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Dear History Lover,

Texas has a special place in history and in the minds of people throughout the world. It has a mystique that no other state and few foreign countries have ever equaled. Texas also has the distinction of being the only state in America that an independent country for almost 10 years, free and separate, recognized as a sovereign government by the , , and England. The pride and confidence of Texans started in those years, and the "Lone Star" emblem, a symbol of those feelings, was developed through the adventures and sacrifices of those that came before us.

This rich history is also reflected in the of Texas, which presents itself as vast and diverse as the Lone Star State’s landscape. The Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas—a multidisciplinary online encyclopedia of Texas history, geography, and culture—has explored this musical voice through two print volumes—The Handbook of Texas Music (2003) and The Handbook of Texas Music, Second Edition (2012), published in partnership with the Texas Music Office (Office of the Governor) and the Center for Texas Music History (). We are proud to announce the launch of the Handbook of Texas Music Online which will carry on scholarship on the many facets of music in Texas. With almost 900 entries and counting, along with hundreds of illustrations and audio samples, the Handbook of Texas Music Online invites readers to explore their own musical journeys through the musicians, festivals, businesses, ensembles, organizations and more that have helped define the state’s identity. The Texas State Historical Association gratefully acknowledges the Handbook of Texas staff and the Digital Projects staff, as well as an outstanding team of music advisors for their dedication to this ongoing work.

To celebrate this launch, the Texas State Historical Association is offering this special e-book. TEXAS: A Musical Journey, which draws from the resources of the Handbook of Texas as well as articles from the Texas Almanac and Southwestern Historical Quarterly, presents a sampling of the impressive history of Texas music through the performers, songs, programs, and events that have crafted a colorful and significant legacy that has reached far beyond the state’s borders.

and Texas  Little Joe y La Familia

Former Texas Music Office Director Casey Monahan, who originally proposed the Handbook of Texas Music project in 1998, has appropriately assessed, “To travel Texas with music as your guide is a year-round opportunity to experience first-hand this amazing cultural force….Texas music offers a vibrant and enjoyable experience through which to understand and enjoy Texas culture.”

For more than a century, the Texas State Historical Association has played a leadership role in Texas history research and education, helping to identify, collect, preserve, and tell the stories of Texas. It has now entered into a new collaboration with the University of Texas at to carry on and expand its work. In the coming years these two organizations, with their partners and members, will create a collaborative whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The collaboration will provide passion, talent, and long-term support for the dissemination of scholarly research, educational programs for the K-12 community, and opportunities for public discourse about the complex issues and personalities of our heritage.

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The TSHA’s core programs include the Texas Almanac, the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, the Handbook of Texas Online, the TSHA Press, and an Education Program that reaches out to students and teachers at all levels throughout the state. The central challenge before the TSHA is to seize the unprecedented opportunities of the digital age in order to reshape how history will be accessed, understood, preserved, disseminated, and taught in the twenty-first century. In the coming years, we will capitalize on these momentous opportunities to expand the scope and depth of our work in ways never before possible. In the midst of this rapid change, the Texas State Historical Association will continue to provide a future for our heritage and to ensure that the lessons of our history continue to serve as a resource for the people of Texas. I encourage you to join us today as a member of the Texas State Historical Association, and in doing so, you will be part of a unique group of people dedicated to standing as vanguards of our proud Texas heritage and will help us continue to develop innovative programs that bring history to life.

With Texas Pride,

Brian A. Bolinger CEO Texas State Historical Association

Randolph “Mike” Campbell Chief Historian Texas State Historical Association

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TEXAS IN SONG

I. “Texas, Our Texas” 5 II. “Beautiful Texas” 6 III. “The Eyes of Texas” 7

VOICES OF TEXAS

IV. Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe 9 V. Damita Jo DeBlanc 10 VI. Daisy Pettit Elgin 11 VII. Baldemar Huerta [] 12 VIII. Janis Lyn Joplin 14 IX. Melody Maids 16 X. 17 XI. Roy Kelton Orbison 19 XII. James Travis Reeves 21 XIII. Selena Quintanilla Perez 22 XIV. Soul Stirrers 25 XV. Louis Charles Stevenson [Buckwheat, B.W.] 27 XVI. John 29

LONE STAR COUNTRY

XVII. Light Crust Doughboys 31 XVIII. James Robert Wills 33 XIX. Orvon 35 XX. 37 XXI. George Glenn Jones 39 XXII. 42 XXIII. Dave Stone 44 XXIV. and the Birth of the Austin Music Scene 47

THE CROSSROADS OF MUSICAL CULTURES

XXV. Bacas of Fayetteville 53 XXVI. Música Norteña 54 XXVII. Narciso Martínez 57 XXVIII. Joseph Patek 59 XXIX. Little Joe y La Familia 61 XXX. Texas Tornados 63 XXXI. West Side Sound 64 XXXII. 66

JAZZ!

XXXIII. Eddie Durham and the Texas Contribution to Jazz History 68

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CLASSICAL TEXAS

XXXIV. David Wendel Guion 92 XXXV. Scott Joplin 94 XXXVI. Leonora Rives-Díaz 96 XXXVII. International Competition 98

TEXAS

XXXVIII. Blind Lemon Jefferson 100 XXXIX. Aaron Thibeaux Walker [T-Bone] 102 XL. Victoria Regina Spivey 104 XLI. Stevie Vaughan 105

ROCKIN’ THROUGH TEXAS---THE ROCK-AND-ROLL REVOLUTION

XLII. Elvis in Texas 108 XLIII. Charles Hardin Holley [Buddy Holly] 111 XLIV. and the Pharaohs 114 XLV. 115 XLVI. 13th Floor Elevators 117 XLVII. Bloodrock 119 XLVIII. Pantera 121

TEXAS MUSIC OVER THE AIRWAVES

XLIX. 122 L. Big D Jamboree 124 LI. Border Radio 126 LII. Harry A. Lieberman [Larry Kane] 128 LIII. Sump’n Else 130 LIV. The !!!! Beat 131

MUSICAL

LV. Cowboys’ Ball 133 LVI. Kerrville Folk Festival 134 LVII. South by Southwest 136 LVIII. Texas International Pop Festival, 1969 137 LIX. Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic 138

HIDDEN GEMS IN MUSIC

LX. Margaret Cage Whitley Adams 140 LXI. Charline Arthur 141 LXII. James A. [Jim] 143 LXIII. John Washington Dollar, Jr. [] 145 LXIV. Evelyn Joyce Johnson 147 LXV. Carl Eric Lewis 149 LXVI. Carl T. Morene 151 LXVII. Sarg Records 153

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TEXAS IN SONG I. “Texas, Our Texas” Written by Charles A. Spain, Jr.

The state song of Texas was adopted by the Forty-first Legislature after a statewide contest in 1929.

The music was originally written in 1924 by William J. Marsh of Fort Worth, and the lyrics were written by Marsh and Gladys Yoakum Wright. 's statehood in 1959 necessitated the only change that has been made in the lyrics—modifying the line “largest and grandest” to “boldest and grandest.”

The Seventy-third Legislature again adopted “Texas, Our Texas” as the state song in a 1993 law.

Vocal Sheet Music—“Texas Our Texas” (Southern Music Company, ). Reportedly, John Philip Sousa once praised the “Official State Song of Texas” as the finest state song he had ever heard. Courtesy of Southern Music Company.

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II. “Beautiful Texas” Written by Laurie E. Jasinski

W. Lee “Pappy” O'Daniel composed “Beautiful Texas” in 1933, and the song was first performed by his band, the Light Crust Doughboys, and later by his Hillbilly Boys.

The tune became a theme song for O’Daniel during his campaign for Texas governor.

Upon his political victory and inauguration in January 1939, Life magazine commented that sheet music sales boasted 75,000 sold during O’Daniel’s campaign, and record sales had skyrocketed to more than 100,000 sold by the inauguration.

The sheet music cover was “designed by Lee O’Daniel himself” and depicts a montage of Texan scenery, industry, agriculture, and history under the six flags of the Lone Star State.

Chorus: (Oh) Beautiful, Beautiful Texas,

Where the beautiful bluebonnets grow, We’re proud of our forefathers Who fought at the Alamo. You can live on the plains or the mountain Or down where the sea-breezes blow, And you’re still in Beautiful Texas, Sheet Music—“Beautiful Texas” by W. Lee O’Daniel (Shapiro, The most beautiful place that I know. Bernstein & Co., Inc., New York). Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Prints & Photographs, Sheet Music #328. Courtesy of Southern Music Company.

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III. “The Eyes of Texas” Written by Margaret C. Berry

“The Eyes of Texas,” the official song of the University of Texas at Austin, considered by some as an unofficial state song, was first sung at a minstrel show to benefit the university track team at the Hancock Opera House in Austin on May 12, 1903. William L. Prather, an alumnus of Washington College (Lexington, Virginia) and president of UT from 1899 to 1905, had often in his student days heard Robert E. Lee, then president of Washington College, say to students, “The eyes of the South are upon you.” Prather altered the saying for use at the University of Texas.

The best-documented version of the song's origin has Lewis Johnson, director of and the person in charge of the show, asking his roommate, John Lang Sinclair, to write the lyrics to a lively song. On the night before the show, Sinclair, recalling Prather's words, wrote lyrics fitted to the melody of "I've Been Working on the Railroad" on a piece of scrap laundry paper. The glee club quartet performed the song repeatedly at the show to great applause, and the band paraded the campus playing and the song the next day. Two years later Prather's family requested that the song be sung at his funeral. Vocal Sheet Music—“The Eyes of Texas” (Southern Music Company, San Antonio). Arthur B. Gurwitz, president of Southern Music Sinclair had revised the words and the chorus to the Company, secured copyright for the official song of the University revised version is the song now in popular use. The of Texas at Austin on behalf of the university in the . Courtesy song gradually became the students' favorite school of Southern Music Company. song. It was translated into ten languages on order of university president Harry Y. Benedict in 1930.

