Beaumont

Stuart Stadium was a ballpark located in Beaumont, TX and home to the Texas League Beaumont Exporters from 1929 to 1955 except for 1943-1945 when the... Texas League ceased operations during World War II. The Beaumont team was not always a good team, but they did have some years of success while at Stuart Stadium. The Exporters lost playoff for 1st half title in 1931, won the Texas League title the next year in 1932, lost in the first round in 1934, finished as runner-up in 1935 to the Oklahoma City Indians, won another Texas League title in 1938, finished as runner-up to the Houston Buffaloes in 1940, and finished as runner-up to the Shreveport Sports in 1942 before returning to mediocrity.
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Provost Umphrey Stadium is a 16,000-seat multi-purpose stadium in Beaumont, Texas. The stadium is located next to the Montagne Center on the campus... of Lamar University It is home to the Lamar Cardinals football team. Cardinal Stadium, as it was original known, was completed in 1964 for a cost of $1,000,000. The stadium was built as the home of the Lamar Cardinals football team. In 1989 the Lamar disbanded their football team. During the years between 1989 and 2009 the stadium hosted the university soccer team as well as the Ozen High School football team. In 2009 the university started renovation on the newly named Provost Umphrey stadium for the return of football in 2010. The original capacity of the stadium was 17,500, but to comply with federal regulations and add handicap accessibility, 1,500 seats were removed, bringing the current capacity to 16,000 seats. Provost Umphrey Stadium and the Lamar athletic complex were renovated for $30,000,000. The Stadium is currently home to one of the largest video boards in FCS football at 50' x 24'.
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Montagne Center is a 10,080-seat multi-purpose arena in Beaumont, Texas. It was built in 1984. It is home to the Lamar University Cardinals... basketball team. The area floor can host sporting events like basketball, volleyball, wrestling, boxing and martial arts tournaments. With stadium and floor seating, the Montagne Center is a perfect venue for hosting concert events. The arena floor can also be transformed into hosting graduation ceremonies, proms, dances, banquets and conferences. The Morgan Suites and Red Room are both sports suites that are housed in the Montagne. The Morgan suites face the football field and are priced at $25,000 a year. The Red Room is a university reception center for alumni and reunion events. The Red Room is unique because one side has windows that face the North end of the Football field while the other side faces the basketball court. On February 19th during halftime Billy Tubbs was honored by Lamar with the naming of the Montagne Center basketball court in his and his wifes honor.
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Ford Park is a multi-purpose Park, Arena, Exhibit Hall, Pavilion, Midway, and Field located on I-10 South in Beaumont, Texas. The Arena seats 9,737... people. It is the former home to the Southeast Texas Mavericks ABA franchise, Beaumont Drillers of the NIFL and the Texas Wildcatters of the East Coast Hockey League. The Arena also hosts concerts, rodeos, circuses, motor sports, ice shows and many other special events. Ford Exhibit Hall is a multi-purpose hall for exhibits, boat shows, and more. It has 83,000 feet of space. Ford Fields are 12 softball/baseball fields. Ford Midway is a 9-acre midway for fairs and carnivals, and other large outdoor events. It is the home of the South Texas State Fair. Ford Pavilion seats 18,000 people. Ford Pavilion is the home of Dog Jam, an annual rock music event. The park opened in 2003. There is also a RV Park on the site, the Gulf Coast RV Resort. In addition, there are eight meeting rooms and a regional visitors center.
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Larry Graham, Jr. is an American bass guitar player, both with the popular and influential psychedelic soul/funk band Sly and the Family Stone, and... as the founder and frontman of Graham Central Station. He is credited with the invention of the slapping technique, which radically expanded the tonal palette of the bass, although he himself refers to the technique as "Thumpin' and Pluckin'." Graham played bass in the highly successful and influential funk band Sly and the Family Stone from 1966 to 1972. It is said that he pioneered the art of slap-pop playing on the electric bass, in part to provide percussive and rhythmic elements in addition to the notes of the bass line when his mother's band lacked a drummer; the slap of the thumb being used to emulate a bass drum and the pop of the index or middle finger as a snare drum. This style has become archetypal of modern funk. Slap-pop playing couples a percussive thumb-slapping technique of the lower strings with an aggressive finger-snap of the higher strings, often in rhythmic alternation.
