Opened in 1942 by Mr. John T. Floore, himself, John T. Floore Country Store was not a store at all, but a unique Texas Dance Hall and Cafe. Renowned for its world famous tamales and homemade bread. John T. Floore is a favorite of locals and travelers alike. Offering good food, a cold beer and all the boot scootin' you can stand, it has prospered as the same business in the same location for 60 years, and becomes more popular every year. Musical "birthplace" of Willie Nelson, Willie immortalized John T. Floore in his hit recording "Shotgun Willie". John T. Floore and Wille Nelson were partners in the original Willie Nelson Music Company. Floore's has also been a music-set location for many film productions over the years.

Upon entering John T. Floore Country Store, the first thing most people notice is the hundreds of autographed photos on the walls. From Bob Wills and Brooks and Dunn, to John Wayne and Patrick Swayze, there is hardly a blank wall space for the entire length of this 6,700 square foot building. Decorated with decades of antique memorabilia, and the original, solid oak tables and chairs, the interior is strewn with year-round Christmas lights that cast just the right atmosphere for a fun-filled evening. The outdoor dance floor under the stars is a favorite of all who visit. The casual, relaxed atmosphere of this Texas landmark is known for its "family" environment. John T. Floore's is also respected for hosting several annual events for community charitable fundraising. From street dances to trail rides, John T. Floore's has covered the gamut of entertainment and philanthropy in South Texas.

San Antonio Express News Article
By John Goodspeed

About a year ago, the new owners of John T. Floore Country Store were sorting treasures from trash in a storeroom at the dance hall in Helotes.

They hit a mother lode of memorabilia at the bottom of the heap — an old polished aluminum microphone on a tall stand with a rusted metal base.

"There's no telling who might have sung on it — Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Ray Price, Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson — everyone who was anybody in its day," said Mark McKinney, managing partner of a small group of investors. "It probably was the old house microphone for years and got thrown out there when it wasn't useful anymore.

"I wish I knew more about it."

Others whose voices could have passed through the mike include Ernest Tubb, Elvis Presley, Bob Wills, Bob Dillon and Merle Haggard.

Price doesn't remember the microphone, but can't forget Floore's — it's one of his favorite places in more than half a century of touring, one he keeps coming back to year after year.

"It's a great place," Price said. "It's a happening when you go there. Everybody who's anybody has played there at one time or another. We always like to play it."

The Mercury Electro Voice Model 611 was made in the early 1950s. A new one in the box is listed at $225 on a collector's Web site.

But, to McKinney , the well-worn mike is priceless — and so is the whole dance hall.

The investors bought Floore's from its third owner since the original dance hall opened across the street in 1942 and gave it a little tender loving care to the tune of about a quarter of a million dollars.

They put on a new roof, installed central heat and air-conditioning, upgraded wiring inside and out, replaced the fence and benches on the patio and gave the place a general sprucing up.

But it's almost invisible. The A/C ductwork was installed on the roof and vented through the evaporative coolers that had been spewing "swamp air" through the ceiling since the dance hall was built about 1945.

"It's really important to us to not alter anything in this room," McKinney said, glancing at a burnt-orange stain of corrosion from a leak on the galvanized metal ceiling. "It's such an incredible place with such an incredible amount of history. The pretty and the ugly are part of the character."

So are the boots, cracked and crusted, hanging from the iron trusses — a shiny green patent-leather pair from country star Ronnie Millsap over here, some over there held together with electrical tape, donated by actor Luke Perry after filming a bar scene for the movie "8 Seconds."

John Wayne's are somewhere up there, lost in time.

Also dangling are sweat-stained cowboy hats, ropes, farm implements, wagon wheels, saddles and an assortment of dust-laden paraphernalia.

The same tables are bolted to the same spots they have been since the 1940s.

The walls are lined with photos — Ernest Tubb, Johnny Bush, Jerry Jeff Walker, Asleep at the Wheel, Ricky Scaggs, Brooks & Dunn, Charlie Robison and plenty of John T. Floore, one with a caption reading: "This man caught a fish so big its picture weighed 38 lbs."

"By all accounts, he was an unbelievably colorful character," McKinney said.

Floore, a former manager of San Antonio's Majestic Theater, headed for the hills of Helotes to cash in on a way station between the Alamo City and Bandera, then as now known as a country music capital.

The brazen entrepreneur was immortalized in Willie Nelson's song "Shotgun Willie," and they were partners in a record label at one time. Nelson made Floore's his home base and still plays there regularly; the last stop was on Oct. 9.

"John T. was an amazing entrepreneur," said singer Geronimo Treviño III, who wrote "Dance Halls and Last Calls — A History of Texas Country Music. "He sold sheets to the Ku Klux Klan, according to that 'Shotgun Willie' song, when he was back in East Texas ."

"I enjoyed knowing John T," said Ray Price, recalling the first time he played Floore's. It was back in the mid-1950s, when he had several hits under his belt and "Crazy Arms" was about to forever embrace his career.

"John didn't know who I was so he said, 'I won't pay you any guarantee. I'll just give you the door,'" Price said. "So when I got there, there were about five state troopers directing traffic so many people had showed up. Must have been at least 2,000."

By 9 p.m., Floore's was out of cold beer, tamales and everything else, he said.

"When I came in I heard him coming out, and he said, 'I didn't know who Ray Price was before this, but by god I do now.'"

Price laughed, adding, "I played for John for years after that. But he never let me play for the door again."

Asleep at the Wheel bandleader Ray Benson didn't know Floore except to exchange pleasantries.

"John T. was a big, imposing kind of guy — 6-foot-6 and big ," Benson said. "He was the law around there, like an old padrón ."

The first time Benson played there was when the Wheel opened for Willie Nelson in 1974, and it was the first time he played with Nelson, too.

