The director of the Greater Boise Auditorium District recently was quoted as saying that its purchase of the Mardi Gras Ballroom was “a fun opportunity” to stimulate transformational growth.
Nothing was said about the fun the old ballroom brought to generations of Idahoans.
The longtime Boise icon, located at 615 S. Ninth Street, was built in 1927 as an open air pavilion. Orson and Lydia Merrill bought it in 1958 and ran it briefly as a skating rink before converting it to a ballroom and changing the name from Riverside Pavilion to the name we know it as today. They thought Mardi Gras Ballroom sounded more festive than Riverside Pavilion.’
And festive it was. Big name acts that performed there through the years included, among others, the Glen Miller Orchestra, Bobby Vee, Buddy Rich, the Ventures, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter, Leon Russell, Carole King, Muddy Waters, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Ice T, REM, Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker.
The Mardi Gras also was a popular venue for dances with music by local bands: Gib Hochstrasser and the Kings of Swing, Dick Cates and the Chessmen, the Fabulous Chancellors and many more.
Few of those who performed on the Mardi Gras stage could equal Cates as a vocalist. He was easily one of the best singers I’ve ever heard, big names included. Roy Orbison had nothing on Dick Cates.
I went to the Mardi Gras to see Johnny and Edgar Winter, Leon Russell and Buddy Guy. It was so jam-packed for Buddy Guy that it took almost half an hour to squeeze through the crowd from the back of the ballroom to the stage. I never knew what the official capacity of the Mardi Gras was, but rumor had it that there were 1,200 people there that night. The fire marshal couldn’t have been pleased.
The ballroom was a favored haunt of musicians because it had great acoustics. Live, but no reverberation or echo. Rich, widely considered to be one of the greatest drummers ever, mentioned the Mardi Gras’ acoustics as a guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. He said it had the best acoustics of anyplace he’d ever played.
Vying with the acoustics for the ballroom’s greatest asset was its 3,000 square-foot dance floor. It was made of hard rock maple over celotex (high-performance insulation boards).
The Merrills installed the dance floor themselves and were rightly proud of it. Lydia said it was the best dance floor in town, and Orson was forever cleaning and polishing it.
My group, the Mystics, played at the Mardi Gras a number of times. I honestly don’t know what the nightly rent was. When we hosted our own dances rather than being hired to play there, the Merrills never charged us. They may have done the same for other local bands. They were good-hearted that way.
The venerable ballroom was the setting for hundreds if not thousands of dances. A big part of the reason for that, according to Lana McCullough, the Merrills’ daughter, was that Lydia firmly believed in providing wholesome entertainment for young people.
“My mom always thought that if they were dancing, they wouldn’t get into trouble,” McCullough once told me.
Lydia was a big part of why the ballroom ran so smoothly and was a part of Boise’s social scene for more than half a century. No matter what time of day or night you happened to go there, she always seemed to be there.
“She was the one who took the tickets and counted the money,” her daughter, Lana McCullough, said. “And she loved to dance. That’s what she always wanted to do.”
Lydia, incidentally, had a goal of living to be 110. She didn’t miss it by much, dying in 2022 at age106. She was a sweet lady. Her passing was mourned by virtually all of the many musicians who played at the ballroom she and Orson so obviously loved.
Orson was a bit of a character. He loved to chat up band members when they were setting up or practicing. One of his stock phrases: “Even I know that, and I’m not bright.”
Few if any of those who heard him say that believed it. He was bright and then some.
An auditorium district feasibility study for an area that includes the Mardi Gras site proposes a 100,000 square-foot exhibition hall, a multi-use event center and an indoor sports facility as possible uses for the land.
The ballroom, obviously, would have to be torn down to make way for whatever the new development proves to be.
Sad for those who loved it, but inevitable.
It would be great if some part of the new development included a mention of the site’s former use. A Mardi Gras Room, perhaps. Or at the very least, a plaque with images of Orson and Lydia and a brief summary of their Mardi Gras history.
They and the ballroom they loved deserve to be remembered.
Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.
Tim Woodward 