The UT Students' Association copyrighted the piece in 1936. In 1951 the association set the John Lang Sinclair Eyes of Texas Scholarship Fund. Royalties were placed in the fund, and half went to the association and the other half to scholarships.

When the copyright expired in 1964, the Students' Association, with the assistance of the Ex-Students' Association and Congressman J. J. (Jake) Pickle, tried to renew the copyright, but the request was refused. Even so, "The Eyes of Texas" continued to be recognized as the official song of the University of Texas at Austin and at times was mistakenly identified as the state song.

UT students and administration were surprised in the late to hear that a man living in Oregon was claiming the ownership of the "Eyes of Texas" and collecting on his version of the composition.

A former Fort Worth musician, Wylbert Brown, copyrighted the words in 1928 with the hope that the song would become the official state song during the Texas Centennial in 1936. In 1986 Arthur B. Gurwitz, president of Southern Music Company in San Antonio, set out to honor his son, a UT graduate who had died in 1984.

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Gurwitz negotiated with Brown, then ninety-one, who agreed to assign the copyright to UT Austin, provided he would continue to draw some royalty until his death. He died in February 1987. On November 14, 1987, in a special salute before a football game, UT Austin honored Arthur Gurwitz for securing the copyright of the song for the school.

In 2003 in honor of the centennial anniversary of the first performance of the song, the University of Texas Board of Regents reaffirmed "The Eyes of Texas" as the university's official song. In March 2012 the University of Texas purchased the publication rights to the song from Southern Music Company. text of the song hangs in the Lila B. Etter Alumni Center. Another copy, a silk screen, was taken to the moon in 1969 by university alumnus Alan L. Bean. This prized copy is also at the Alumni Center on campus.

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VOICES OF TEXAS IV. Julius Lorenzo Cobb Bledsoe Written by Lynnette Geary

Julius (Jules) Bledsoe, and composer, was born on December 29, 1897, in Waco, Texas, the son of Henry L. and Jessie (Cobb) Bledsoe. He attended Central Texas Academy in Waco from about 1905 until his graduation as class valedictorian in 1914. He then attended Bishop College in Marshall, where he earned a B.A. in 1918. He was a member of the ROTC at Virginia Union University in Richmond in 1918–19 and studied medicine at in between 1920 and 1924. While attending Columbia, he studied voice with Claude Warford, Luigi Parisotti, and Lazar Samoiloff.

He was sponsored by the impresario Sol Hurok for his professional singing debut on April 20, 1924, at Aeolian Hall in New York. As a artist Bledsoe performed in the United States and . He was praised for his ability to sing in several languages, for his vocal control and range, and for his power to communicate through music. In 1926 he performed as the baritone Tizan, the leading role in the opera Deep River.

His best-known achievement was his portrayal of Joe in Florenz Ziegfeld's 1927 production of 's Showboat. His interpretation of “Ol' Man River” made the song an .

He recreated this role in the film version of Showboat in 1929. In his versatile career of nearly twenty years Bledsoe performed with such distinguished musical organizations as the Symphony Chamber Players (1926), the BBC Symphony in (1936), and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of (1937). He sang the role of Amonasro in 's Aïda with the Stadium Opera (1932), the Opera Company at the Hippodrome in New York (1933), and the Cosmopolitan Opera Company, also at the Hippodrome (1934). A highlight of his career was his performance in the title role for the European premiere, in Amsterdam, of 's opera (1934). In 1940 and 1941 Bledsoe worked in films in . He played the part of Kalu in Drums of the Congo, and, although his name did not appear in the credits, he probably played in Safari, Western Union, and Santa Fe Trail.

He wrote several patriotic songs and songs in the style of spirituals and folk songs. Some of his compositions were “Does Ah Luv You?” (1931); “Pagan Prayer” (date unknown), on a poem by Countee Cullen; “Good Old British Blue” (1936); and “Ode to America” (1941). He wrote an opera, Bondage (1939), based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Bledsoe's African Suite, a set of four songs for voice and orchestra, was featured with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, directed by Wilhelm Mengelberg.

After a war bond tour Bledsoe died, on July 14, 1943, in Hollywood, from a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Waco.

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V. Damita Jo DeBlanc Written by Clayton T. Shorkey and Laurie E. Jasinski

Damita Jo DeBlanc, pop and soul singer, was born in Austin, Texas, on August 5, 1930. She was the daughter of Herbert and Latrelle (Plummer) DeBlanc, and she showed singing ability at a very early age. During World War II the family relocated to Santa Barbara, , where her father was stationed in the . She attended high school there but periodically returned to Austin to visit relatives. DeBlanc attended Samuel Huston College (which later merged with Tillotson College to form Huston-Tillotson College) in Austin and the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 1949 she performed a two-month stint at Club Oasis in .

Signed to Discovery Records, DeBlanc, known simply as Damito Jo, released her debut single, “Until the Real Thing Comes Along.” She began a long career as a recording artist, as well as a jazz, pop, and soul singer in international supper clubs and on television.

In 1951 Damita Jo joined the rhythm-and-blues group Steve & the 5 Red Caps.

She married Gibson in 1954; they divorced in 1958, but she remained with the group until 1960. Signing with Mercury, she scored a hit in 1960 with her song, “I’ll Save the Last Dance for You,” an answer to the top hit “Save the Last Dance for Me” by . Jazz, pop, and soul singer Damita Jo DeBlanc, a native of Austin, Her 1961 release, “I’ll Be There,” was in response to Ben Texas. Photo courtesy of Representative Dawnna Dukes, Texas E. King’s “Stand By Me” and reached Number 12 on Music Museum. the Billboard pop charts. In 1961 she married Biddy Wood, her manager, and they had a son.

A downturn, however, in Damita Jo’s popularity led to Mercury’s termination of her contract. She then signed with Epic. On May 9, 1967, she was honored by the mayor and city council in Austin, Texas, on “Damita Jo Day” and by having a street named in her honor. Damita Jo gave birth to a daughter in 1970, but the girl died of sickle cell anemia three years later. With her recording career in decline, she turned to performing on the supper club circuit in the 1970s. She also toured with comedian Redd Foxx and appeared on his television show. By the late 1970s she was singing in Atlantic City and backed up such greats as , , and . During her career she recorded on many labels, including Discovery, RCA Victor, Mercury, Epic, Melic, and her own label, Black Masters. In 1983 she also composed and recorded a song entitled "The Color of Your Skin Makes No Difference" which has been used as a part of a program for students in the public school system in , Maryland. By the mid-1980s Damita Jo focused on performing strictly . She died in Baltimore on , 1998. Singer , whose middle name is Damita Jo, named her Damita (2004) after DeBlanc. In 2009 Damita Jo DeBlanc was inducted into the Austin Music Memorial.

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VI. Daisy Pettit Elgin Written by Clayton T. Shorkey

Daisy Pettit Elgin, opera singer, was born in on November 6, 1901, to Robert Wilson and Daisy (Pettit) Elgin. In the early 1920s she received her musical training in New York under the direction of Charlotte Maconda. She was a coloratura soprano with a light, agile voice and extensive range. Her sister, Mary Alice, an accomplished pianist, also studied in New York. In May 1927 Daisy Elgin signed a concert contract with the management of R. E. Johnston in New York, and later that year her performances on the East Coast received glowing reviews. Her Houston debut was in 1930 and included arias such as “Ah! Fors' e Lui,” from La Traviata and “Una Voce Poco Fa,” from The Barber of Seville.

During the early Elgin had a Sunday night radio program, the Cox & Blackburn Frigidaire Hour, on KPRC in Houston. She also frequently appeared on tour throughout the United States with Beniamino Gigli and Giuseppe de Luca. Throughout the mid-to- late 1930s Elgin continued touring which included performances in major Texas cities, and she spent summers in New York. She was often a featured artist on the National Broadcasting Company’s radio network. Elgin lived in Houston later in life and was a member of Christ Church Cathedral. She never married. She died in Houston on June 19, 1975, and was buried in Glenwood Cemetery.

Houston native Daisy Elgin, a coloratura soprano, received high praise for her performances on the East Coast during the late 1920s. She made her Houston debut in 1930. Mary Alice Elgin Collection, Texas Music Museum.

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VII. Baldemar Huerta [Freddy Fender] Written by Teresa Palomo Acosta

Freddy Fender, a highly successful singer of rock-and- roll, popular, country, and , was born Baldemar Huerta in San Benito, Texas, on June 4, 1937. The son of migrant farm workers, he began to sing on KGBS, a Harlingen radio station, at the age of ten. When he was sixteen, he dropped out of high school and joined the United States Marine Corps. After serving in the corps for three years, he returned to his native South Texas, where he performed under the names of El Kid, Eddie Medina, and Scotty Wayne. During this period, his recording of “No Seas Cruel,” the Spanish-language rendition of ’s “Don’t Be Cruel,” became a Number 1 hit in and South America.

On August 9, 1957, he married Evangelina “Vangie” Muñiz. They had four children. Years later the Freddy Fender performs at the Texas Prison Rodeo, ca. mid-1970s. couple divorced, but they eventually remarried. During his long and versatile career he achieved success in rock-and- roll, pop, country, and Tejano music. Courtesy of Texas State Library In 1959 the singer changed his name to Freddy and Archives Commission, Prints & Photographs #1998/038-402. Fender, combining the brand of his with the name Freddy, which he believed was a perfect match with Fender. He also signed a with Imperial Records. The following year, he recorded “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” but was also sentenced to a three-year prison term in Angola State Prison in after being arrested in Baton Rouge for possession of marijuana. After completing his prison term, Fender resumed his singing career in and performed with and Dr. John but soon returned to San Benito, where he worked as a mechanic. During this time he also took classes at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi and performed music on weekends.

