Indie Venue of the Month June 2026: Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa – Billboard

Trending on Billboard When the Rodgers family began restoring Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Okla. — roughly eight months after purchasing the dilapidated 1924 building and business — they found handfuls of ticket stubs that read “dime-a-dance.” The tickets dated back to when venue founder Madison Cain opened the space as Cain’s Dance Academy in the 1930s, during which men who lived off Tulsa’s booming oil and gas business would spend 10 cents for a dance lesson taught by a man named Howard Turner. “Turner would hold these dances where he would have women…there to provide dances for men who would buy a 10-cent ticket and come in,” says Chad Rodgers, who currently co-owns Cain’s Ballroom alongside his brother Hunter Rodgers. “Then [he] and the venue would split the proceeds with the women.” Related More than 100 years later, the venue still has a painted sign inside advertising dancing at Cain’s on various nights of the week — and it’s not the only relic that remains. The log cabin-patterned dance floor still bounces as it did in the 1930s on what was rumored to be truck springs under the floorboards. The ballroom walls also boast large sepia-toned portraits of folks like Oliver
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