The Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom will stage its final concert of the 2007 season on Saturday, Nov. 17, hosting an atypical acoustic performance by Korn singer Jonathan Davis. As the heavy metal idol shows the Seacoast audience his softer side, music fans will be bracing themselves for the long, cold winter, devoid of warmth, long days and concerts at the beach.

As usual, the Casino Ballroom brought an exceptionally diverse array of acts to the Hampton Beach strip this year, including hot young bands and aging rock relics, comic icons and blues legends. There were tributes to rock deities like Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix, and there were familiar Ballroom regulars, like George Thorogood and Bob Weir. It’s a funny thing about the Ballroom, but just about every music fan can find something to celebrate and something to scoff at in a typical summer season.  

According to head of marketing Andrew Herrick, there were a total of 69 shows at the Ballroom this year, falling one shy of the venue’s 2006 record of 70 shows. The Ballroom is currently ranked 23rd worldwide for club ticket sales by Pollstar, and it has ranked in the top 30 in each of the past three years. The only other New England club included on that list is the Avalon in Boston, which is currently ranked sixth. Unlike the Ballroom, however, the Avalon is open year round and is located in a major city. (Pollstar’s definition of a “club” does not include larger venues like the Tweeter Center or TD Banknorth Garden.)

The 2007 season began on March 31, when Lindsay Buckingham took the stage. Since then, shows have featured an impressively diverse array of artists, including Dark Star Orchestra, Ween, Robert Cray, Candlebox, Hootie & The Blowfish, Los Lonely Boys, Jonny Lang, Social Distortion, B.B. King, Susan Tedeschi, Tesla, KC & The Sunshine Band, Deep Purple, Indigo Girls and Megadeth. Standup comedy acts have included Jim Breuer, Ron White, Lewis Black, George Carlin, Artie Lang and Jim Gaffigan.

Although Herrick has not tallied the final numbers for sales this year, he expects the latest season to edge out 2006 sales, which would make 2007 the fourth consecutive year in which the club has broken its own sales record.

“It’s a testament to how much the Seacoast loves live entertainment,” Herrick wrote in an email.

Booking close to eight months worth of big names is no easy task, but the Ballroom has been at it for a while now. The venue originally opened in the summer of 1899, at which time the building included an entertainment hall, two dining rooms, two bowling alleys, pool tables, summer rentals and recreational space for baseball and tennis. A 57-room hotel was added the following year, and additional construction occurred in the early part of the 20th century, eventually including an opera house, a penny arcade, a shooting range and numerous dressing rooms for beachgoers.

Ownership changed in the late 1920s, and the venue quickly became the most popular night spot in the area, with thousands of guests dancing on the wooden ballroom floor. As the big band era swept across the nation the following decade, jazz legends like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Glen Miller played the Ballroom, along with the orchestras of Bing Crosby, Frankie Lane and the Dorsey Brothers.

Ownership changed again in the late 1930s, and large jazz and orchestral acts continued to fill the Ballroom over the next couple of decades. Then came the introduction of rock ’n’ roll. Stars flooded the Hampton Beach facility, including The Doors, Janis Joplin, The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. The town of Hampton temporarily banned rock shows in 1971, after thousands of fans rioted outside a sold-out Jethro Tull concert.

But, a group of businessmen took over ownership in 1976, and the building reopened as Club Casino, introducing a Vegas-style showroom with a 144-foot bar.

More than $1 million of renovations revamped the building in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and the Casino began to re-emerge as an entertainment destination, hosting comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and musical acts like Bonnie Raitt, Melissa Etheridge and Phish in the 1980s. But, management changed repeatedly in the early 1990s, and the Ballroom began to suffer from a reputation for strict rules and rough bouncers.

The tides changed again in 1995, when Bob Weir and Rat Dog played on the day Jerry Garcia died, attracting thousands of Grateful Dead fans to the strip. Security managed to keep the event under control, and the Casino Ballroom thereafter began rebuilding its reputation as a popular venue.

The Ballroom’s success over the past several years reflects continued growth, and the performance by Jonathan Davis on Saturday will top off perhaps the Ballroom’s most successful season in well over a century of existence.

Davis will play a set of popular and obscure Korn tunes, joined by a quintet of instrumentalists that will alternate between electric and acoustic performances. Doors open at 6 p.m., and the 18 and over show begins at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $26 to $50. For more information, visit www.casinoballroom.com.