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Lost Treasures: The Blackboard
| Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 11:50 AM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Nov 8 2006 11:50 AM
The Blackboard
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The Blackboard, owned by Frank Zabaleta and Joe Limi, was the place to be.
One of Buck Owens' first jobs in Bakersfield was playing at the legendary Blackboard nightclub.
The Blackboard building circa 1980.
Long before Buck Owens opened the upscale Crystal Palace, he helped shape the music that would come to define Bakersfield in an unassuming little honky tonk on Chester Avenue.
The Blackboard’s predecessor was a cramped little cafe built in 1925 that served breakfast to blue-collar oil and agricultural workers.
In 1951 the cafe reopened after a remodeling and became known around town as one of the hottest places to hear new music acts. The famous “Bakersfield Sound,” a twangy, new country music style unique to the area, was off and running.
The Blackboard’s heyday came in the decade or so starting in 1952, when music legends Patsy Cline , Merle Haggard and Bill Woods and his Orange Blossom Playboys — including Buck Owens playing his Fender Telecaster — graced the small stage.
There were other music joints in Bakersfield. The Lucky Spot, Trout’s, Rainbow Gardens and the Beardsley Ballroom in Oildale were all popular spots. But it was the Blackboard where the Bakersfield Sound truly hit its stride.
You didn’t hang around the Blackboard if you weren’t tough. Without a doubt, the 40 cent draft beers contributed to regular fistfights and rowdiness at the gritty bar.
Bill St. Claire vividly remembers the day he turned 21 and walked into the bar — and a fight.
“Just as we walked in a guy was breaking a beer bottle over another guy. We made a U-turn and went right out the door,” St. Claire, 72, recalled.
But he was back the next week to see Bonnie and Buck Owens on the little stage.
For some of Bakersfield’s youth, the Blackboard was a kind of proving ground. If you thought you were tough enough, you crossed the river to North Chester to see if you could handle the rough-and-tumble joint.
The Blackboard closed for good in the late 1970s, or early 1980s — there is no clear record — and the building housed a succession of businesses, from a shooting range to a Domino’s Pizza.
By the time it was torn down in 2001, little remained of the original building. One remodeling after another had left only a wall or two from its honky tonk days.
Today a charter school building is planned for the vacant lot just south of the Kern County Museum where the Blackboard used to sit and the still-familiar sound played.