kenny Rogers and Barbara Mandrell graced the Palomino’s stage. Icons like Bob Dylan, Elton John and Elvis Costello performed unannounced sets.
The Palomino topped the Academy of Country Music’s “Nightclub of the Year” list for 14 straight years through the 1970s and 1980s, thanks to the stewardship of the Thomases. When ticket sales dropped, the shrewd siblings increased revenues by selling promotional belt buckles, cigarette lighters and T-shirts, and offering improved food and drink options at popular prices.
Thanks to the club’s lived-in look, movie stars came calling in the late 1970s in need of an authentic roadhouse feel for big-screen projects. Long a favorite with stunt men and rodeo riders for its rough-and-tumble atmosphere, the Palomino added gritty texture to several films and TV shows. Action star and club regular Clint Eastwood filmed scenes for his comic films Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can at the iconic location, as did popular leading man Burt Reynolds with his film Hooper. Such TV shows as Adam-12, CHiPs and T.J. Hooker also employed the club as a location.
When films like Urban Cowboy and Honeysuckle Rose re-energized country and Western music with up-tempo pop beats in the early 1980s, attendance skyrocketed, pushing the Palomino uptown for a time. Uptight businessmen, preppy college students, pushy talent agents and slick record executives were as likely to attend concerts as longtime assembly-line workers and truckers. The club evolved from friendly neighborhood hangout to industry essential, hosting live music broadcasts, corporate meetings and shindigs, and serving as a local bar for professional athletes, entertainers and politicians.
By the late 1980s, however, the craze dissolved and attendance plummeted. The Thomases added other genres like rock and blues to the Palomino mix, hoping to draw new talent. In the 1990s, the club hosted Barn Dances on Tuesdays and the rock Policemen’s Ball, but declining sales continued as the growing Nashville music scene, proliferation of other entertainment choices and increasing turn to pop music took over country. New owners chased film shoots like Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do, but too little revenue and too many losses forced its closure.
Gone now for 30 years, the Palomino lives on in spirit, a symbol of the deep roots and rural beginnings of the San Fernando Valley.