In 1974, working with producer Huey Meaux, he recorded “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” in Houston at SugarHill Recording Studios. The song, released on Meaux’s Crazy Cajun label and subsequently picked up by ABC/Dot, rose to Number 1 on Billboard’s pop and country charts in 1975, the first time any singer’s first single had gained such prominence on both charts. It also became the first bilingual song to hit the country charts; Fender had improvised a verse in Spanish during the studio session. In addition, the re-released “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights” climbed to the Number 1 position on Billboard’s country chart, and the publication named Fender its “Top Male Artist” of 1975. That same year he received the award of “Most Promising Male Vocalist” from the Academy of . A follow-up song, “Secret ,” also became a country hit later in 1975. In an amazing run from 1975 through 1977, Fender had twelve songs that reached country music’s Top 20, with four tunes reaching Number 1.

In a career that spanned four decades, Freddy Fender achieved fame and popularity as a solo artist and as a member of the Texas Tornados, which he formed with , , and Flaco Jiménez in 1989, and , which he formed in 1998 and included Jiménez, members of , as well as Ruben Ramos, , and Rick Treviño. Both groups boasted some of the Lone Star State’s top country, rock-and-roll, and Tejano musicians.

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Fender’s outstanding talents earned him numerous awards, including induction into the Conjunto Music Hall of Fame in 1986, for his group work in the Texas Tornados in 1991 and Los Super Seven in 1999, and for his solo work on La Musica de Baldemar Huerta, which won the Grammy for Best Album in 2002. “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” was named one of the top 100 country songs of all time in 2003.

His other accolades included the Star and the Texas Music Hall of Fame in 1999, the Tejano R.O.O.T.S. Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, and the South Texas Music Walk of Fame Star in 2004. In addition to pursuing a musical career, Freddy Fender appeared in several films, including Short Eyes (1977) and The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), and he contributed to the soundtracks of The Border (1982), Lone Star (1996), and numerous others. He also appeared in television specials and performed for the inaugurations of President George Herbert Walker Bush, President William Clinton, and Texas Governor Ann Richards.

In 2000 Fender was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. He received a kidney transplant from his youngest daughter Maria in 2002 and received a liver transplant in 2004. He continued to perform and played his final concert on December 31, 2005. Early in 2006, Freddy Fender became ill, and he died of lung cancer at his home in Corpus Christi on October 14, 2006. A funeral Mass for him was celebrated at the Queen of the Universe Catholic Church in San Benito on October 18, 2006. The Mass was preceded by a funeral procession along Freddy Fender Lane, past the home where he grew up in El Jardin neighborhood. Singer , Jr., who had once been a member of Fender’s band, sang the singer’s legendary “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” during the service. Texas Governor and Congressman Solomon Ortiz attended the service. Freddy Fender was buried with military honors at the San Benito Cemetery. He was survived by his wife Vangie, two sons, and two daughters.

In death, Freddy Fender’s musical colleagues recalled him as a musical “icon” whose influence on future generations of rock-and-roll, country, and Tejano musicians was substantial. On November 17, 2007, the Freddy Fender Museum opened in San Benito.

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VIII. Janis Lyn Joplin Written by Richard B. Hughes

Janis Lyn Joplin, blues and rock singer, daughter of Seth Ward and Dorothy (East) Joplin, was born on January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas. She grew up in a respectable middle-class home; her father was an engineer and her mother a Sunday school teacher. The future queen of nonconformity is remembered as a bright, pretty, and artistic little girl.

Signs of rebellion, however, against the religious, sexual, and racial conservatism of her environment were evident in junior high school, and by the time Janis graduated from Jefferson High School in Port Arthur in 1960, her vocabulary of four letter words, her outrageous clothes, and her reputation for sexual promiscuity and drunkenness (signs of were already apparent) caused her classmates to call her derogatory names.

Bereft of friends, without dates for school dances, ashamed of her acned face and overweight figure, Janis responded with contempt and insults to cover the rejection that scarred her for the rest of her life.

In her junior year she found acceptance in a small group of Jefferson High who read Jack Kerouac and roamed the nightspots from Port Arthur to New Orleans, thus mining one of the motherlodes of Port Arthur, Texas, has been called “the best white of American ethnic music. blues singer in American musical history.” Larry Willoughby Collection, Courtesy of Huey Meaux. There were Anglo, African American, Cajun, Mexican, and Caribbean sounds. There were the lyrics and rhythms of country, gospel, jazz, soul, and . Janis did not read music, but at the roadhouses or at home listening to records of , , or Willie Mae Thornton, she had an uncanny ability to imitate the sounds she heard. Out of imitation there slowly developed the timing, phrasing, inflections, and talent at evoking changing moods that were the Joplin trademarks.

She found Lamar State College of Technology at Beaumont no improvement over Port Arthur; she was a rebel in both places. She fled to the University of Texas in Austin in the summer of 1962 to study art. Indifferent to classwork, she found soulmates at the Ghetto, a enclave, and got gigs around Austin, most importantly at Threadgill's, a converted filling station and late night hangout for lovers of music and nonstop partying. The proprietor, country singer , offered Janis encouragement and lifelong friendship.

Janis craved such acceptance, but her nonconforming behavior often provoked rejection, as when university fraternity pranksters nominated her as their candidate in the annual Ugliest Man on Campus contest. Characteristically, she laughed to cover the hurt, and dreamed of , where Beats and were not outsiders.

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She spent 1963 to 1965 in the Bay area and won attention from local audiences, until drugs became more important than singing and reduced her to an emaciated eighty-eight pounds. Her friends passed the hat and gave her a bus ticket home.

Parental care restored her health, and fear of relapse produced a period of sobriety. Business suits and bouffant hairdos announced conversion to the Port Arthur ethos. But Janis's mind was torn: Port Arthur was safe but dull. San Francisco offered both excitement and potential self-destruction. She made her decision after receiving an offer to audition for a new rock band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and headed west in May 1966, toward four years of meteoric fame—and death at age twenty-seven.

“Imagine a white girl singing the blues like that!” they said of Big Brother's lead singer. And Joplin's belting of rock gathered huge swaying, clapping, shouting, and dancing audiences. For Janis a good audience was an audience in motion, and her body joined her voice in pleading for audience participation. She stopped the show at the Festival in 1967 with “Ball and Chain.” That triumph and the album Cheap Thrills (1968) elevated her to national stardom. A new manager, , whose stable of stars included Peter, Paul and Mary and , urged Janis to dump Big Brother for more versatile and disciplined support. The Kosmic Blues band was never satisfactory; the was.

Joplin's career now surged forward full tilt, driven by Southern Comfort booze, , bisexual liaisons, compulsive work, and the hope that fame would bring inner peace. Success now meant in , , London, , and ; adulation in ; a guest appearance on The Show; and a six-figure salary.

Janis was ready in to confront the Jefferson High classmates who had called her a slut. Whether her primary purpose in attending the tenth-anniversary class reunion was revenge, a desire to be worshiped as a hero, or just a quest for acceptance is unclear. What is certain is that she left Port Arthur feeling further alienated from her classmates, her parents, and her hometown. When she died in Los Angeles two months later, on October 4, 1970, of an accidental overdose of heroin and alcohol, her newly drawn will required that her ashes be strewn over California soil.

The judgment of others has been far kinder to Janis Joplin than she was to herself. She has been called “the best white blues singer in American musical history” and “the greatest female singer in ‘n’ roll.” Those who missed her live performances must judge her from a relatively small number of , audiotapes, and videotapes. Pearl, an album recorded just before her death and featuring “Me and Bobby McGee,” shows that Janis was growing musically almost to the moment of her death. The film (1979), starring , is not faithful in detail to Janis's life, but it captures her mesmerizing power onstage, in contrast to her utter powerlessness offstage to halt her relentless descent to self-destruction. Janis's sad life cannot be separated from her greatness. Her tortured soul gave her blues the authenticity of direct experience. After her death she was finally accepted in the hometown she both loved and ridiculed. In 1988 some 5,000 people from Port Arthur, tears in their eyes, sang “Me and Bobby McGee” as a bust of Janis Joplin was unveiled. It now sits in a Port Arthur library. In the Port Arthur's Museum of the Gulf Coast featured Joplin among its exhibits and she was an inductee in the Gulf Coast Music Hall of Fame. Port Arthur holds a birthday bash every January in celebration of the singer.

In the decades after her death, various Joplin anthologies and live recordings were released as well as numerous biographies. In 1992 her sister, Laura Joplin, published Love, Janis, a collection of letters Janis wrote to her family beginning in 1963. A play with the same title and based on the book opened in Denver in 1995 and subsequently had a long run at the Zachary Scott Theater in Austin in summer 1997. The performance opened off Broadway in April 2001 and ran to January 5, 2003. Janis Joplin was inducted into the Hall of Fame on January 12, 1995. In 2005 she was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. A Texas State Historical Marker was erected in front of Joplin’s childhood home in Port Arthur in January 2008 in commemoration of the singer’s sixty-fifth birthday. She was inducted into the Austin Music Memorial in 2010.

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IX. Melody Maids Written by Mamie Bogue

In 1942 Eloise Milam was asked to help arrange entertainment for a bond rally at the Jefferson Theater in Beaumont. As a private music teacher, she had a group of voice students, whom she presented as a choral group, all dressed in white. Since the newspaper insisted on having a name for the group, they decided to call themselves the Melody Maids. They became a self-sustaining, nonprofit organization consisting of teenage girls and were a great hit.

