ABOUT Lincoln Jamboree

On June 6, 1959, Joel Ray purchased the Lincoln Village Restaurant and adjacent property. He wasn’t looking to run a restaurant as much he was interested in the buying the land in hopes of building of his own theater. During these years the restaurant was open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For 14 years, the doors were never locked. The first Lincoln Jamboree theater was built on the adjacent restaurant property and opened for the first time on Saturday, December 2, 1961. The building held 700 people. The Lincoln Jamboree went from being a little show downtown on Saturday nights to a statewide entertainment venue. The new building literally made the show explode. People everywhere were talking about the Jamboree as the place to be on Saturday nights.

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Besides being the proprietor of two businesses now, the Lincoln Jamboree and Joel Ray’s Lincoln Village Restaurant, Joel Ray remained working as disc jockey at WTCO for 2 years and then WLOC for 8 years. Joel Ray also had another dream he wanted to fulfill – becoming a pilot. He began training in 1964 and obtained his pilot license on January 12, 1965. The sky was the limit. “If the weather was good, I flew at least 4 times a week,” Sprowls recalled.

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The Jamboree was a huge success by the mid-1960s, selling out every Saturday night, but over the life of the Jamboree, there have certaintly been brief pauses due to natural and medical tragedies. After a show on a stormy Saturday night in 1968, Donald “Boogie” Sherrard lingered around on stage to pick on his steel guitar. He yelled for Joel Ray and said he smelled something odd. Boogie and Joel Ray, both cigarette smokers at the time, decided it must be a cigarette butt in an ashtray somewhere. Little did they know that during the storm, lightning had struck the attic. Sherrard and Joel Ray both went home, but just a few hours later they would learn that the building was engulfed in flames and was a total loss. Fans worried, could this be the end of their favorite Saturday night show place? However, Joel Ray knew that the show had to go on. That Monday morning after the fire, Joel Ray called Louisville Tent Company. They informed him they had a tent but it leaked. That wouldn’t work. Still not ready to throw in the towel, Sprowls located a tent company in Chattanooga, TN. The company had a tent that was big enough to accommodate a large crowd but thought it was too windy to bring to Kentucky and leave for the summer. Joel Ray begged the company to rent him the tent. The company finally relented provided that Joel Ray would use chains so secure instead of rope and would have $500 cash waiting when they pulled in the driveway. Joel Ray immediately replied, “Load it up and get rolling here now.” School was out so the local Boy Scout troop brought chairs from the local schools. The Jamboree never missed a Saturday night in 3 months. 

During the 1970s, besides preparing for the show on Saturday night, Joel Ray also hosted a live radio broadcast for an hour every Saturday afternoon on then local station WLCB. Naomi Gardner recalls turning the radio on and listening to Joel Ray’s radio show as she got dressed for work that night. “He played the best of the best records at the time. Everyone that could pick up the station tuned in,” Gardner recalled. “By the time the radio show ended each Saturday, I was dressed and headed out to go work for the guy I had just listened to for the last hour on the radio, Joel Ray Sprowls,” recalled Gardner. In 1971, Joel Ray started the annual Easter Egg Hunt. That year he had a co-sponsor, radio station WINN, that advertised the event commercial breaks for two weeks. 5,000 people attended the first egg hunt, and the tradition carried on for 30 years. Joel Ray added events such as the Easter Egg Hunt, the annual pig roast and the flea market to draw every type of person to the Jamboree. By the early 70s, Joel Ray had expanded the Jamboree’s front by adding a museum of costumes and memorabilia of the stars of country music. A gift shop selling Jamboree souvenirs was added.

 

After Elvis died in 1977, Joel Ray added a theater room addition to the restaurant. People would then come from the Jamboree show, the restaurant, and would buy tickets for special Elvis tribute shows. Joel Ray even showed old western movies. In those days after the show was over, people didn’t just leave and go home. They congregated at the restaurant, visited and drank coffee. Many Saturday nights Joel Ray provided talent for the restaurant customers to listen to after the show. There was entertainment in every direction. The Jamboree continued to sell out in the 80s. Fans young and old eagerly waited for the Saturday night shows.

Joel Ray endured a series of health crises which began in 1998 when he suffered the first of three strokes. In 2002, doctors found an aneurism that needed immediate removal. Joel Ray had the surgery and was off the show a few weeks. Ronnie Benningfield and Ricky Puckett managed and emceed the show until Sprowls once again made it back to the stage only a few weeks later. In 2008, Joel Ray suffered another light stroke, but 2009 would be the worst stroke of the three. Sprowls was hospitalized for this stroke and treated with physical and speech therapy to learn to walk and talk again. People speculated that Joel Ray would never return to the stage, but this Man of Steel proved them wrong once again. On January 16, 2010, he returned to the stage. The first few weeks back, Joel Ray emceed the first half of the show and turned it over to Ronnie Benningfield and Mike Ash, who kept the show running while Joel Ray was recovering. Sprowls continue to front and emcee the Lincoln Jamboree until shortly before his death, December 5, 2020, at the grand age of 93.

 

Forbes magazine deemed Joel Ray Sprowls the Cal Ripken of the music industry.