Herb Henson

Herb Henson (May 17, 1925—November 26, 1963), known as Cousin Herb, was a country music performer and television host on KERO-TV, channel 10 (now 23) in Bakersfield, California. He is the first cousin once removed of musician Jeff Tweedy.

Despite releasing only a small clutch of recordings, Cousin Herb Henson was a pivotal figure in the development of country music's Bakersfield sound—his weekday television variety program, The Trading Post, was a showcase for acts including Buck Owens, Spade Cooley and Merle Haggard, the latter dubbing Henson "the Ralph Emery of Bakersfield."

Born in East St. Louis, IL, on May 17, 1925, Henson was a self-taught pianist and sometimes comedian who arrived in California via Union Pacific railcar sometime in the mid-1940s. After picking cotton in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, he landed a job making door-to-door laundry pickups for a company operating out of the Fresno area.

Bandleader Bill Woods convinced Henson to relocate to Bakersfield in 1946, where he worked at local radio station KERO and occasionally performed at area honky tonks such as the now-legendary Clover Club and the Blackboard. In mid-1953, KERO-TV offered him his own weekday broadcast, and The Cousin Herb Henson Trading Post TV Show premiered in September, appearing each afternoon from 5:00 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. Originally co-starring Woods, Billy Mize, and members of the Clover Club house band (including Buck Owens' estranged wife Bonnie), the program's cast would later boast such ace musicians as Al Brumley, Roy Nichols, and Dallas Frazier, and its sprawling list of guest stars featured the likes of Gene Autry, Bob Wills, Johnny Cash, Ernest Tubb, Tex Ritter, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Merle Travis, and Lefty Frizzell. (Even a ten-year-old Barbara Mandrell made her television debut on the show's stage.)

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