“Early in 1938, Hal “Pappy” Horton of the Consolidated Drug Company offered Woody a show on XELO in Tijuana….

Hal Horton, a former sideshow barker, later moved to Dallas, where he deejayed the popular Hillbilly Hit Parade on KRLD and formed the publishing company Metro Music.”
[Fowler, Gene, Crawford, Bill, Border Radio, 2nd ed. (Austin: U. of Texas Press, 2002, pp.283-284)]



"Hal Horton
b. Montclair, New Jersey, 1893; d. November 28, 1948
Hal Horton, popular Dallas disc jockey and show promoter, first acted onstage with his parents at age ten. He worked as a sideshow barker throughout the nation and entered broadcasting in Davenport, Iowa. From Mexican Border Radio stations Horton came to Dallas in 1936*; there an auto dealer sponsored his first hillbilly record programs on WRR.

In the early 1940s Horton launched the KRLD Hillbilly Hit Parade, a 10:30 p.m. program on which he played and ranked records and interviewed country stars. Later he added the Cornbread Matinee and in 1947 announced the Mutual Network's prerecorded Checkerboard Jamboree series, which featured Eddy Arnold. Horton cofounded Metro Music, publisher of Hank Thompson's earliest songs and Tommy Dilbeck's biggest hits for Arnold.

Horton made two records for Sonora in 1946.** Plagued by a heart ailment in the last years of his life, he did his final broadcast from a back porch home studio two weeks before he died.
-Ronnie Pugh"
[Kingsbury, Paul, ed., et al, The Encyclopedia of Country Music, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford U., 2012, p.229)]

* This is roughly same time he was supposed to be a Consolidated Drug Co. representative in Los Angeles.

**See following.