Why is Fort Worth called “Funky Town”? It spread from radio to the TCU Horned Frogs
(Updated from a column first published Sept. 20, 2017.)
What makes Fort Worth “Funky Town?”
Now on a line of TCU Horned Frogs T-shirts, the nickname started with a song nearly 40 years ago.
And credit goes to a top-ranked local soul radio station — “K-104.”
When the 1980 disco-funk song “Funkytown” was still a 1980s hit, listeners to KKDA/104.5 FM and KKDA/730 AM grew up hearing the station refer to “Funky Town Fort Worth.”
The song is catchy. Minnesota songwriter Steven Greenberg wrote about longing for “a town that’s right for me ... to keep me movin’, keep me groovin’ .... Won’t you take me to Funkytown?”
In 1986, KKDA started promoting a weekly series of blues concerts in Fort Worth, inviting listeners from across North Texas to come to “Fort Party Worth” and “Funky Town.”
A nickname was born.
“That’s where it started,” 36-year “Soul 73” KKDA morning host Willis “Da Crooner” Johnson said in a 2017 interview.
The concerts lasted weekly for nine years until 1995, first in a blues club on Camp Bowie Boulevard and then in another on Barden Street.
In 1989, a Texas Monthly article included a passing line comparing “tony Dallas to funky Fort Worth.”
Then, in 1990, a UPI review of Fort Worth singer Delbert McClinton’s album referred to his “Fort Worth funkiness.”
By 1997, the term had crossed into hip-hop. An online commenter in a discussion group wrote: “I was born and raised in Ft. Worth, Tx. (aka Funkytown) ... as a true product of hip-hop culture.”
The nickname came to the Southside in the 2000s, when new shops on West Magnolia Avenue wanted a rallying slogan for unique local culture similar to “Keep Austin Weird,” created in 2000 by the late Austin librarian and Fort Worth native “Red” Wassenich.
“Outside of Austin, Fort Worth has always been one of the strangest cities I can think of,” said Wassenich, the son of a Texas Christian University professor.
In 2003, the late filmmaker Andrew Hill used the “Funky Town” slogan to run for mayor and called for urgent city intervention to address any “TLF” — “tragic lack of funk.” (Hill also promised to hire more “funky, quirky” city employees.)
By 2011, Funky Town emerged in a new T-shirt message by entrepreneur James Zametz: “Keep Fort Worth Funky.”
“It’s a take on ‘Keep Austin Weird,’ because most people know what that means,” he emailed in 2017.
“Keep the history and culture of our city intact. Help keep local arts local and help it grow, including music. … We would hope for our fans to wake up every morning thinking how they can support local [people and businesses] throughout the day.”
State Sen. Royce West, a Dallas lawyer and graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington, has at times represented both Dallas and Tarrant counties in the Texas Legislature.
The nickname “funky town” stuck for Fort Worth’s nightlife, he said.
“Though it has the appearance of being a conservative city, the nightlife is very vibrant — it can be very funky,” he said, naming the city jazz fame for the much-missed Caravan of Dreams jazz club downtown and the current Scat Jazz Lounge.
In a travel story about Magnolia Avenue in the Austin American-Statesman, the line was expanded.
It read:
“Keep Austin weird. Keep Fort Worth funky. And keep Dallas 30 miles away.”