Carousel Lounge turns 60

Winsdor Park's circus-themed watering hole is Austin's oldest continuous live music venue

Cecil and Myrtle Meier opened the Carousel Lounge in 1963 after a visit to New Orleans. But they kept their day jobs.

Remember the first time you walked into the Carousel Lounge- it doesn’t matter the year- and wondered why it took so long? The hallucinogenic, circus-centric bar, which once had a giant elephant on the roof, was cool without having to let everyone know about it. But eventually everyone did.

What most don’t know is that the Carousel, which celebrates its 60th anniversary July 7, has hosted live music, continuously, for longer than any club in Austin, beating the Broken Spoke by a year. The Continental Club is older, opening in 1955, but it did not have live music for almost all of the ‘70s, when it was a windowless day drinker haven with a 7 a.m. happy hour.

The Carousel’s founders were Cecil and Myrtle Meier, a couple who grew up dancing at the SPJST (“some people just sit there”) Hall in Taylor. On a visit to New Orleans circa ‘61, they had drinks at the Carousel Lounge in the Hotel Monteleone and fantasized about opening their own one-ring circus in Austin. Their dream came true at 1110 E. 52nd near the freeway.

It was 1963 and another Carousel club in Dallas would soon be made infamous by its owner Jack Ruby. But that was a seedy burlesque joint. Austin’s Carousel was for older couples dancing to combos playing the music of Frank Sinatra, Glenn Miller, Patti Page and the like.

Their room wasn’t big enough for a rotating bar, like at the Monteleone, but the Meiers lined the walls with red and white circus canvas, which met at the ceiling to give an illusion that folks were dancing under a tent. But everybody smoked in that poorly ventilated space, so you went home smelling like an ashtray. Plus, a city inspector saw a fire hazard, so the canvas came down, replaced by painted murals depicting festive big top activity.

Cecil and Myrtle kept their day jobs, with him delivering bread for Butter Krust from 4 a.m. until about noon, and her working at an insurance office. Cecil would go right from his route to behind the bar, while Myrtle was the evening bartender. Even after it became legal for clubs to serve liquor by the drink in 1971, the Carousel has always served just beer and wine, plus setups.

Jay Clark flew Carousel customers to the moon, 7 nights a week, for over 30 years.

The Carousel’s chief competition early on was the Playboy Club on 53 1/2 Street near Airport, which featured the Velvetones, who did justice to Big Band standards with only five or six members. When the Playboy burned down in ‘67, the Velvetones hired on at the Carousel to play seven nights a week, but the grind of that schedule (for not great pay) made it hard to keep musicians, especially as popularity waned for this “music for squares” during that time of the cosmic cowboy. The Velvetones started shrinking until there was only one member, Jay Clark, who bought a four track recorder and dubbed in the sax and clarinet parts, then played along on his organ with programmed beats.

Jay was a self-contained swing band, an eccentric living jukebox, whose effervescent arrangements of timeless classics underlined the Carousel's surreal visual personality. As did the redheaded dancing bartender Stella Boes, who came to know the Meiers family when, as a volunteer for terminal cancer patients, she helped care for Cecil in his final months in 1988.

Canada native Stella loved her adopted country. Photo Chris Butler.

A Canadian whose parents immigrated from the Ukraine, the former Stella Timak came to Texas in 1957 as the bride of Giddings sheet rocker Elmer Boes. “Happiness is dancing” read her business card for lessons in two-step, polka, waltzes, Cotton-Eyed Joe and other dance styles. Stella was a trip, making her perfect for the Carousel, which gave the recent divorcee’ a new life at age 61.

Stella and Jay made quite a team for 10 years, until Clark had a stroke in ‘98 and was forced to retire. They ended up dying less than a year apart, the musician in 2006 at age 86. Boes made it to 80 before her dance ended in March 2007.

Meier’s daughter Nicki Mebane and husband Bob have owned the Carousel since 1988. That’s Yvette Evans behind the bar.

Blind since age 11, when a mishap took away his one good eye, Clark moved to Austin from McKinney in 1931 to attend the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. It was there that his passion for music was born.

After graduating in the ‘40s, Clark played saxophone, clarinet and keyboards in area big bands, especially Cecil Hogan and the Swingsters, which featured local WWII hero Hogan on guitar, backed by blind musicians Clark, organist Sid Fisher and clarinetist Hub Sutter. Jay had three kids to support so he ran the  concession stand in the basement of the Statesman for several years before pursuing music full time.

The Carousel hit a rough patch in the ‘80s when the original clientele dwindled and was not replaced. The turnaround came when the Meiers’ daughter Nicki Mebane hired a pair of popular UT co-eds as bartenders after she inherited the club in ‘88. The gregarious Boes, dressed in red, white, and blue, pumped up the character as the young women’s word-of-mouth drew the college crowd to “this crazy circus bar.” It became a secret hangout for kids in the know.

The Butthole Surfers/ Ministry crowd was next, mesmerized by Clark’s quirky sound, and how the decorations heightened a psilocybin high. In the late ‘90s, the club became part of the swing revival, with such acts as Merchants of Venus, Jive Bombers, Electrolux and Rocket 69 bringing in Gen X jitterbuggers and David Lynch fans.

These days, the Carousel books mainly rock bands with a high quotient of moonlighting lawyers and dentists. There’s rarely a cover charge, so the bands play for tips. Nobody makes any money, but everyone has a lot of fun.

Next Friday’s 60th anniversary show kicks off at 3 p.m. with Thunderpeople. The club’s most popular band Mad Cowboys play from 7-9 p.m. There will be food trucks, so stop by and stay awhile. The party goes on ‘til midnight, and the circus never ends.