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Henry Haag “Harry” James was an actor and musician best known as a trumpeter who led a swing band during the Big Band Swing Era of the... 1930s and 1940s. He was especially known among musicians for his astonishing technical proficiency as well as his superior tone. Harry James was born in Albany, Georgia, the son of a bandleader of a traveling circus. By the age of 10 he was taking trumpet lessons from his father, who placed him on a strict daily practice schedule. Each day, James was given one page to learn from the Arban's book and was not allowed to pursue any other pastime until he had learned that particular page. In 1931 his family settled in Beaumont, Texas, where James began playing with local dance bands. In 1935 he joined the nationally popular Ben Pollack but at the start of 1937 left Pollack to join Benny Goodman's orchestra, where he stayed through 1938. He was nicknamed "The Hawk" early in his career for his ability to "sight-read." A common joke was that if a fly landed on his written music, Harry James would play it. His low range had a warmth associated with the cornet and even the flugelhorn, but he achieved this on the trumpet.
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George Glenn Jones is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage... to Tammy Wynette. Over the past 20 years, Jones has frequently been referred to as the greatest living country singer. Country music scholar Bill C. Malone writes, "For the two or three minutes consumed by a song, Jones immerses himself so completely in its lyrics, and in the mood it conveys, that the listener can scarcely avoid becoming similarly involved." Throughout his long career, Jones made headlines often as much for tales of his drinking, stormy relationships with women, and violent rages as for his prolific career of making records and touring. His wild lifestyle led to Jones missing many performances, earning him the nickname "No Show Jones." With the help of his fourth wife, Nancy, he has been sober for over 10 years. Jones has had more than 150 hits during his career, both as a solo artist and in duets with other artists. The shape of his nose and facial features have given Jones the nickname "The Possum." Jones said in an interview that he has chosen to tour only about 60 dates a year.
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John Dawson "Johnny" Winter III is an American blues guitarist, singer, and producer. Best known for his late 1960s and 1970s high-energy blues-rock... albums and live performances, Winter also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues legend Muddy Waters. Since his time with Waters, Johnny Winter has recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums and continues to tour extensively. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 74th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" He was born with albinism. Johnny Winter, along with his brother Edgar Winter, were nurtured at an early age by their parents in musical pursuits. Both he and his brother, who were born with albinism, began performing at an early age. When he was ten years old, Winter appeared on a local children's show, playing ukelele and singing Everly Brothers songs with his brother. His recording career began at the age of fifteen, when his band Johnny and the Jammers released "School Day Blues" on a Houston record label.
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Woodward Maurice Ritter , better known as Tex Ritter, was an American country music singer and movie actor popular from the mid-1930s into the 1960s,... and the patriarch of the Ritter family in acting . He is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. Ritter was born in Murvaul, Texas, the son of Martha Elizabeth and James Everett Ritter. He grew up on his family's farm in Panola County and attended grade school in Carthage. He attended South Park High School in Beaumont. After graduating with honors, he entered the University of Texas at Austin; he studied pre-law, majoring in government, political science and economics. An early pioneer of country music, Ritter soon became interested in show business. In 1928, he sang on KPRC-AM in Houston, a 30-minute show featuring cowboy songs. That same year, he moved to New York City and landed a job in the men's chorus of the Broadway show The New Moon . He appeared as cowboy Cord Elam in the Broadway production Green Grow the Lilacs , the basis for the musical Oklahoma!.
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James Charles "Jim" Lehrer is an American journalist and the executive editor and former news anchor for PBS NewsHour on PBS, known for his role as... a frequent debate moderator during elections. Lehrer is an author of non-fiction and fiction, drawing from his experiences and interests in history and politics. Lehrer was born in Wichita, Kansas, the son of Lois Catherine , a bank clerk, and Harry Frederick Lehrer, a bus station manager. He attended middle school in Beaumont, Texas, and graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School , where he was one of the three sports editors at the Jefferson Declaration. He also graduated from Victoria College in Texas and the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri. Lehrer joined the United States Marine Corps and attributes his service and travels with helping him to look past himself and feel a connection to the world that he would not have otherwise experienced. Lehrer began his career in journalism at The Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times-Herald, where he covered the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963.
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John Dawson "Johnny" Winter III is an American blues guitarist, singer, and producer. Best known for his late 1960s and 1970s high-energy blues-rock... albums and live performances, Winter also produced three Grammy Award-winning albums for blues legend Muddy Waters. Since his time with Waters, Johnny Winter has recorded several Grammy-nominated blues albums and continues to tour extensively. In 1988, he was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame and in 2003, he was ranked 74th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" He was born with albinism. Johnny Winter, along with his brother Edgar Winter, were nurtured at an early age by their parents in musical pursuits. Both he and his brother, who were born with albinism, began performing at an early age. When he was ten years old, Winter appeared on a local children's show, playing ukelele and singing Everly Brothers songs with his brother. His recording career began at the age of fifteen, when his band Johnny and the Jammers released "School Day Blues" on a Houston record label.
