Bill Johnson blew into town in 1955, driving a white convertible Cadillac with steer horns on the hood and an attitude behind the wheel. Every time he stopped, a friend would open the door and announce to anyone within hearing distance, "This is Bill Johnson."

That was Bill Johnson - larger-than-life personality, trapeze artist, master showman, radio host, friend to country-and-Western stars. He also opened, in 1956, what has become one of the longest-operating restaurants in the Valley.

Bill Johnson's Big Apple turns 50 this year, and the veteran barbecue restaurant has hardly missed a beat since it sprang up on the outskirts of Phoenix - 36th and Van Buren streets. When the place opened, its neighbors were the cattle at the stockyards next door and the shy couple who lived at Tovrea Castle.

"Phoenix was a little cow town back then," said Johnson's 85-year-old widow, Gene.

Yet Valley residents found their way to what Johnson's daughter and company president, Dena Cameron, 69, calls "Phoenix's first theme restaurant."

The rustic interior was hung with Western memorabilia. Servers dressed in cowboy gear. The sign out front was a giant steer head with the invitation, "Let's Eat." The menu was simple: burgers, steaks, ribs. Entrée salads and chicken came later.

Gene Johnson's succulent barbecue and homemade deep-dish apple pie brought cowboys from the stockyards and nearby stables, and anyone else in town who liked the entertainment as much as they liked the food.

Bill Johnson would work the room with a portable microphone, dropping by patrons' tables, putting them on live radio, first on KPHO and then on KTAR.

"My dad was the showman, and my mom was the brains," said son Johnny Johnson, 63, one of the four siblings who own and operate six Valley Bill Johnson's restaurants. He's wearing the garb and badge of an Old West sheriff. He looks born for the role.
 

Circus romance

Gene Golden was in her early teens, living in Healdton, Okla., when the circus came to town. Admission was only a quarter, Gene said, but it was enough to find the man of her dreams, an 18-year-old "catcher" in a trapeze act.

"He was handsome, so talented," Gene remembered.

When the circus left town, Bill Johnson stayed and courted Gene despite her parents' objections. That was 1934, the depths of the Depression. He was her first, and last, boyfriend. They married two years later.

Bill Johnson had big dreams. In 1939, the couple moved to Compton, Calif., where he took a job at the shipyards and Gene worked in a cannery. Gene also worked as a carhop and learned business skills from the manager. She put that knowledge to good use when the Johnsons opened Gene's Original Wood Pit B-B-Q, based on her recipe for barbecue sauce.

The restaurant was down the street from Town Hall Party, a music hall where, from 1952 to 1961, country music stars performed every Saturday night. After the show, they wandered down to Gene's restaurant and record store. The Johnsons got to know all the country legends, from Tex Ritter to Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Bill Johnson hosted a radio show and interviewed his friends while spinning their platters.

"It was good promotion for them and us," Cameron said.

When Johnny Johnson's asthma worsened, the family moved to the Arizona desert. Bill liked to call the plot of land he bought for his restaurant "where the pavement ends and the Old West begins." In fact, it was where the city ended - the last outpost until Tempe.

The restaurant was successful from Day 1, Gene said. "This was the restaurant for several years."
 

'Delightful guy'

Bill started a radio show in a back corner of the Big Apple, named for his favorite 1920s dance craze. When he wasn't roaming the dining room with a microphone, he was playing host to friends from the Town Hall Party days.

Bill was in his element. Local singers Waylon Jennings, Marty Robbins and Wayne Newton stopped by. So did Ritter, Rogers and Evans, Johnny Cash, Buck Owens (Johnny Johnson still has the guitar Owens gave him), children's-TV show hosts Wallace and Ladmo, as well as such politicians as Barry Goldwater and a string of governors.

"Only Bill Johnson, Camelback Mountain and I have been here 50 years," joked Pat McMahon, a guest on Bill's radio show in the mid-'60s.

McMahon appeared on The Wallace and Ladmo Show, which began in 1954, and today hosts TV and radio programs.

"I remember he was a delightful guy," McMahon said of Bill Johnson. "He really enjoyed the community. He had a sense of fun, of Western entertainment."

When the Johnson children were old enough, they joined the business.

Cameron started at age 19, handling the administrative duties that she continues today.

"It was the only thing I knew," she said.

For all his pizzazz, Bill Johnson was a stern man who set high standards, Cameron said. But he had a great sense of humor, illustrated in Johnny Johnson's favorite story.

As a teen, Johnny was assigned to greet customers at the door. His dad would come by every day and ask, "Do you want to dance?" One day Johnny said yes.

The dad swept the boy off his feet, waltzed him around the crowded restaurant and back to the entrance, dipped him back, deposited a big kiss on his forehead and said, "Thank you!"

"I was so embarrassed," Johnny said. "The laughter took 10 minutes to die down."
 

Suddenly gone

Tragically, the man with dreams of being a star died of an aneurysm in 1966 at age 49. Bill Johnson had been a robust man, a health advocate before it was trendy. He kept fit in a workout room at the back of the restaurant. Death came quickly.

"It was something no one expected. It was a big shock," Johnny Johnson said. "He always said he'd outlive us all, and I believed it."

Gene Johnson never doubted the family could carry on the business. Though daunted by his father's reputation, Johnny took over the radio show. He became comfortable in the job, and continued until KTAR went to an all-news format in 1974.

Gene continued to run the kitchen.

Her children, and now grandchildren, have taken charge of the company. Cameron's daughter, Danielle Hanson, is director of marketing. In all, 15 family members are involved in day-to-day operations.
 

Meeting challenges

Phoenix has changed dramatically in the past half-century. Bill Johnson's Big Apple has faced many challenges but overcome each one.

It began with cynics who said the original location was too remote to attract customers. They were wrong.

In 1961, Ramada Inn built its first grand hotel next door on East Van Buren Street, complete with dining room. Critics said the Big Apple was doomed.

Bill Johnson expanded, and business exploded.

In 1963, the Johnsons opened El Diablo, a Mexican restaurant at 32nd and Van Buren streets. It lasted 20 years but closed in 1983 when the city kept nibbling away at parking space.

Bill Johnson's Big Apple West opened at 31st Avenue and Indian School Road in 1974. There are now Big Apples in the northwest Valley, Arrowhead, Goodyear and Mesa.

At one time, Van Buren was the center of a high-end hotel strip. Over the years it became a depressed area, hundreds more restaurants opened in the Valley and Bill Johnson's suffered.

"When we opened, there was no competition. We owned the world," Cameron said. "Now we own a piece of it."

The bustling Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has re-energized business. The upcoming light-rail line along Washington Street promises to bring more customers. Gateway Community College has built a campus nearby.

Phoenix is no longer a cow town. But the man who insisted on pushing the city's limits in its infancy is still the spirit of the Big Apple.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think of him," Johnny said.