12 records in the full inventory
Oklahoma ensembles whose public function was professional, commercial, broadcast, jazz, or dance music.
Historical frame
Radio, touring circuits, dances, records, and commercial sponsorship carried Oklahoma musicians far beyond the state.
Records enter this collection through evidence of an organized Oklahoma ensemble, not merely because a photograph or name resembles another band.
Published records
The documented organization began May 7, 1925, when old-time fiddlers and cowboy performer Billy McGinty broadcast from KFRU in Bristow. Management passed to Otto Gray, whose Oklahoma Cowboys toured nationally from 1926 through 1936.
The Blue Devils developed in Oklahoma City after Billy King’s Road Show disbanded there in 1925. Walter Page reorganized and renamed the group, which operated through 1933 from the Ritz Ballroom and toured widely.
Ernest Lawrence Fields, born in 1904 and raised in Taft, graduated from Tuskegee Institute in 1924 and settled in Tulsa. He led the Royal Entertainers in the 1920s and developed a prominent African American territory orchestra that toured from the early 1930s into the postwar period.
An archival photograph carries the stable name “Pride of Ardmore” and a 1928 date. The live archival metadata further states: "Pride of Ardmore" band, 1928.
The Choctaw Hall family ensemble recorded commercially after being heard at a Choctaw fair.
OHS documents a formal Federal Music Project dance band in Ardmore.
OHS documents a formal Federal Music Project dance band in Shawnee.
Tourism and organization sources document a sibling big band appearing with the Stillwater Community Band.
King Cabbage Brass Band formed in Tulsa in summer 2021 around performances at Cry Baby Hill. Its official history describes a horn-driven ensemble drawing on funk, soul, jazz, and rhythm and blues and identifies regional touring and major Oklahoma appearances.
A named historical image lead documents Al Hurt’s Band; instrumentation and detailed activity still require reconstruction.
Contemporary Oklahoma newspaper evidence identifies the named ensemble in actual performance, organization, personnel, finance, or travel activity; see TRIAGE-113.