The first time I saw Conway Twitty

When I first started goin', it was a pretty scary place, totally the hippie in redneck country deal.

The first time I saw Conway Twitty was before I was a DJ on WXPN radio otherwise I would’ve tried to interview him. It was at this legendary now gone place called Sunset Park, about 50 miles south of here down along the Maryland/Delaware border. It was a real old time country music park, with shows only on Sundays. All the biggest stars played there like Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Patsy Cline, George Jones, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton.

What I never knew until recently was that Hank Williams had played there and a bootleg was floating around of Hank Williams playing there (Leon Kagarises, the sound engineer at Sunset Park, who turned out to have a huge collection of both country music, 78s and many, if not all of the, shows and colour photographs from Sunset Park over the years):

When I first started going to Sunset Park in the '70s, it was real cheap to get in but got progressively more expensive as time went on. Philly sucked for country, so every summer I’d call up and ask them to send me their schedule. It had a tiny amusement park with a merry go round and the world's smallest ferris wheel, and a food stand with great burgers. There was a stage with wooden benches. A lot of people brought folding lawn chairs to put over the benches.

Sunset Park ‘70s

I interviewed George Jones on his bus there. I forget who the first person I saw there was. It might have been Jimmy Martin. He was a total lunatic onstage. Just damn crazy. Ola Belle Reed and friends opened up all the shows and there usually was another act as well. Del McCoury opened a lot of shows I saw there. I even saw the Osborne Brothers there.