They began to travel from coast to coast singing for organizations, but mostly they performed at military bases and military hospitals. The group made four tours of Europe, several to England, three to the Far East, seven to the far North, four to the Caribbean, five to Mexico, seven to Hawaii, and four to Bermuda, Iceland, and the Azores. The girls financed some of the tours themselves by holding bake sales, style shows and other fund- raisers. After 1956 all of the Melody Maid tours were financed by the Entertainment Branch of the Department of Defense. Of all the performers who traveled with the Entertainment Branch, the Melody Maids were requested the most. They sang for the troops at military bases and hospitals from 1942 to 1972.

The Melody Maids and Eloise Milam wore identical costumes. Their routines called for a variety of costume changes, depending on their location and the content of the show. The group had a book of rules for conduct and etiquette. This book, the Melody Maid “Bible,” taught them how to act when presented to royalty and the correct way to present themselves at formal affairs. Milam always said she taught the girls morals, manners, and music, in that order. To help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of oil at Spindletop in 1901, Milam wrote a musical production, Song Saga of Spindletop. The work contained twelve original songs written by Milam to salute the oil industry of Beaumont. The first performance was on the anniversary (January 10, 1951) of the Lucas Gusher and was lauded by Gulf Oil Company. The Melody Maids appeared on the television show We, the People in 1952 to perform the musical.

Many of the Melody Maids kept in touch and established a tax exempt Melody Maid Foundation, which sponsored a $10,000 scholarship fund at . Through the years there were around 1,500 Melody Maids, and the group received many awards. The Eloise Milam–Melody Maid Rose Room at the Julie Rogers Theatre in Beaumont opened in 1990. Scrapbooks, souvenirs, photographs, and other memorabilia are housed there. The room is open to the public by request. In 2000 the Melody Maids performed Song Saga of Spindletop at their annual reunion as a Eloise Milam. Milam died on October 3, 2008, at the age of 100.

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X. Lydia Mendoza Written by Teresa Palomo Acosta

Lydia Mendoza, known as “La Alondra de la Frontera” (“The Lark of the Border”), “La Cancionera de los Pobres” (“The Songstress of the Poor”), and later as “La Gloria de Texas” (“The Glory of Texas”), was born in May 1916 in Houston to Francisco and Leonora Mendoza. From an early age she was taught to play a variety of instruments by her mother and grandmother, and when she was four years old, she made a guitar for herself from wood, nails, and rubber bands. Within a few years Mendoza joined her family in performing songs and variety shows for the Tejano community.

Her ability to sing and play the twelve-string guitar ultimately made her the family’s principal bread earner. “La Alondra de la Frontera” (“The Lark of the Border”) Lydia Mendoza became one of the best-known Spanish-language singers In 1928 when Lydia Mendoza was only twelve years of the Texas-Mexico border region. Her music evoked cultural pride old, her family responded to an OKeh Records and spanned seven decades of performances and recordings. Company advertisement seeking Spanish-language Photograph by Clayton T. Shorkey, Texas Music Museum. recording artists placed in La Prensa, the Spanish- language newspaper in San Antonio. After successfully auditioning, the family recorded twenty songs under the professional name Cuarteto Carta Blanca and earned $140. However, they soon left San Antonio to seek work in the sugar beet fields in . Upon their return to San Antonio by the early 1930s, Mendoza and her family found work performing at Tejano business establishments, on the streets, and at the Plaza del Zacate. During the week they earned twenty-five or thirty cents a day to cover food; on the weekends they pulled in a dollar and twenty-five cents to cover rent. Soon Manuel J. Cortez, a Tejano broadcaster, heard Lydia Mendoza sing at the plaza and offered her a guest appearance on his radio show, Voz Latina. The audience’s quick and positive response to her talent led Cortez to invite Mendoza to appear regularly on his show for $3.50 a week. The money provided the family much-needed income. Mendoza recalled years later, “With that three-fifty, we felt like millionaires. Now at least be sure of paying the rent.”

At a 1934 audition in San Antonio, Mendoza recorded four songs, including “Mal Hombre” (“Evil Man”), and earned $60. When the song was released a few months later, it became the first of many hits she would record during her lengthy career. As Mendoza’s popularity grew, her performances were considered “magical and could awaken a populist frenzy and collective pride in Mexicans.” She toured with her family throughout the Rio Grande valley, performing as a soloist; her siblings sang as a group and performed a variety act. Like many other Tejano artists, the Mendoza family entertained at tent shows, including the Carpa García and the Carpa Cubana. Discrimination against in West Texas forced the family to stay in private homes while on tour. They also avoided restaurants that posted signs warning “No dogs or Mexicans Allowed.” Mendoza’s “soulful, yearning voice” and her skillful acoustic guitar-playing resonated with her audiences. Among her early hits were “Pero Hay Que Triste” (“But Oh, How Sad”), “La Valentina,” and “Ángel de Mis Anhelos” (“Angel of My Desires”). By the start of World War II, Mendoza was one of the most famous Spanish-language singers of the Texas-Mexico border region.

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In 1935 she married Juan Alvarado, and during the early she retired to rear their three daughters. After World War II she resumed her career, attracting large audiences.

Her reentry into touring took her initially to the Colón Theater in El Paso and culminated at the Mason Theater in Los Angeles where the 2,500-seat auditorium could not contain all the people who clamored to see her and to hear her voice. For the next seven years, from the late 1940s into the early , Mendoza and her family were on the road performing in theaters and movie houses. She began to record again, this time accompanied by a Mexican orchestra. Mendoza also became increasingly popular outside the United States through her regular tours to Mexico, Cuba, and Columbia, often playing to as many as 20,000 fans at a time. She went on to record hundreds of songs and some fifty albums in a career that ended only after she suffered a stroke in 1988. Other popular songs she recorded included “Ojitos Verdes” (“Little Green Eyes”), “Delgadina,” and a song she wrote entitled “Amor Bonito” (“Beautiful Love”).

After her husband’s death in 1961, she married Fred Martinez in 1964. In the when she returned to live in Houston, Mendoza found a following among white college students who were interested in the movement sweeping the country. In Houston she performed in nightclubs, basing her repertoire on more than 1,000 songs that spanned one hundred years. After some of her recordings were re-issued in the 1970s, Mendoza became even better known among young people. Her fame also bought her to the attention of universities, and for a time she served as a music teacher at California State University in Fresno. Her appearance in Chulas Fronteras, a 1976 documentary on Tejano culture, fortified her enduring importance as a musician.

As a Spanish-language singer, Mendoza struggled to achieve recognition beyond Latino audiences for most of her career. Nevertheless, she gained national prominence when she was invited by President to sing at his inauguration festivities in 1977. More tributes to her followed. In 1982 she won the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship. In 1999 President presented her with the at a ceremony. In her native state Mendoza was inducted into the Tejano Music Hall of Fame in 1982, the Texas Women’s Hall of Fame in 1985, and the Tejano R.O.O.T.S. Hall of Fame and Museum in 2002. Near the end of her career, scholars produced books on her life, further ensuring Mendoza’s legacy. The prominent visual artist Ester Hernández created paintings of Mendoza that reflected the continuing respect in which she was held by the Mexican-American community in Texas and the music world in general.

Lydia Mendoza died in San Antonio, the city where she first found a strong following for her work, on December 20, 2007, at the age of ninety-one. Hundreds of fans came to that city from across Texas to pay their final tributes to her. Her funeral Mass was celebrated in San Antonio at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, and she was buried in the city’s San Fernando Cemetery on December 27, 2007.

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XI. Roy Kelton Orbison Written by George B. Ward

Roy Orbison, rock-and-roll singer and , was born in Vernon, Texas, on April, 23, 1936. He was the son of Orbie Lee and Nadine Orbison. He grew up in Wink, a small West Texas oil town, where his father taught him to play the guitar at age six. Orbison dedicated himself to music as a young man, performing at school and on the radio. While attending Wink High School he formed a country music group called the Wink Westerners, which featured Orbison as lead singer and guitar player.

Only later, while attending North Texas State College—where he met fellow student and musician —did Orbison transform the Wink Westerners into his first rock-and-roll band, the Teen Kings. After two years of college he dropped out. The group played throughout West Texas and on a number of television shows and recorded “Ooby Dooby,” which brought him to the attention of , owner of in Memphis.

Reportedly, Midland/Odessa record shop owner Cecil “Pop” Holifield played “Ooby Dooby” to Sam Phillips with Charline Arthur, ca. mid-1950s. Courtesy of Dragon Street Records, Inc. over the phone. Orbison rerecorded the song for Sun, and in 1956 it became his first chart hit. It was made in the pioneering rock-and-roll style known as —a frantic mixture of country music and developed by Elvis Presley and Phillips. Unlike , , and , up-and- coming music stars who were also recording rockabilly on the Sun label, Orbison had little chart success. The Teen Kings dissolved, and Orbison left Sun.

Most of his early success was as a songwriter. “Claudette,” a song written by Orbison and named after his first wife, Claudette Frady, was a hit in 1958 for the country and rockabilly duo . In 1959 Orbison joined the small Monument label in Nashville, which resulted in a string of international hit records from 1960 to 1966, including such classic rock-and-roll melodramas as “Only the Lonely” (1960), “” (1960), “Running Scared” (1961), “Blue Bayou” (1963), “It's Over” (1964), and “Oh, Pretty Woman” (1964). Elvis Presley once referred to Orbison as “the greatest singer in the world.” Roy's hits in this period featured his trademark three-octave voice with its soaring, emotional splendor; his lush songwriting with its beautiful melodies; sophisticated studio production; and dark, brooding themes of love, loss, and longing. Wearing his trademark black clothes, slicked back hair, and dark glasses, the short, pale, shy performer with the overpowering voice played his hits around the world. In England in 1963 he headlined a tour that included , then on the verge of international popularity.

