![]() “But the town was hoppin’ when I was coming up.“ “Some people talk like Austin became a music town in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Campi, who owns a house in Spicewood, yet has lived primarily in Los Angeles for five decades. Billed the “Folk Music Fireball” by an Austin promoter, Elvis Presley played the future hippie haven August 25, 1955- one of four Austin appearances before his January 1956 TV debut made him a national sensation. There, he and such local acts as Betty Barnes, the Hubcats with Hub Sutter, the Hungry Mountain Boys and Buck Fowler and the Black Diamonds would play the Saturday night Jamboree. While legions continue to mourn the 1980 closing of the Armadillo World Headquarters on Barton Springs Road, Campi has fonder memories of the 1,500-capacity hall when it was the Sportcenter in the mid-’50s. He still calls far South Congress Avenue, home of such 1950s clubs as the Cinderella, Rudy’s Drive In, the Alibi, Gil’s and the Top Hat, “the San Antonio Highway.” is still Flossie’s Drive In, where country bands like Leon Carter and the Rolling Stones played. He’s a man of the ‘50s in his home town, so in his mind the Magnolia Café at 1920 S. Wild-eyed rockabilly veteran Ray Campi wrote his first song on the last day of 1949 and left Austin at the end of 1959. By Michael Corcoran, on Apon the at Ramblin' Ray and the Ramblers, with Bert Rivera on steel, 1951. ![]()
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