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Close up the honky-tonks: Legendary Trout's owner dies

BY SHELLIE BRANCO, Californian staff writer
sbranco@bakersfield.com | Tuesday, Aug 19 2008 7:38 PM

Last Updated: Wednesday, Aug 20 2008 7:27 AM

It wasn’t brawlin’, broads or bottle-smashing on Vern Hoover’s final day, though he certainly saw it all as owner of Trout’s, the legendary Oildale honky-tonk.

It was a quiet end: The Olympics and a last meal of grilled chicken from El Pollo Loco — hold the fat.

The heart behind the Bakersfield Sound hot spot for more than 50 years was found dead Tuesday in his Oildale home, said bar spokesman T. Rockwell. He was 77 and suffered from lung cancer.

Under his watch, the bar hosted country music greats, from homegrown talent such as the Buckaroos to Susan Raye and Brooks and Dunn.

Hoover insisted upon maintaining a venue for local artists as the old honky-tonks shut down, one by one. Rockwell, the interim president of the bar’s corporation, said he’ll keep it open for the next hundred years.

Funeral arrangements and tributes at the bar are pending.

Trout’s promotions director Lynda Fette said Hoover was an astute businessman.

“He’s kept the only honky-tonk that’s left of the original honky-tonks,” she said. “ ... He treated it like a business and not like a party. It wasn’t a playground, it was his livelihood.”

Friends and family, including Fette and Rockwell, regularly checked on him during his illness. On Monday, he and Rockwell visited a chiropractor and ate dinner from El Pollo Loco.

“He was one of those boys, he loved the fried chicken, but not on my watch,” Rockwell said.

Hoover watched the Olympics in his bedroom and called Rockwell around 7 p.m. As always, he asked about the night’s crowd.

He apparently died in his sleep. Rockwell found him in bed the next morning.

“It’s a traumatic, traumatic situation for country music history,” Rockwell said. “Out of any man alive, certainly on the West Coast, he’s employed more Bakersfield musicians than anybody.”

Hoover was born at Mercy Hospital on Sept. 30, 1930. His father worked for Standard Oil. As a child he lived off Kern Front Road and loved birthday trips in the company car, a Pontiac Chieftain, to Dutch Frontier Restaurant in Ducor.

As a young man he and his buddies revved their muscle cars in front of a Taft hardware store, trying to outdo one another’s noise. The racket shattered the store windows. Hoover and his friends fled and were never caught.

During the Korean War he served as a horologist, keeping timed mechanisms — bombs, for example — functioning properly.

He married into founder Ralph Trout’s family and started at the bar around 1956. The bar opened in Woody in 1937, and moved three or four times before settling in its present spot on North Chester Avenue in 1945.

Hoover saw a parade of famous faces over the years. Buck Owens’ son Buddy Alan Owens worked as a bouncer. Merle Haggard would drop by in the mid-1960s and stand behind the phone booth as Buckaroos Doyle Holly and Don Rich jammed with Buck Owens. Merle would eventually go onstage and sing. Hoover was always surprised Haggard made it as far as he did.

Hoover and Owens were terrible drivers, Rockwell said.

“(Buck) would come along corners fast ... and one time Buck ran into him,” Rockwell said. “They pulled over and talked it out, ‘How you doing, Vern?’ ‘I’m fine, you need to work on your driving.’”

Hoover married five times and had advice for his friend: Find out who you’re compatible with. But the marriages produced “wonderful, productive” children and Hoover and his exes remained amicable, Rockwell said.

Hoover and his brother-in-law took over when Trout died around 1972. The bar was sold in 1992 to Kern Coast Services, which owned several nightclubs in town, as his brother-in-law’s health failed. Hoover and the corporation behind Trout’s bought it back in 1999, and he remained president of the corporation until his death. Rockwell, who came on board as spokesman that year, would not divulge who is involved in the business.

Hoover oversaw the bar’s expansion from 1,200 square feet to nearly 7,000 square feet with the addition of The Blackboard Stages.

He loved collecting model cars sold on the QVC TV network. He enjoyed a variety of movies, from “Lethal Weapon” to “Titanic.” He’d try to sneak fried chicken and chicken and dumplings.

And he told great stories, Rockwell said, such as the time when someone opened a sack of greased piglets on the dance floor in the 1970s.

“People just laughed their tails off,” Rockwell said.