Orbison's time at the top was brief. Claudette Orbison was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1966, and in 1968 two of his three sons were killed in a fire at his Nashville home. He married his second wife, Barbara Ann Marie Wellonen Jakobs, in 1969, and they had two more sons. Orbison underwent open-heart surgery in 1979. Although he continued to tour, this period of personal difficulty also saw his hit recordings dwindle.

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He experienced a revival of popularity in the late 1970s and 1980s, when such artists as , Don McLean, and recorded some of his songs and he released new recordings of his classic hits. His 1980 recording of “That Feeling Again” with won a Grammy Award, and in 1987 his recording “In Dreams” was featured in the soundtrack of Blue Velvet, a popular movie. That same year Orbison was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a poignant introduction from , whose monumental hit album of 1975, Born To Run, paid lyrical and stylistic homage to Orbison.

In 1988, the year of his death, Orbison's renewed popularity was confirmed in a critically-acclaimed television special featuring his music performed by him and his musical heirs. He also released an album in 1988, The , Volume One, featuring Orbison and his friends Bob Dylan, of the Beatles, , and of the . The record was in the Top 10 when he died of a heart attack, the night of December 6, 1988, at his mother's home in Hendersonville, . He was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California. His new album, , released in 1989, soared to the Top 5 in the charts and contained the hit single “,” which reached Number 9 on Billboard.

The music industry has continued to give accolades to Orbison. He was inducted posthumously into the Hall of Fame in 1989 and was awarded a 1991 Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. In 1998 he was honored with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. His songs “Only the Lonely” and “Oh, Pretty Woman" received Awards in 1999, and “Crying” received this award in 2002. Orbison is also an inductee into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and West Texas Music Hall of Fame. In 2008 Sony released The Soul of Rock and Roll, a comprehensive containing many rare and unreleased recordings in addition to his hits. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and was inducted into the newly-established America's Pop Hall of Fame in 2014. The Roy Orbison Museum in Wink, Texas, Orbison's boyhood home, contains musical memorabilia of the famed singer, and the Roy Orbison Festival takes place in Wink each June.

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XII. James Travis Reeves Written by Bill C. Malone

James Travis (Jim) Reeves, country and popular singer, was born in Galloway, Texas, on August 20, 1923. He was the son of Tom and Mary (Adams) Reeves. After graduation from Carthage High School in 1942, Reeves attended the University of Texas and played for the university team. He pitched briefly for Marshall and Henderson in the Class C League but retired from baseball in 1946 after a leg injury. In 1947 he was an announcer and disc jockey at KGRI in Henderson and began singing locally under the name Sonny Day.

Reeves recorded first in 1949 for Macy's, a small Houston company, but had no real success until 1952, when he signed a contract with Abbott Records. His second Abbott recording, “Mexican Joe,” brought him national popularity and led him in 1953 to employment as an announcer for KWKH, Shreveport, and subsequent appearances on the . After his second successful recording, “Bimbo,” Reeves joined the in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1955 and began recording for RCA Victor. His most successful recordings were “He'll Have to Go” and “Four Walls.” “He’ll Have to Go” hit ’s smooth vocal delivery earned him success as a country Number 1 on Billboard’s country charts in 1960 and and pop singer, and his recordings continued to be top sellers long also reached Number 2 on the Top 40 charts. His after his untimely death in 1964. Courtesy of Dragon Street Records, songs helped give country music international appeal, Inc. and Reeves garnered international acclaim.

Reeves and his pianist, Dean Manuel, were killed on July 31, 1964, when his private plane crashed near Nashville. He was buried in a two-acre memorial plot near Carthage, Texas, on the road to Shreveport. At the time of his death Reeves owned KGRI in Henderson and three music-publishing companies. He had made three European tours and two trips to South Africa, where he starred in a film, Kimberley Jim, which was released the year after his death. He was survived by his wife, Mary, whom he had married in 1946. They had no children. His recording of “Distant Drums,” a song written by Cindy Walker, was released posthumously and in 1966 topped the British charts and the U.S. country charts. Reeves became the first American to have a song (“Distant Drums”) awarded Song of the Year in the .

In 1967 Reeves was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He was inducted in the Hall of Fame, located in Carthage, in 1998, and in 1999 his song “He'll Have to Go” (1959) won a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. In 2004 the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame dedicated a Jim Reeves exhibit made possible from Reeves collector James Newberry. Newberry's extensive Jim Reeves collection was later acquired by the Family Foundation. A life-sized statue of Reeves was placed at his gravesite in Carthage. His compilation albums and boxed sets have continued to sell well and attract new listeners into the twenty-first century.

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XIII. Selena Quintanilla Perez Written by Cynthia E. Orozco

Singer Selena Quintanilla Perez, known simply as Selena, the daughter of Abraham and Marcella (Perez) Quintanilla, Jr., was born on April 16, 1971, in Lake Jackson, Texas. She married Christopher Perez, guitarist and member of the band (slang for “the Boys”) on April 2, 1992. They had no children. Selena attended Oran M. Roberts Elementary School in Lake Jackson and West Oso Junior High in Corpus Christi, where she completed the eighth grade. In 1989 she finished high school through the American School, a correspondence school for artists, and enrolled at Pacific Western University in business administration correspondence courses. Her career began when she was eight. From 1957 to 1971 her father played with Los Dinos, a Tejano band. He taught his children to sing and play in the family band and taught Selena to sing in Spanish.

They performed at the family restaurant, Pappagallo, and at weddings in Lake Jackson. After 1981 the band became a professional act. In 1982 the group moved to Corpus Christi and played in rural dance halls and urban nightclubs, where Tejano music flourishes. In her late teens Selena adopted fashions sported by Selena—photo taken in Corpus Christi in 1993. The Tejano music star Madonna. became popular in Texas in the 1980s and crossed into a broader Latino and Latin-American audience. By the mid-1990s she was Preceded by Lydia Mendoza and Chelo Silva, poised to cross over into mainstream pop before her untimely death. Photograph by Al Rendon, www.alrendon.com. Mexican-American star vocalists of the 1930s, and by pioneer orchestra singer Laura Canales in the 1970s, Selena became a star in Tejano music. She won the Tejano Music Award for Female Entertainer of the Year in 1987, and eight other Tejano awards followed. By the late 1980s Selena was known as “la Reina de Tejana” (“the Queen of Tejano music”) and “una mujer del pueblo.” Her popularity soared with annual awards from the Tejano Music Awards and a contract with EMI Latin Records in 1989. At the 1995 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the band attracted 61,041 people, more than , , , or Reba McEntire.

Selena y Los Dinos recorded with Tejano labels GP, Cara, Manny, and Freddie before 1989. Their albums include Alpha (1986), Dulce Amor (1988), Preciosa (1988), Selena y Los Dinos (1990), Ven Conmigo (1991), Entre a Mi Mundo (1992), Selena Live (1993), (1994), and Dreaming of You (1995). The band's popularity surged with Ven Conmigo. Entre a Mi Mundo made Selena the first Tejana to sell more than 300,000 albums. In 1993 she signed with SBK Records to produce an all-English album, but it was eventually replaced with the bilingual Dreaming of You. Despite her success in the Spanish-language market, mainstream society largely ignored Selena until around 1993. In 1994 Texas Monthly named her one of twenty influential Texans and the interviewed her. That same year, Selena Live won a Grammy for Best Mexican- American Album. Also in 1993 and 1995, Lo Nuestro Billboard gave the band awards in four categories. Selena y Los Dinos was a cross-over act in Tejano, romance, cumbia, tropical, pop, rap, and salsa in Spanish and English; Selena was not only bilingual but biethnic. Before her death, the band sold more than 1.5 million records.

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By the mid-1980s Selena had crossed into the national Latino and Latin-American market. A recording with the Puerto Rican band Barrio Boyzz furthered inroads into this area. Selena y Los Dinos began to acquire a following in Mexico (Matamoros) as early as 1986. Along with Emilio Navaira, Selena y Los Dinos attracted 98,000 fans in Monterrey, and thus popularized Tejano music in Mexico.

In 1994 the band played in New York to a Mexican and Central American audience. The band was the first Tejano group to make Billboard's Latin Top 200 list of all-time best-selling records.

Selena was also known to Latin-American television audiences. At the age of twelve or thirteen she was introduced on the Show. She appeared on Sábado Gigante, Siempre en Domingo, El Show de Cristina, and the soap opera Dos Mujeres, Un Camino. She also made a in the 1995 film Don Juan DeMarco. Advertisements also made Selena popular. Coca-Cola featured her in a poster, and she had a promotional tour agreement with the company. She had a six-figure contract with Dep Corporation and a contract with AT&T and Southwestern Bell. A six-figure deal with EMI Latin made her a millionaire. In 1992 she began her own clothing line. In 1994 she opened Selena Etc., a boutique–salon in Corpus Christi and San Antonio. At the time of her death she had plans to open others in Monterrey and Puerto Rico. A 1994 Hispanic magazine stated her worth at $5 million. Despite her wealth, however, she lived in the working-class district of Molina in Corpus Christi.

Selena considered herself a public servant. She participated with the Texas Prevention Partnership, sponsored by the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (Dep Corporation) Tour to Schools, in an educational video. She was also involved with the D.A.R.E. program and worked with the Coastal Bend Aids Foundation. Her pro-education videos included My Music and Selena Agrees. She was scheduled for a –Fort Worth boys' and girls' club benefit. Selena taped a public-service announcement for the Houston Area Women's Center, a shelter for battered women, in 1993.

