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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.
In 1961 The Lloyd Thaxton Show (sometimes known as "The Lloyd Thaxton Hop") debuted on KCOP as an hour-long presentation from 5 to 6 p.m. The format, much along the lines of American Bandstand, featured local high school students dancing on the soundstage to the latest records. The show was almost totally unscripted and spontaneous. Thaxton's description of the idea: “No one told me what I had to do. I was producing it myself. I was writing it myself.” Thaxton frequently clowned around on stage to the music, lip-synching the vocals and accompanying the records on guitar or piano. One favorite recurring skit had the costumed Thaxton on his knees, impersonating painter Toulouse-Lautrec, while lip-synching a current song. He also occasionally "performed" on an odd contraption made from a tennis racket and a bow and arrow that roughly looked like a guitar and "play-synked" popular early-1960s instrumental tunes like "Scratchy" by Travis Wammack and various The Ventures and Link Wray guitar songs. The Lloyd Thaxton Show, with its mix of new music and comedy skits, immediately shot to Number One in the time period, with a viewership of at least 350,000 homes, including those on the East Coast. Many leading rock 'n' roll acts of the time, like The Byrds, Sonny & Cher, The Kinks, The Bobby Fuller Four, The Challengers and others appeared on the program. Thaxton would end each show by saying, "I'm Lloyd Thaxton," followed by the teen audience shouting, "so what," whereupon the Bill Black Combo instrumental of the same name would play.
