Country-music band Tony Douglas and The Shrimpers of Athens is scheduled to perform during Chandler’s 50th-anniversary celebration in July, city secretary Shirley Parmer said.

Inspired by Hank Williams, Lefty Frizell and others, Douglas, 80, has performed and recorded music for more than 50 years. His appearances included “The Louisiana Hayride,” the Jimmie Rodgers Memorial Festival in Meridian, Miss., and the “Cowtown Hoedown.” In 1957, he turned down a contract offer to perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

“We’re excited to have him for the celebration,” Parmer said.

The event marking 50 years of Chandler’s incorporation is set for July 10 at Winchester Park, and money raised will help fi- nance the creation of a city museum.

Historical collections, including that of Sen. Ralph Yarborough and Jackie Kennedy, are kept in two cases at the Chandler Public Library, and Librarian Nancy Bertholf has said space is inadequate.

Activities planned for the July celebration include a street dance, concert, and fireworks exhibition. Food concessions will be available.

To help raise money, a Heritage Cookbook will be sold. It’s an update for the 1980 centennial publication, “Chandler: Its History and People.”

Though the city was incorporated in 1960, its history dates to 1880 when the Texas and St. Louis Railway established a station on land donated about 31 years earlier by Alphonso Chandler, for with the town was renamed. It was originally called Stillwater.

Chandler Public Library is a branch of the Henderson County Clint W. Murchison Memorial Library. Originally housed in a book mobile, the Chandler branch was moved to Broad Street in 1983 and relocated again 13 years later to its current building at 900 State Highway 31.

The late Yarborough, a Democrat, was born in Chandler in 1903. He taught school in Henderson County, practiced law in El Paso and Austin, was a Texas judge and assistant attorney general, a World War II veteran in the U.S. Army, and an author. Yarborough was in Kennedy’s motorcade during the president’s assassination in 1963 in Dallas.

The planning committee for Chandler’s 50thanniversary celebration is scheduled to meet at City Hall on March 18, at 6 p.m. Call 903-849-4122.

Douglas’ Web site is tonydouglas.com.