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Famous or well-known people who have called Shreveport-Bossier home

dimebag1980

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dimebag1980 Metropolis

dimebag1980

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Okay, I was bored so I decided to do something different. With the help of my own knowledge and Wikipedia, I have been able to compile the most comprehensive list I've ever seen of famous or well-known people who have lived in Shreveport-Bossier at some point in their lives. Some of these people were born in Shreveport but went on to achieve fame and fortune in other parts of the country, some moved here and began their careers here, and others have made their permanent homes here and have also made this their final resting place.

Enjoy... and if you have anything or anyone that I may have missed, please add it to this list!

Professional Athletes

Terry Bradshaw - professional football player, most notably with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Born in Shreveport in 1948 but currently resides in Dallas, Texas.

Robert Parish - professional basketball player, most noptably with the Boston Celtics. Born in Shreveport in 1953 where he played for Woodlawn High School. Played his final season of professional basketball with the Chicago Bulls in 1997.

Karl Malone - professional basketball player. Born in Bernice, LA, in 1963. Malone played basketball for Louisiana Tech and then the Utah Jazz and the Los Angeles Lakers. He is currently involved in the Shreveport-Bossier area as a partner in StageWorks, a movie production facility in downtown Shreveport.

Joe Ferguson - professional football player, most notably for the Buffalo Bills. Born in Shreveport in 1950. Before moving to Ruston, where he currently resides, he was the head football coach for Captain Shreve High School in Shreveport for many years.

Hal Sutton - professional golfer with the PGA. Born in Shreveport in 1958 and currently resides in Shreveport after living in Bossier City for a few years. Hal Sutton is still an active PGA golfer today.

David Toms - professiona golfer with the PGA. Born in Monroe, Louisiana, in 1967 but currently residing in the Shreveport-Bossier area and is still an active PGA golfer.

Musicians

Elvis Presley - country music LEGEND, Louisiana Hayride performer. Born in East Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1935. Turned down by the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, Elvis became a member of the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport in 1954 and lived in this area off and on during his time on the Hayride. The Louisiana Hayride was the event responsible for jump-starting Elvis' musical fame.

James Burton - guitarist, most notably for Elvis Presley. Born in Minden, an eastern suburb of Shreveport, in 1939, but moved to Shreveport with his family in 1949. James Burton resides in Shreveport to this day.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd - blues musician and guitarist. Born in Shreveport in 1977. His first break in the world of music came when he was invited onstage by Stevie Ray Vaughn and New Orleans artist Brian Lee... at the young age of 13.

Hank Williams, Sr. - country music singer. Born in Georgiana, Alabama, in 1923. Lived in Shreveport while a member of the Louisiana Hayride. Died in 1953 at the tender age of 19 years old. He was discovered unresponsive by his 17-year-old chauffer after having been injected with B12 and morphine and drinking a bottle of whiskey.

Hank Williams, Jr. - country music singer. Born in Shreveport in 1949 and raised in Bossier City by his mother, Audrey, after his father's untimely death.

Kix Brooks - country music singer, most notably of the country duo Brooks & Dunn. Born in Shreveport in 1955.

Johnny Horton - country music singer, Louisiana Hayride performer. Not born in Shreveport, but lived here throughout the 1950s, until his untimely death in 1960. I'm proud to say this legend is buried in Haughton, Louisiana, the Shreveport-Bossier suburb I currently live in.

David Houston - country music singer. Born in Bossier City in 1938, where he lived until his death in 1993.

Tillman Franks - songwriter and manager. Born in 1920 in Stamps, Arkansas, but moved to the Shreveport suburb of Cedar Grove at age 2. Currently resides in Shreveport.

Claude King - country music singer, Louisiana Hayride perfromer. Born in Keithville, just south of Shreveport, in 1923. Currently residing in Shreveport at the age of 83.

Dale Hawkins - a rock-n-roll pioneer, best-known for writing the song Susie Q. Born in Goldmine, Louisiana in 1936, he got his start while playing clubs in Shreveport.

Jim Reeves - country music singer. Born in Galloway, Texas in 1923 and died near Nashville, Tennessee in 1964, while piloting a small airplane. Reeves is memorialized at the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in Carthage, Texas. His big break in the music industry came when he was a disc jockey for KWKH radio station in Shreveport. KWKH is still in existence today.

Huddie Ledbetter - folk and blues musician. Born in Mooringsport (just north of Shreveport) in 1885, and died in New York City in 1949. He is currently buried near Blanchard, Louisiana, just outside of Shreveport. Ledbetter, or "Leadbelly" as he's more commonly known, is memorialized by a statue on a sidewalk in downtown Shreveport and with a star on the Shreveport Walk of Stars. The Shreveport neighborhood known as Ledbetter Heights was named for him.

Van Cliburn - pianist. Born in Shreveport in 1934, Cliburn has had a prestigious career as a pianist, and achieved worldwide recognition at the tender age of 23. Clibrun has a street named after him in Keller, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth.

Other

Johnnie Cochran - attorney. Best known as the legal defense in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Born in Shreveport in 1937, died in Los Angeles, California, in 2005.

Wolfman Jack - world-famous disc jockey. Born in (unknown) in 1939. Wolfman Jack, whose real name is Bob Smith, began his radio career on KCIJ-AM, a daytime radio station in Shreveport.

