Billy Mize

By ROBERT PRICE

Californian staff writer

Cousin Herb Henson might be Bakersfield’s best-remembered TV country crooner, but he was neither the first nor the busiest.

Henson, who died in November 1963, ending a 10-1/2-year run as host of the daily “Trading Post” show on Bakersfield’s KERO-TV, had plenty of good company.

Jimmy Thomason, a Texan with a talent for fiddle and mandolin, was the first to hit valley airwaves, teaming up with his wife for “The Louise and Jimmy Thomason Show” on KBAK-TV (then KAFY-TV) in 1953. Thomason was an easy-going charmer who’d put in a long stint with Gov. Jimmie Davis, the singing former chief executive of Louisiana.

“The business people didn’t want to have anything to do with country music, but maybe because Jimmy came straight over from the governor’s office, they listened to him,” Louise Thomason said. “They liked him, and it sold.”

A few weeks later after Thomason launched his show - some say it was actually just a few days - Henson sold KERO’s management on a competing show; his partners were multi-talented veteran Bill Woods and a young, handsome steel guitar player by the name of Billy Mize.

“He sang like a bird,” said Roy Nichols, former guitarist for Merle Haggard’s Strangers and a sometime-regular on “Trading Post.” “Looked good, too. You didn’t have a chance with girls when Billy was around.”

Dorsey got 64 percent of the vote and the Thomasons, out of a job, moved back to Waco, Texas, for two years, where they launched WACO-TV’s own live-music program, the “Home Folks Show.”

In stepped Mize, by now a seasoned TV performer after a year with Cousin Herb. Mize, a native of Kansas by way of Riverside, teamed with Cliff Crofford for a year and a half on KBAK’s “Chuck Wagon Gang.” Among the guests: 16-year-old Merle Haggard, in what is thought to be his first television appearance.

The Thomasons returned to Bakersfield again in 1956, picking up where they left off with a third incarnation of “The Jimmy Thomason Show.” The show lasted three years.

Mize, meanwhile, had rejoined the “Trading Post” gang, becoming the show’s host in 1962, after Cousin Herb was forced to scale back following a heart attack. After Henson died in September 1963, the show moved to KBAK, and Mize became the show’s host for its final years.

In a two-year display of road-warrior grit, Mize racked up 3,000 miles a week driving his pink ‘59 Cadillac back and forth between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, hosting two live, daily TV music shows: “Trading Post” and Gene Autry’s “Melody Ranch,” on KTLA.

All told, Mize performed on several Los Angeles-area shows, including more than one at a time at several junctures: “The Hank Penny Show,” “Town Hall Party,” “The Cal Worthington Show” and “Country Music Time.” He eventually sold his heroic, well-traveled Caddy to Buddy Mize, his songwriting brother.

Before the Academy of Country Music gave its “TV Personality of the Year” award to Glen Campbell in 1968, Mize owned the trophy, winning three years in a row.

Mize recorded for Columbia, Decca, United Artists, Zodiac and others, but his finest moment in the studio was probably the day in June 1966 that Dean Martin recorded three of his songs, including “Terrible Tangled Web.”

By this time, Thomason was back before Bakersfield TV viewers as host of yet another revamped version of “The Jimmy Thomason Show,” this time on KERO-TV. The daily show ran for 8-1/2 years, until Thomason, facing heart surgery, was forced to quit in 1974.

In 1975, Thomason began teaching The History of Country Music at Cal State Bakersfield, a pursuit that lasted several years. He died in 1994 at age 76.

Mize’s last run at more enduring fame came in 1972, when he taped two pilots of the “Billy Mize Music Hall,” which he hoped to sell into national syndication. Despite guest appearances by Haggard in one show and Marty Robbins in another - and a new-look Billy, with medallion, leisure suit and sideburns - no one picked it up.

Mize, who suffered a stroke six years ago, speaks a little slowly now but has recovered well enough to play guitar again. At 68, he has a girlfriend, and he’s still a fixture in the crowd most Monday nights at Trout’s Cocktail Lounge in Oildale.