Uniquely is a Fresno Bee series that covers the moments, landmarks and personalities that define what makes living in the Fresno area so special.
A decade or more before Bakersfield became the spiritual home for country music in the Central Valley of California, there was the Big Fresno Barn.
The converted dance hall was situated on a rural part of West Shields Avenue that, even now, might be considered the outskirts of town. But from the 1940s well into the 1960s, the venue also known as “Nashville West” was a mainstay for western swing and what would become honky tonk and country music.
“It had no air conditioning, something to be considered with Fresno’s temperatures typically ranging in the 100s during the summer,” Dave Stogner wrote of the barn in a chronicle of his life titled “Only a Memory Away.”
“But the side windows could be dropped down about three feet to circulate the air.”
Stogner, who in 2021 was inducted into the first class of the Valley Music Hall of Fame, booked bands and managed the venue during its heyday. The barn had a “genuine hardwood dance floor that was one of the best in California” and “plenty of seating all the way around the place with bench seats and chairs along the walls, and booths and tables,” Stonger wrote.
“The bandstand was built in the center of the south wall with stairs to the side of it. The offices and restrooms were on the east wall near the main entrance. There was one small dressing room down a short hallway on the east side.”
That eventually become a beer room. The owner had a home behind the barn and provided space for entertainers to use as a dressing room.
“There was a bar area on the north wall. The ceiling was just what you’d expect inside an old wooden barn. It had large wood rafters, and big space heaters were spread out in them to heat the place in the winter.”
During its heyday, you could catch a bus from downtown Fresno out the barn for its Saturday nights dances.
It would leave at 9 p.m., return at 1 a.m. and cost $.25 for the round trip.
Stogner’s band, The Western Rhythmaires, played often and were popular. They set a record with a crowd of nearly 2,500 on New Year’s Eve 1956.
Who played at the Big Fresno Barn?
But it the venue drew any number of country music legends.
Buck Owens, who pioneered the Bakersfield sound, played at the barn at least twice month from 1960 until 1964. According to a story in The Fresno Bee following his death in 2006, it was during a break at a concert at the barn that Owens first heard a demo version of “Act Naturally.”
The song would become one of Owens’ biggest hits.
Side note: Songwriters Johnny Russell and Voni Morrison were based in Fresno in the 1960s.
Another Bakersfield icon, Merle Haggard during a 1990 concert at Selland Arena downtown claimed that he had played Fresno more than any other town. He was quoted in The Bee review at the time: “I once played 50 straight weeks at the Fresno barn.”
Johnny Cash played his first Fresno gig at the barn in 1957. He was an opening act for country superstar Bob Wills. When Cash returned 15 years later, he was headlining at Selland.
The barn continued to be used, though with less frequency, into the 1980s, when it was eventually closed and left mostly abandoned. It did serve as an auction house for a time.
It has sat empty since it was sold in the early 2000s. At some point, the memorabilia from the venue’s golden days (including a vintage microphone and a hand-painted sign that sat near the ticket booth) were sold off.
The barn’s current owner says there had been thought of trying to restore the place for some kind of public use. But years of neglect, coupled with severe damage caused by recent storms, has taken its toll and the building is now beyond the point of restoration.
But the Big Fresno Barn can still seen.
The long white building is set back from an empty dirt field. Sections of the roof are missing and a large portion of the building appear to have collapsed in on itself.
The owners are working to empty out whatever contents are left inside. Then, they will salvage the wood and take bids to have the rest of the barn razed.
“It has to come down.”
Bob Wills Triple B Ranch
This isn’t the first time a piece of Fresno’s county music legacy has been lost to time and neglect.
In 2013, the last remaining structure on Bob Wills’ famed Triple B Ranch came under threat of demolition by Granville, which owned the land at Clinton and Armstrong avenues.
Wills was the original country music mega-star, who at the height of his career made more than $1 million a year touring for MCA Records. His song “San Antonio Rose” sold 1 million records in 1940.
From 1945 to 1948, he lived on the 80-acre ranch, which served as home base for his band as it did a regular radio show on KMJ and traveled to gigs up and down the Valley, including at the Big Fresno Barn.
A fan tried to save from house from demolition. He started a campaign to have it relocated to Prather, where it would become the centerpeice of a Bob Wills Ranch House Museum. While the home was moved, momentum to have it restored never seemed to have materialized. A fundraising campaign at the time raised less than $500 of its $50,000 goal.
Its current condition is unclear.