George Carlin - comedian, actor, and author. Born in New York City in 1937. Carlin's early years as a radar technician in the United States Air Force put him at Barksdale Air Force Base, near Shreveport, where he would ultimately be discharged from the Air Force in 1957. Shortly thereafter, at the tender age of 18, he became a disc jockey for KJOE, a Shreveport-based radio station. During his time as a disc jockey in Shreveport, Carlin and a fellow disc jockey formed a comedy routine and started working the club circuit. This kick-started what would ultimately become a legendary career in comedy for Carlin.

William Joyce - children's author, artist. Born in Shreveport in 1957, Joyce is the creator of Disney's Robots and of the cartoon Rolie Polie Olie. He currently resides in Shreveport where he works in Disney's Shreveport animation studio and has his own animation studio as well.

John Romero - video game designer and developer, best known for the video games Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Quake. Born in (unknown) 1967, Romero lived in Shreveport for a short time in 1989 while he worked as a programmer for Softfdisk, a Shreveport-based software and internet company.

Fictional

Arthur Spooner - character on TV's 'The King of Queens.' Spooner, played by actor Jerry Stiller, is the father of Carrie Heffernan. Though Spooner lives in Queens, NY, Shreveport is one of the places where he's lived and worked. Again... purely fictional and thrown in here for fun.

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dimebag1980 Metropolis

dimebag1980

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Very interesting list there. I knew Karl Malone was from somewhere in the area. He has a ranch somewhere in southwest Arkansas.

Cool, I didn't know that. My guess would be somewhere between Texarkana and El Dorado, as that would put him not far from where he grew up.

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Mith242 Gigalopolis

Mith242

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Cool, I didn't know that. My guess would be somewhere between Texarkana and El Dorado, as that would put him not far from where he grew up.

Yeah I don't know where exactly it's at. But he's mentioned it before in some of his interviews and such.

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dimebag1980 Metropolis

dimebag1980

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Yeah I don't know where exactly it's at. But he's mentioned it before in some of his interviews and such.

It's always cool to hear of famous people who come back to your area to live. It makes you realize there's something about the area that they like. The fact that he's got a place not far from his tiny hometown must show that he's really fond of that area.

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NCB Metropolitan Area

NCB

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Cool list, Brian! I knew about most of the people on the list having ties to the area, but there were a few I didn't know. I had no idea that Arthur from The King of Queens is supposed to have ties to Shreveport in the show. Pretty cool.

BTW, I think I'm gonna make the same type of list for New Orleans. :thumbsup:

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dimebag1980 Metropolis

dimebag1980

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Cool list, Brian! I knew about most of the people on the list having ties to the area, but there were a few I didn't know. I had no idea that Arthur from The King of Queens is supposed to have ties to Shreveport in the show. Pretty cool.

BTW, I think I'm gonna make the same type of list for New Orleans. :thumbsup:

Yeah, the Arthur Spooner thing caught me off-guard as well. That's one of the few names I stumbled upon, by accident, at Wikipedia.

I think you most certainly should do that for New Orleans! I almost created a thread based on this topic on the main Louisiana board, because I figured you guys would want to do something like this for your respective cities.

Heck, I can name a few right off for New Orleans, without even having to think hard:

Harry Connick, Sr.

Harry Connick, Jr.

Aaron Neville

Arthel Neville

The other Neville brothers

Fats Domino

I could go on and on...

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Mith242 Gigalopolis

Mith242

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Well the first person that comes to my mind when I think of famous people from Arkansas is, you guessed it, Bill Clinton. I imagine it's the same for many others across the nation.

Yeah of course there's him. Then we also have had some big businessmen especially Sam Walton.

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Mith242 Gigalopolis

Mith242

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Bill Clinton

Sam Walton <-- haven't you heard? He's world-famous!

Okay, I'm stumped... but I'm sure there are more! Isn't Houston Nutt from your area as well?

He's originally from Little Rock I believe. I don't consider him that well known though. I doubt many people outside the SEC know him. If I tried I could come up with some more. But I don't know if I could come up with a list like either of you could.

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dimebag1980 Metropolis

dimebag1980

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He's originally from Little Rock I believe. I don't consider him that well known though. I doubt many people outside the SEC know him. If I tried I could come up with some more. But I don't know if I could come up with a list like either of you could.

Well yeah, but I listed the creator of the game DOOM in my list, and no one outside of the world of video game creation would know who he was. :lol:

Yeah, so what if I got desperate... some people know who he is.

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Mith242 Gigalopolis

Mith242

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Well yeah, but I listed the creator of the game DOOM in my list, and no one outside of the world of video game creation would know who he was. :lol:

Yeah, so what if I got desperate... some people know who he is.

Yeah I've heard his name. I also remember Doom and the other id games. :D

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dimebag1980 Metropolis

dimebag1980

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There was someone else I thought of last night, but now I've forgotten who again. If I remember any others as time goes on, I'll add them to my original list but I'll also add them in a reply to this topic as well, that way it can be seen by those who've already viewed the list.

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TBurban Town

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Arthur Spooner - character on TV's 'The King of Queens.' Spooner, played by actor Jerry Stiller, is the father of Carrie Heffernan. Though Spooner lives in Queens, NY, Shreveport is one of the places where he's lived and worked. Again... purely fictional and thrown in here for fun.

I love that show :D

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