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Edgar Holland Winter is an American musician. He is famous for being a multi-instrumentalist. He is a highly skilled keyboardist, saxophonist and... percussionist. He often plays an instrument while singing. He was most successful in the 1970s with his band, The Edgar Winter Group, notably with their popular songs "Frankenstein" and "Free Ride". He has albinism. Winter was born to John Winter II and Edith Winter on December 28, 1946, in Beaumont, Texas. Both he and his brother Johnny have albinism, and both were required to take special education classes in high school. Winter states, "In school I had a lot of friends. I wore a lot of white shirts to, like, blend in I guess. No one really gave me a hard time about being albino or taking special education classes. Then again, I wasn't really popular." By the time Edgar Winter left his hometown of Beaumont, Texas, in the 1960s, he was already a proficient musician. A child prodigy who achieved international success early on, Edgar has found an audience in a number of major entertainment media, including music, film and television.
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Benjamin Isaac Broussard is an American former Major League Baseball first baseman. He is currently a musician. Broussard was drafted by the... Cincinnati Reds in the second round of the 1999 Major League Baseball Draft. During a 7-year baseball career, he played from 2002-2008 for the Cleveland Indians, Seattle Mariners, and the Texas Rangers. Broussard has released two full-length music albums. The first, his self titled album, was released in 2005. The second, Renovated, was released in 2009. He was also featured on the album, Oh Say Can You Sing?, a compilation of different Major League Baseball players singing their favorite songs. On that album Broussard sang U2's With or Without You. He is now a full-time musician. Broussard was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in the second round of the 1999 Major League Baseball Draft. He was a Pioneer League All-Star in his first professional season, winning the league batting crown with a .407 average. He was named Pioneer League Player of the Week for July 12 July 18 and in his first professional season he made the jump from Rookie-league to Double-A.
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L.Q. Jones is an American character actor and film director, known for his work in the films of Sam Peckinpah. Jones was born Justus Ellis McQueen... in Beaumont, Texas, the son of Jessie Paralee and Justice Ellis McQueen, who was a railroad worker. He made his film debut in 1955's Battle Cry, with Van Heflin, under his birth name. His character was named L.Q. Jones, and when it was suggested to him by film producers that he change his screen name for future pictures, he decided that the name of his debut character would be a memorable one. Jones appeared in numerous memorable films in the 1960s and 1970s. He became a member of Sam Peckinpah's stock company of actors, appearing in his Klondike television series , Ride the High Country , Major Dundee , The Wild Bunch , The Ballad of Cable Hogue , and Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid . He was frequently cast alongside his close friend, Strother Martin, most memorably in The Wild Bunch.
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Billie Jo Spears was an American country music singer. She reached the top-10 of the Country music charts five times between 1969 and 1977, her... biggest hit being "Blanket on the Ground", which, in 1975, became her only number one. She also had a large following in the United Kingdom with two of her singles reaching the pop top five. Spears was born in Beaumont, Texas, United States. She made her professional debut at age 13 at a country music concert in Houston, Texas. She cut her first single, called "Too Old For Toys, Too Young For Boys," while she was still a teenager. It was released by the independent record label, Abbot Records, under the name 'Billie Jean Moore'. She also performed on the Louisiana Hayride at 13. After graduating from high school, she sang in nightclubs and sought a record deal. Spears' early career was orchestrated by the country/rockabilly songwriter, Jack Rhodes. Working out of his makeshift recording studio, Rhodes took it upon himself to provide Spears with material and clout in her early years. Spears moved from Texas to Nashville, Tennessee in 1964.
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Barbara Lynn is an American rhythm and blues and electric blues guitarist and singer. She is best known for her R&B chart-topping hit, "You'll... Lose A Good Thing" . She played piano as a child, but switched to guitar. Inspired by blues artists Guitar Slim and Jimmy Reed, and pop acts Elvis Presley and Brenda Lee, she created an all-female band, Bobbie Lynn and Her Idols. Singer Joe Barry introduced Lynn to producer Huey P Meaux who ran SugarHill Recording Studios and several record labels in Houston. Her first single, "You'll Lose A Good Thing", was a number 1 US Billboard R&B chart hit and Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1962, and was later a country hit record for Freddy Fender. Soon Lynn was touring with such soul musicians as Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Dionne Warwick, Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, James Brown, Al Green, Carla Thomas, Marvin Gaye, Ike and Tina Turner, The Temptations, and B.B. King.
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