The Dallas beginnings of Showco

Angus Wynne III, Jack Calmes, and a growing live-music scene

Before Showco became known for touring sound, its name belonged to a Dallas concert-promotion and talent-booking business built by Angus Wynne III and Jack Calmes.

Both had experience organizing music events while in college. Their partnership grew through parties and concert promotions, bringing performers and audiences together in a city becoming an important stop for live music. They established a booking and promotion office in the Quadrangle, and Wynne is credited with naming the venture Showco.

Soul City and the musicians around Showco

In 1967, Wynne and Calmes opened Soul City on Greenville Avenue. The club brought national rhythm-and-blues performers into an intimate Dallas setting and provided a meeting place for the musicians and working relationships surrounding Showco.

Calmes played guitar in the Soul Society, the club’s house band. Rusty Brutsche played bass, and David Alley sang and played trumpet. In Jim Bornhorst’s later account, Brutsche also built the club’s sound system. These connections help explain how musicians and technical people already knew one another before Showco’s touring sound business took shape.

Wynne and Calmes sold their interest in Soul City in 1968. Their promotion work continued toward a much larger undertaking.

The Texas International Pop Festival

Over Labor Day weekend in 1969, Wynne, Calmes, and Atlanta promoter Alex Cooley brought the Texas International Pop Festival to Lewisville. The gathering put North Texas within the emerging festival movement and brought together artists including Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, and B.B. King. A July 24, 1969 letter concerning Interpop Superfest, Inc., addressed to Cooley care of Showco at 225 The Quadrangle, 2800 Routh Street, Dallas, places his festival organization at Showco’s office during planning.

Its importance to Showco’s history lies in both the opportunity and the difficulty it revealed. Large audiences wanted live music on a new scale. Producing those events required dependable sound, extensive organization, and financial resources that could be put at considerable risk.

Bill Hanley supplied the festival sound system. In Bornhorst’s recollection, seeing that equipment at work helped convince the future Showco sound-company team that touring systems could be made more practical and reliable.

The festival lost money, bringing the original promoting venture to a turning point. Wynne and Calmes subsequently pursued different business paths.

A new direction in 1970

Calmes carried the Showco name into a new sound-focused venture with Rusty Brutsche and Jack Maxson in 1970. David Alley also became an important early principal.

The promotion years supplied relationships, musical experience, and lessons about producing live events. The next chapter would focus on building the equipment and organization that could travel with the performers.

Related pages: Meet Angus Wynne III · Meet Jack Calmes · Continue to 1970–1974

Sources: Jim Bornhorst’s 2018 presentation; Angus Wynne’s In the Studio interview introduction. See also the Dallas Morning News profile and original archive material below.