Texas Venue Directory
Longhorn Ballroom
Historic ballroom and concert venue · Dallas
Restored Dallas landmark presenting concerts and special events in a historic ballroom setting.
About this room
Dallas millionaire O.L. Nelms built this room in 1950 for his friend Bob Wills, and it opened as Bob Wills' Ranch House with stables out back for the Texas Playboys' horses. Wills was financially ruined out of it within two years. Jack Ruby took over the Ranch House in 1952, eleven years before he shot Lee Harvey Oswald, and did the booking. Dewey Groom bought it in 1958 and renamed it the Longhorn Ballroom. Over the next seventy years the stage held Bob Wills, Nat King Cole, James Brown, Otis Redding, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Selena, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Sex Pistols. It was stripped and abandoned by the 2010s, landed on Preservation Dallas's most-endangered list, and reopened after a restoration in the 2020s.
History sources checked August 29, 2026.
Things you may not know
- Bob Wills rode his horse across the dance floor. The horse was named Punkin and wore rubber shoes for it. The original barn where band members stabled their horses is still on the property. Source
- The building sitting outside the Dallas city limits was the point. Because it was past the line, Jack Ruby could book around the city's Jim Crow ordinances, which is how Nat King Cole played to a mixed-race audience there in 1954. Source
- There is a bullet hole in a back door, from a husband who fired into the green room while his wife was in it keeping a performer company. Source
- A life-size fiberglass statue in the parking lot has two bullet holes in its abdomen. A later owner left the statues up as relics of a less careful era but painted over the sign next to them at his daughter's urging. Source
- Asleep at the Wheel learned Bob Wills had died while parked outside in their bus on May 13, 1975, when a reporter knocked on the door. They played the show anyway. Source
- The Sex Pistols played here on January 10, 1978, one of only about seven US shows the band ever performed. Tickets were $3.50. Source
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