Lloyd Thaxton

Lloyd Thaxton (May 31, 1927 – October 5, 2008) was an American writer, television producer, director, and television host best known for his syndicated pop music television program of the 1960s, The Lloyd Thaxton Show, which began as a local Los Angeles program on KCOP in 1961.

The son of a newspaperman, Thaxton was born in Memphis, Tennessee. On graduating from high school, Thaxton enlisted in the Navy, "barely hours" before he would have been drafted.

Thaxton came to Los Angeles from Toledo, Ohio, in 1957, becoming, in his words, a "freelance announcer" and host of the highly rated Leave It To Lloyd talk show on KHJ-TV. He casually coined the term "freelance announcer" since his work in commercials was most active toward the end of the era of live television; Thaxton would go from venue to venue performing the commercials live, since videotape was not in wide use then. Many of his commercials for KHJ and KNXT were for the now-defunct Southern California discount chain, White Front. His career at KCOP began in 1958 both as a commercial announcer and as announcer for The June Levant Show, an afternoon talk show starring the wife of celebrated pianist Oscar Levant. This led to his own afternoon show, Lloyd Thaxton’s Record Shop, in 1959. The program attracted quite a number of big-name guests, some of whom stopped by to promote their latest record and many of whom simply stopped by for the chance to chat with Thaxton. Among those early guests were Fred Astaire, Jerry Lewis, Johnny Green and Dimitri Tiomkin.

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