On March 31, 1995, Selena was shot fatally in the back by Yolanda Saldivar, her first fan club founder and manager of Selena Etc., in Corpus Christi. The New York Times covered her death with a front-page story, as did Texas major dailies. Six hundred persons attended her private Jehovah's Witness funeral. More than 30,000 viewed her casket at the Bayfront Plaza Convention Center in Corpus Christi. Hundreds of memorials and Masses were offered for her across the country; on April 16, for instance, a Mass was celebrated on her behalf at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in Los Angeles. Her promotion agency, Rogers and Cowan, received more than 500 requests for information about her. Entertainment Tonight and Dateline NBC ran short stories on her, and People magazine sold a commemorative issue. Spanish-language television and radio sponsored numerous tributes, typically half-hour or hour programs.

Selena's fans compared the catastrophe to the deaths of , Elvis Presley, John F. Kennedy, and Pedro Infante. Songs, quilts, paintings, T-shirts, buttons, banners, posters, and shrines honored her. Radio talker Howard Stern of New York, however, snickered at her music and enraged her fans. Bo Corona, a disc jockey at a Houston Tejano radio station, asked him to apologize, and the League of United Latin American Citizens organized a boycott of his sponsors. Selena's death became part of the controversy over the Texas concealed-handgun bill. Her death also fostered greater awareness of Tejano music. According to superstar Little Joe, as a result of Selena's death “the word Tejano has been recognized by millions.” Governor George W. Bush proclaimed April 16, 1995, “Selena Day.” Selena's family founded the Selena Foundation. Her bilingual album, Dreaming of You, was released posthumously in 1995 and was the first Tejano album to hit Number 1 in the United States.

Selena's killer, Yolanda Saldivar, was convicted by a Houston jury. In 2002 Nueces County Judge Jose Longoria ordered that the murder weapon, a .38-caliber revolver, be destroyed and its pieces scattered in Corpus Christi Bay. Some musicologists and fans felt that the gun should have been preserved in a museum for its historical significance, while others were glad to see the destruction of the instrument of the singer's death.

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In the years after Selena's death, the singer's popularity has remained very strong. Numerous honors have been awarded posthumously.

The city of Corpus Christi erected a memorial, Mirador de la Flor (“Overlook of the Flower”), which included a life-sized bronze statue, to the fallen singer in 1997. That same year, a movie about her life—Selena—was released and starred newcomer Jennifer Lopez in the leading role.

The Quintanilla family opened the Selena Museum in Corpus Christi in 1998, and in 2001 she was inducted into the Tejano R.O.O.T.S. Hall of Fame. She is also a member of the South Texas Music Walk of Fame.

On April 7, 2005, a tribute concert "Selena ¡VIVE!" was broadcast live from Houston's Reliant Stadium. Attended by more than 65,000 fans, the event featured famous artists performing Selena's songs. The live broadcast on the Network became the highest-rated Spanish-language program in American television history. In 2011 the United States Postal Service honored Selena as a “Latin Legend” with the issue of a memorial postage stamp. In April 2015 the city of Corpus Christi hosted the first annual , a two-day festival celebrating the life and legacy of the singer. A portion of the profits was donated to the Selena Foundation.

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XIV. Soul Stirrers Written by Shelia G. Kidd

The Soul Stirrers was one of Texas’s most innovative gospel groups and pioneers of the contemporary quartet sound. It was the first gospel group to incorporate two lead singers. Their unique , which served as the basis for doo-wop and R&B, set the pace for gospel and pop vocal groups making the Soul Stirrers forefathers in the development of R&B.

The musical group traces its beginnings to two different quartets. Silas Roy “Senior” Crain had been performing since the mid-1920s in Trinity, Texas, when he formed a quartet with some of the other teens in his church and named themselves the Soul Stirrers after an audience member told Crain how their music The Soul Stirrers in 1943. The group pioneered the modern gospel had stirred his soul. When Crain’s group fell apart, he sound with innovative arrangements and the use of two lead relocated to Houston. singers. Left to right: (top row) James Haywood Medlock, R. B. Robinson, and R. H. Harris; (bottom row) S. R. Crane, T. L. Bruster, There he met Walter La Beaux who, in September and J. J. Farley. R. H. Harris Collection, Texas Music Museum. 1929, had organized the New Pleasant Green Gospel Singers with himself as , Edward Allen Rundless, Jr. (second tenor), C. N. Parker (baritone), and W. R. Johnson (bass). Upon Johnson’s passing four years later, O. W. Thomas took his place and a year later, upon Parker’s passing, he was replaced by Crain. Crain joined La Beaux’s group with the condition that they change the name to the Soul Stirrers.

In 1934 La Beaux left the group to preach the gospel and was replaced by A. L. Johnson. Two years later, in 1936, Jessie James (J. J.) Farley (bass) joined the group. It was this same year that Alan Lomax first recorded the group for the . About this time M. L. Franklin of Trinity, Texas, sang second tenor.

Around 1937 first tenor Rebert H. Harris of Trinity, Texas, joined the group. Harris, who admired blues artists such as Leroy Carr, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Lil Green, brought a new sound to the group’s old-fashioned harmonies. Soon Crain recruited another tenor, James Medlock, who served as the second lead vocalist to complete the classic early lineup of the group. Under Harris’s direction, the group began to develop their innovative modern gospel style by creating the “ lead” concept by combining four-part harmony and two alternating lead vocalists. His other concepts included introducing ad-libbing lyrics, singing in delayed time, repeating words in the background, and having its members move about stage in time to the music. These new ideas differentiated the Soul Stirrers from other groups, causing their popularity to quickly grow. The group moved to Chicago in the late 1930s and toured the gospel circuit across the country. In 1939 they began performing on radio alongside the Stamps-Baxter Quartet, one of the superior gospel groups by the 1940s. During World War II they played in USO shows. The group’s popularity led them to perform at the White House for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

In 1948 the Soul Stirrers made their first public recording with Aladdin, and in 1950 they were signed to Specialty Records where they recorded more than twenty tracks for their album Shine On Me, including their debut single “By and By,” which was followed by originals “I’m Still Living on Mother’s Prayer” and “In That Awful Hour.” Through the years the group was joined by other great singers such as Leroy Taylor, Julius Cheeks, T. L. Bruster (Brewster), and R. B. Robinson, founder of the Highway QCs, which drew several of the group’s lead singers.

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The 1950s brought many changes to the Soul Stirrers. Near the end of 1950, Harris left the group and was replaced by nineteen-year-old , singer with the Highway QCs, who had idolized and modeled his style after Harris. The group also added Paul Foster to be the new second tenor (replacing Medlock). In 1951 the Soul Stirrers recorded their first album featuring Cooke, entitled Jesus Gave Me Water. Cooke’s youthfulness, angelic voice, and idol good looks brought a sexual to the group causing women, even in this religious setting, to faint. Their single “” featuring Cooke became a classic version of the hymn. By the mid-1950s longtime member Bruster retired and baritone Bob King joined the group as their first instrumentalist. He played guitar in addition to singing vocals, thus making the Soul Stirrers the first gospel group to use instrumental backup.

From 1951 to 1956 Cooke had a successful and popular career with the group. By 1956 he was transitioning into a pop singer. That year he recorded and released a secular song, “Lovable,” which closely resembled the Soul Stirrers classic “Wonderful.” The song was released under the name of Dale Cook, a name adopted by Sam so as not to offend his gospel following. He left the Soul Stirrers in 1956 to pursue what would become a successful solo career in secular music. In 1960 Cooke pondered a return to gospel and attended several Soul Stirrers concerts. In 1962 he sang at an anniversary reunion in Chicago only to be treated with disdain by the audience. Cooke was shot and killed on December 11, 1964, by a motel manager who reported that she was threatened by him.

After Cooke’s departure in 1956, he was replaced by former Highway QC alumnus, Johnnie Taylor. Just as Cooke had modeled himself after Harris, so did Taylor after Cooke. However, his popularity or fan devotion never equaled that of Cooke’s. Taylor’s most notable recording with the Soul Stirrers was “Stand by Me Father,” which was later restyled to be Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me.” Having had previous experience in R&B, Taylor moved on in 1963 to sing and record secular hits such as “Who’s Makin’ Love” (1968), “Take Care of Your Homework” (1968), and “ Lady” (1976). Taylor was replaced by Jimmy Otler. In 1967 Otler was replaced by Willy Rogers.

Since the 1960s the Soul Stirrers continued to tour the United States and Europe as well as make recordings. The group experienced many changes in their lineup, yet never deviated from their high level of quality. Throughout these changes, original member J. J. Farley stayed with the group until his death in 1990. The Soul Stirrers were inducted into America’s Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame in 1988, and in 1989 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame Foundation in 2000. A version of the Soul Stirrers continued to perform into the early twenty-first century.

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XV. Louis Charles Stevenson [Buckwheat, B.W.] Written by Gary S. Hickinbotham

B.W. Stevenson, singer and songwriter, was born Louis Charles Stevenson on October 5, 1949, in Dallas, Texas. He attended Adamson High School in Oak Cliff, where his peers included , Ray Wylie Hubbard, and Steve Fromholz. Under the name Chuck Stevenson he sang with a few local bands until he graduated in 1967 and went to North Texas State University (now University of North Texas) in Denton on a voice scholarship. Operatic singing did not appeal to him, and he left the music program after a year. He subsequently attended Cooke County Junior College (now North Central Texas College) and served a stint in the .

Stevenson returned to Dallas, playing local clubs when he could and working odd jobs. He went to Austin in 1970 to look for work but found none. He then went to Los Angeles to try to sell his songs, but the L.A. labels also passed him by. Sometime in this period his longtime girlfriend left him unexpectedly, and, heartbroken, he wrote some of his best ballads. A representative from RCA who was in Los Angeles heard his songs and signed him in 1971.

