Fort Worth, Tarrant County
Samuel “Papa Sam” Cunningham was excavating for gravel at this site in 1918 when he discovered an underground spring. Cunningham built a swimming pool and a covered shelter and opened for business in 1925 as Crystal Springs Dancing and Swimming. The popularity of the dance hall was driven by the house band, The Light Crust Doughboys. Sponsored by the Light Crust Flour Company and performing a regular radio show on KFJZ, the Doughboys featured Bob Wills on fiddle and Milton Brown on vocals. Over the course of their 1930-32 shows at Crystal Springs, Wills and Brown pioneered a fusion of Honky-tonk and jazz that would later become known as Western Swing. They consistently packed the 900-person dance floor for late night romps, and Crystal Springs was so popular that Cunningham’s son, Henry, ran a bus to transport crowds from downtown Fort Worth. Some sources even hold that famous gangsters such as Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly and Pretty Boy Floyd visited Crystal Springs. In 1932, Brown and Wills both left the band to start their own separate projects. Wills formed the Texas Playboys and left for Oklahoma, while Brown stayed in Fort Worth. In 1933, Fort Worth radio news called Brown “the King of Hillbilly Bands.” Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies continued to play at Crystal Springs until his tragic death in a 1936 car accident. After this loss, Crystal Springs entered a slow decline; in 1966, the old dance hall was destroyed by a fire. In 2011, the Texas legislature named Western Swing the “official state music of Texas,” commemorating the unique genre that Wills and Brown created at Crystal Springs.