"It was the coolest place back then — still is. It's one of the coolest dance patios in all of South Texas ," Benson said. "It has character."

Part is the food — sausage, tamales and fresh-baked bread back then; part is the patio, which can hold several thousand; and part is the funky flavor.

"The signs are hilarious — 'Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may diet.' John T. had a hundred of those corny things, and they're still there," said Benson, who still plays at Floore's.

To Benson, the dance hall reflects the history of country music in Texas — from Western swing pioneers Bob Wills, J.R. Chatwell and Adolph Hofner to the countless bands that blended the South Texas sounds of country, Western, blues and Mexican, German and Czech polkas.

"Johnny Bush held court there," Benson said. "It was the place for the South Texas shuffle guys — Darrell McCall, Willie Nelson and others, and Ray Price was the king of it all.

"Gruene Hall might be the oldest dance hall, but Floore's was really the center of honky-tonk music in the 1960s and early 1970s."

One of those musical pioneers was Rusty Locke, who was manager and steel guitar player for the Texas Top Hands in the early 1950s when he gave John T. Floore the idea for building the patio.

The Top Hands, one of the longest running bands around and still in existence, had built a huge following in every town with a dance hall in South Texas .

"We'd been playing inside and needed more room because we'd been getting some big crowds, overflowing," said Locke, who turned 84 on Saturday.

"I got the idea playing at other patios at dance halls, like the Cotton Patch near Yorktown ," he said. "I went and talked to John and that's what happened.

"It turned out pretty good. But it was bad news in a way."

Two young men got into a fight at a dance the Top Hands played soon after the patio was finished.

"It just happened the sheriff was there that night and one of the guys got knocked down right at his feet," Locke said. "He told John he'd better check those IDs in the future because they were underage.

"The next Saturday night there was a parade of sheriff's department cars hauling people off down highway 16."

Floore's also was the scene of the most unusual barroom incident ever witnessed by Doyle Holly, who played bass with Buck Owens from 1963 to 1971.

Owens was making his first appearance at Floore's before a packed house in the mid 1960s when a woman came up on stage and put her hands on the steel guitar player's strings, halting the music. A red Mustang was blocking her car, and she asked the owner to move it.

Ten minutes later, Holly said, she came back and did the same thing, only a little angrier.

"She said, 'The red Ford Mustang blocked us in out front and we want the SOB moved. My husband is 6-foot-4 and we want it moved right now.'

"Being the smart aleck that I am, I stepped up to the microphone and said, 'If he's 6-foot-4, he can move that Mustang himself."

The woman took off her shoe and threw it at Holly, breaking a Lone Star Beer sign behind the stage.

The other shoe hit the drummer.

"It was nothing too serious," Holly said. "But it prompted people to start throwing bottles up at the stage — not viciously but out of fun. Everybody was a little intoxicated, and they were in a fun mood. Texans like to have fun that way.

"Buck didn't take it seriously, and we laughed about it and the crowd laughed about it."

The next time Owens played Floore's, however, there was chicken wire around the stage.

Holly, today a tour bus driver, returned to Floore's earlier this year with Steve Earle.

"The place looks the same as it did in the 1960s," he said. "Except there's no chicken wire now. I kind of miss that chicken wire."

Whenever someone says Floore's looks the same as it did a generation earlier, it's music to the ears of McKinney , the managing partner.

"Our goal is to embrace everything this place has ever done and expand on it," McKinney said. "We think of it as a great venue for great American music, from straight honky-tonk bands to roots music, whether it's blues, rock or soul."

To that end, Floore's has been booking top area, regional and national artists every weekend for the past year, taking the venerable venue to the next level with Jack Ingram's Real. American. Music. Festival, an all-day show on Labor Day weekend that featured 14 acts and will become an annual event.

Floore's also continues the longtime tradition of free family dances on Sunday evenings, which Frank and Lupe Hernandez rarely miss.

"We go there to dance all the time," said Hernandez, who retired from a window cleaning service he had. "They have good music and really nice people. It's a friendly place, and everybody knows each other."

The Hernandezes should know everyone — they've been regulars for 30 years, and he's had his birthday party at the Sunday dance for the past 10 years, celebrating his 70th on Oct. 26.

They also go on Friday and Saturday nights.

"We've seen Willie Nelson, Little Richard, Ray Price, Dwight Yoakam, Merle Haggard — all the big stars," Hernandez said.

"One thing is you get to see them pretty close. I've seen Willie in the Freeman Coliseum. You know it's Willie, but you can't really see him.

"And he gets down, like Ray Price and others, and signs autographs, lets people take pictures with him."

Hernandez also praises the local groups that play on Sundays, such as Nick Hernandez & Wild Horses and the Jimmy Cribb Band.

Geronimo Treviño broke into playing Floore's at the Sunday dances in the late 1980s, went on to headline shows and open for such legends as Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.

"I'll always have a special place in my heart for Floore's," Treviño said. "Once we played Floore's, we felt like we had arrived.

"The character of the hall made it intriguing to us, and we also enjoyed it because of the history. The people who'd played there were amazing to us, and we were trying to follow in their footsteps."

No one respects the history of Floore's and its role as a music destination in South Texas more than McKinney , 33, a graduate of Boerne High School and the University of Texas at San Antonio who attended countless shows there over the years.

"It's long hours and hard work, but I love working here. I feel like kind of a custodian, seeing Floore's through another period of time before passing it on to the next person.

"I hope Floore's looks the same 200 years from now. That's what this place should always be."

As for the vintage microphone, it will end up on display.

"We'll give it proper reverence in some fashion," McKinney said. "With a mike like that in Nashville , people would stand in line to pay $5 to have their picture taken singing on it."