Stevenson's first album on RCA was recorded in Chicago and released in 1972. The record included one B. W. Stevenson, the man with “a voice as big as Texas.” Bill Arhos / of his songs that is very popular with his fans today, Austin City Limits Collection, Wittliff Collections, Texas State “On My Own,” but RCA did not promote any songs on University. the album that were written by Stevenson. This was the first misstep in a long series of blunders in producing and marketing his music and voice. Stevenson's talent lay in his ballads and mournful tunes of lost and unrequited love, of which “On My Own” is a beautiful example, but RCA released as a single not one of them but Stevenson's recording of a song about songwriting written by Michael Martin Murphey. The single went nowhere, but “On My Own,” along with a more sincere Murphey tune, “Five O'clock in the Texas Morning,” got the attention of the Austin music scene, and Stevenson was welcomed back as a brother in the progressive country movement. RCA had given him the moniker “Buckwheat,” and the name stuck. “Buck,” as his friends called him, became a regular at the Armadillo World Headquarters and other clubs around Austin, often singing with Kenneth Threadgill, Jerry Jeff Walker, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and other stalwarts of the Austin “redneck rock” era.

RCA had no interest in the Austin music scene and took Stevenson to L.A. for his next recording, Lead Free (1972). This album had an L.A. sound rather than a band sound, thematically jumped from Pennsylvania to Mexico to Memphis and to Jackson, , and also produced no hits. For the third album RCA's producer found a song in the ABC–Dunhill reject pile called “Shambala,” written by Danny Moore. It was perfect for Stevenson's voice, and he was climbing the charts with it as a single when ABC–Dunhill realized its potential and quickly released a version of it by Three Dog Night, even though RCA had negotiated a “lock” on the song.

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As Three Dog Night was very popular at the time, its cover of the tune quickly eclipsed Stevenson's and knocked him off the charts.

This unscrupulous move generated some sympathetic press for Stevenson, but not much else until RCA released “My Maria,” written by Stevenson and Danny Moore as a vehicle to show off Stevenson's powerful and distinctive voice. “My Maria” went to Number 9 on the pop charts for weeks in 1973 and was the most commercially successful of Stevenson's recordings, although he felt it was far from his best work. Nevertheless, it had a compelling sound, so much so that it became the Number 1 Billboard “Country Song of the Year” when Brooks and Dunn covered it in 1996.

The misguided attempts to package Stevenson as something other than what he wanted to be, a Texas musician, continued with the next album on RCA, Calabasas (1974), and with subsequent albums from Warner Brothers and MCA. Calabasas was critically acclaimed, but its over-produced sound was difficult to reproduce onstage, and although Stevenson toured extensively to promote it, his heart was not in it. He grew discouraged and, already fond of food and drink, began to drink excessively. Warner Brothers and MCA also attempted to categorize him as a pop musician on the next five albums that he recorded, with fewer and fewer of his songs on the records. By the time his ninth major-label album was released in 1980 and Stevenson was free of his contracts, the progressive country scene had faded. Although he returned to Texas for a while, there were no further recording opportunities available to him. He spent much of the 1980s in Los Angeles but occasionally played in clubs in Dallas and Austin, trying to find a label that would allow him to be himself.

Stevenson returned to Texas once again in 1987 and went into the studio on his own. He recorded some new songs and some old ones, including “On My Own.” This was the first time his songs were recorded the way he wanted them produced, and the first time all but one of the songs on an album were his. Willis Alan Ramsey produced some of them with Austin musicians, and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section played on others. Many of Buck's old friends joined him on some tracks, including Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Steve Fromholz, Christine Albert, , , Bobby Rambo, John Inmon, and . Stevenson was finally happy with and proud of one of his albums, his tenth. Though the record, called Rainbow Down the Road, was beautiful, the initial attempts to get major labels interested in it were unsuccessful.

Before the album was completed, however, Stevenson fell ill, in February 1988. At first he thought he had the flu, but the diagnosis was endocarditis, an inflammation of his heart that was eating away one of its valves. In April he went to the VA hospital in Nashville for a valve-replacement operation. The replacement was successful, but Stevenson never woke up from the anesthetic and passed away forty-eight hours later, on April 28, 1988. He left his wife, Jan, and their three children. B. J. Thomas sang at his funeral at Laurel Land Memorial Park in Dallas, where also rests.

Just before the operation, Stevenson's manager and friend, Harry Friedman, had promised that he would personally see to it that the new record would be released and on the shelves in record stores. After much effort, with the last overdubs and mixing done after Stevenson's death, Rainbow Down the Road was released as a CD on Amazing Records in 1990 (not 1970 as some catalogs indicate). Out of print today, it is a sought-after collector's item, a hint of what might have been. The much-beloved Buck Stevenson, the man with "a voice as big as Texas," never got to hear it.

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XVI. John Townes Van Zandt Written by John McVey and Laurie E. Jasinski

Townes Van Zandt, singer and songwriter, was born John Townes Van Zandt in Fort Worth on March 7, 1944. He was the son of Harris William and Dorothy (Townes) Van Zandt. The Van Zandts were a wealthy family whose ancestors were among the founding families of Fort Worth. The law school building at the University of Texas at Austin, Townes Hall, bears the mother's family name. Van Zandt attended a private school in Minnesota and later the University of Colorado. Instead of law school and a future in the family oil business, he opted for a rootless life as a roaming singer and songwriter.

Once claiming that he wanted to know what it was like to fall, he sat on his fourth-floor balcony during a party and leaned slowly backward until he dropped. He came through without injury, but his family submitted him for psychiatric evaluation. The doctors diagnosed him as a “schizophrenic–reactionary manic depressive” and gave him insulin shock therapy, Townes Van Zandt, called by some the “poet laureate of Texas,” which is said to have erased his childhood memories wrote songs about the hard experiences of his own life. He influenced many of his contemporary singers and songwriters. and left him without any attachment to his past. Photograph by Niles J. Fuller. Niles J. Fuller Photograph Collection, Despite emotional and psychological problems, Van BCAH: CN 11494. Zandt eventually wore such labels as “poet laureate of Texas,“ “premier poet of the time,” “the James Joyce of Texan songwriting” and “the best writer in the country genre.” He was married three times: to Fran Petters (1965–70; one son); to Cindi Morgan (1978–83); and to Jeanene Munselle (1983–94; one son and one daughter). All of the marriages ended in divorce.

Van Zandt was greatly influenced by Elvis Presley, Sam Lightnin' Hopkins, , , and the early work of Bob Dylan. At the age of fifteen, he started playing the guitar after seeing Elvis on . In the mid-1960s he played regularly at Houston's Jester Lounge. In the late 1960s, through an introduction by tunesmith , he met Nashville producer “Cowboy” , who began a long association with Van Zandt as his producer. Van Zandt recorded and released several albums from the late 1960s through the early 1970s, including , Townes Van Zandt, Delta Momma Blues, and High, Low and in Between. In 1975 he starred with other musicians, including and , in Heartworn Highway, a documentary film.

He wrote songs in a narrative style about his own experiences, including alcoholism, depression, and life on the road. In 1981 his song “,” recorded by Emmylou Harris with , reached Number 3 on the country charts. His best-known piece, “,” speaks of life on the road and hope for redemption. In 1983 a featuring Willie Nelson and made the song Number 1 on the Billboard country charts.

Van Zandt's impression on other singers and songwriters was profound. Such performers as , , Emmy Lou Harris, , and Steve Earle fell under his influence. Earle proclaimed him “the best songwriter in the whole world.”

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Van Zandt's impact even extended to the grunge rock band Mudhoney. He joked that he “was the mold that grunge grew out of.”

He engendered the same devotion in a loyal following of fans that some have called “cult-like” and “quasi- religious.” He received critical acclaim, but the reclusive songwriter preferred to perform in mostly small venues. He did, however, tour as the opening act for The Cowboy Junkies in 1990.

Years of alcoholism, drug , and bouts of depression took their toll. Van Zandt was planning to record a new album on Thurston Moore's (of Sonic Youth) Ecstatic Peace label in late 1996 when he injured his hip. After having hip surgery, Van Zandt died of cardiac arrest at his home in Smyrna, Tennessee, on January 1, 1997. His death came forty-four years to the day after that of his idol Hank Williams. Townes Van Zandt was buried in Dido Cemetery in Tarrant County, Texas.

During his life Van Zandt had signed with Tomato Records, the label of his longtime manager Kevin Eggers, which released a number of albums through the years. The label, as The Tomato Music Works Limited, issued many albums posthumously. After the songwriter's death, control of his records became a contentious legal battle between the and the Van Zandt family. A court eventually sided with the Van Zandt heirs. Van Zandt's third wife, Jeanene, along the songwriter's three children, began TVZ Records to reissue the late musician's recordings.

Musicians and musicologists continued to honor Van Zandt's legacy in the early twenty-first century. A documentary film about his life and music, : A Film about Townes Van Zandt, was completed in 2004. He won the Americana Music Association's President's Award in 2007. A new , John Kruth's To Live's to Fly: Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, won ASCAP's award for Best Music Book of the Year in 2008. Van Zandt's song, “Nothin',” was covered in (2007) by and . The album won a Grammy in 2009. That same year, singer–songwriter Steve Earle released a tribute album of Van Zandt's songs, Townes, which won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album in 2010. Robert Plant subsequently recorded another Van Zandt song, “Harm’s Swift Way,” released on his album Band of Joy (2010). Townes Van Zandt was inducted into the Austin Music Memorial in 2010 and the Texas Heritage Songwriters’ Association Hall of Fame in 2012. Sunshine Boy: The Unheard Studio Sessions & Demos, 1971–1972 was released on Omnivore Recordings in 2013. He was an inductee into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame in 2015.

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LONE STAR COUNTRY XVII. Light Crust Doughboys Written by Charles R. Townsend

The Light Crust Doughboys, founded in 1931, have had the greatest and longest success of all the bands in the Fort Worth-Dallas area. The group's history more than three quarters of a century. In 1929 James Robert (Bob) Wills moved from West Texas to Fort Worth and formed the Wills Fiddle Band, a rather unimposing aggregation made up of Wills as fiddler and Herman Arnspiger as guitarist. In 1930 Milton Brown joined the band as vocalist, and in 1931 the Wills Fiddle Band—Wills, Arnspiger, and Brown—became the Light Crust Doughboys.

With help from friends and fans in Fort Worth, Wills persuaded Burrus Mill and Elevator Company to The Light Crust Doughboys (ca. 1940), one of the greatest and most sponsor the band on a radio show by advertising the successful of the western swing bands. Texas Western Swing Hall of mill's Light Crust Flour. After two weeks of Fame Collection, Wittliff Collections, Texas State University. broadcasts, W. Lee O'Daniel, general sales manager of Burrus Mill, canceled the show because he did not like “their hillbilly music.” However, a compromise, inspired by Wills's persistence and the demands of thousands of fans who used Light Crust Flour, brought the group back to the air in return for its members' agreement to work in the mill as well as perform. People listened at noon each day for a couple of licks on 's fiddle and Truett Kimsey's enthusiastic introduction: “The Light Crust Doughboys are on the air!” Then the Doughboys sang their theme song, which began: “Listen everybody, from near and far if you wanta know who we are. We're the Light Crust Doughboys from Burrus Mill.” This went over so well that it became the permanent salutation of the Doughboys.

So impressed was O'Daniel with the band's following that he became the announcer for the show and organized a network of radio stations that broadcast the Doughboys throughout Texas and most of . The Texas Quality Group Network, formed in 1934, included such radio stations as WBAP, Fort Worth; WFAA, Dallas; WOAI, San Antonio; KPRC, Houston; and KOMA, . The show became one of the most popular radio programs in the Southwest. In 1932 the original Doughboys began leaving the band. Brown left the show that year to form the Musical Brownies, and in 1933 O'Daniel had to fire Wills for missing broadcasts, especially because of drinking. In 1933 Wills organized the Playboys in Waco. Of all the early Doughboys, Wills was the most influential. The Light Crust Doughboys never departed from the fiddle–band style that Wills established in the band's formative years. In October 1933 O'Daniel took a new and talented group of Doughboys to Chicago for a recording session with Vocalion (later Columbia) Records. O'Daniel, who deserves much credit along with Brown and Wills for the initial success of the Doughboys, continued as manager and announcer until the mid–1930s. In 1935, when Burrus Mill fired him after a series of disputes, O'Daniel formed his own band, the Hillbilly Boys, and his own flour company, Hillbilly Flour. O'Daniel used this band in his successful bid for the governorship in 1938. The years between 1935 and World War II were the most successful in the long history of the Doughboys. By 1937 some of the best musicians in the history of western swing had joined the band. Kenneth Pitts and Clifford Gross played fiddles.

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The rhythm section consisted of Dick Reinhart, guitar; Marvin (Smokey) Montgomery, tenor banjo; Ramon DeArman, bass; and John (Knocky) Parker, piano. Muryel Campbell played lead guitar. At various times, Cecil Brower played fiddle. Almost from the beginning, the Light Crust Doughboys enjoyed a successful recording career; their records outsold those of all other fiddle bands in the Fort Worth–Dallas area. Their popularity on radio had much to do with their success in recording. By the 1940s the Light Crust Doughboys broadcast over 170 radio stations in the South and Southwest. There is no way of knowing how many millions of people heard their broadcasts. Though the Doughboys played good, danceable jazz, the band was basically a show band whose purpose was to entertain. Their shows took the listeners' minds off the economic problems of the 1930s and added joy to their lives.

In the early months of World War II members of the band went into either the armed forces or war–related industries. In 1942 Burrus Mill ended the Doughboys' radio show. The mill reorganized the band in 1946, but the broadcasts were never as appealing as they had been in the prewar years. The company tried various experiments and even hired and in the hope that somehow the radio show could be saved. By 1950 the age of television had begun, however, and the dominance of radio was over.

With its passing went the radio show that Texans had enjoyed since 1931. The Light Crust Doughboys were no longer "on the air." But the group's demise was only apparent, for in the 1960s the Doughboys' music was revived. In 1973 members of the band took part in the last recording session for Bob Wills in Dallas for the album For the Last Time. During the following decades leader Smokey Montgomery continued to keep the band going in some form. In the late 1980s the Light Crust Doughboys were the first inductees into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame. Throughout the 1990s the Doughboys continued to bring their music to new audiences. joined the group; as co-producer he added horns to their sound in 1993, thus bringing about a new type of "country jazz," influenced by the old swing sound. The declared the Doughboys the "official music ambassadors of the Lone Star State" in 1995. The band received some national recognition when one of their 1930s jukebox classics, "Pussycat, Pussycat, Pussycat," written by Montgomery, was featured in the movie Striptease in 1996. By the late 1990s the Doughboys were also recording gospel music with on Greenhaw's , based in Dallas. Beginning in 1998 the group performed jointly with the Lone Star Ballet in Amarillo, the Fort Worth Symphony, the Dallas Wind Symphony, the Abilene Philharmonic, and other ensembles. They were inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 2000 and continued to release material including the CD Doughboy Rock (2000).

After Montgomery's death in 2001, the Light Crust Doughboys played a fitting tribute at his funeral, held in the Hall of State in Dallas. Art Greenhaw became the band's leader and producer. The history of the Light Crust Doughboys was chronicled by John Dempsey in his book The Light Crust Doughboys Are on the Air: Celebrating Seventy Years of Texas Music, published in 2002. In 2003 the band won a Grammy for their work on the CD We Called Him Mr. Gospel Music: The James Blackwood Tribute Album.

The Light Crust Doughboys, under the leadership of Art Greenhaw, remained very active in the 2000s. Their collaborative work on Southern Meets Soul: An American Gospel Jubilee (2005) earned a Grammy nomination for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Album. In December 2005 the Light Crust Doughboys Hall of Fame and Museum officially opened in Quitman. The facility displayed exhibits of historic memorabilia of the group as well as hosted live performances. The Light Crust Doughboys were inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2006. The following year their release, Light Crust Doughboys 1936–1941, received enthusiastic reviews from western swing fans. The year 2011 marked eighty years of performances for the Light Crust Doughboys.

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XVIII. James Robert Wills Written by Charles R. Townsend

James Robert (Bob) Wills, musician and western swing pioneer, was born near Kosse, Limestone County, Texas, on March 6, 1905. He was the first of ten children of John and Emmaline (Foley) Wills. In 1913 the family moved to Hall County, where they settled on the Ogden Ranch, between Memphis and Estelline. In the early 1920s they moved to a combination farm and ranch between the Little Red River and the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River.

In Hall County Wills learned to play the violin; in 1915 he played at his first dance. He played for ranch dances in West Texas for the next fourteen years, and his life and career were greatly influenced by that environment. During that time he brought together two streams of American folk music to produce western swing. He had first learned frontier fiddle Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys at the Showboat Hotel in Las Vegas (spring 1959). Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame Collection, music from his father and grandfather, but he also Wittliff Collections, Texas State University. learned blues and jazz from black playmates and coworkers in the cottonfields of East and West Texas. He played fiddle music with the heat of blues and the swing of jazz; his new music could as properly have been called western jazz as western swing.

In 1929 Wills moved to Fort Worth and was performing in a medicine show when he met guitarist Herman Arnspiger. That same year the two made their first recordings in Dallas for the Brunswick label. By 1930 he had formed the Wills Fiddle Band with Arnspiger and was performing on radio. Another western swing pioneer, Milton Brown, joined as vocalist. The group eventually became the Light Crust Doughboys and was run by future and United States senator, W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel.

Wills left the Light Crust Doughboys in 1933, and by 1934 he had moved to Oklahoma and was establishing Bob Wills (center) is flanked by Texas Playboys vocalists Tommy his own band, dubbed Bob Wills and His Texas Duncan and Laura Lee McBride. Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame Playboys. He made radio and musical history with his Collection, Wittliff Collections, Texas State University. broadcasts in Tulsa over Station KVOO, though he was embattled in a lawsuit filed by O'Daniel over quitting the Light Crust Doughboys. Wills eventually won the court case. During his years in Tulsa (1934–43) he and his group continued to develop the swinging western jazz he had pioneered in West Texas, adding drums and a of brass and reeds. They made their first recording in 1935 in Dallas for Brunswick (then a label of the American Record Corporation aka ARC or American Record Company).

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Wills's recording of his composition “New San Antonio Rose” in 1940 made him a national figure in . He went to Hollywood that year and made the first of his nineteen movies.

Wills joined the in December 1942. After World War II he had his greatest success, grossing nearly a half million dollars during some years. In 1957 he was elected to the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. In 1968 he was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, although he never thought of his music as “country.”

Wills was married and divorced several times. In 1923 he married a woman named Edna. They had one child. He married and divorced Ruth McMaster in 1936. His marriage to Mary Helen Brown (widow of Milton Brown) in 1938 soon ended in divorce. In 1939 he married Mary Louise Parker. They had a daughter, but the marriage ended in 1941. On August 10, 1942, he was married to Betty Anderson, and they remained married until his death; they had four children.

In 1969 the governor and legislature of Texas honored Wills for his contribution of western swing to American music, one of the few original music forms Texas and the Southwest has produced. The day after the ceremonies in Austin, Wills had the first in a series of crippling strokes. By 1973 his health had improved to the extent that he could lead some of his former Texas Playboys in a recording session for United Artists. The album, For the Last Time: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, sold more copies than any other in Wills's career and was awarded a Grammy by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the highest achievement of any Wills recording or any other recording in the history of western swing. Bob Wills died on May 13, 1975, and was buried in Memorial Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The western swing pioneer has continued to receive accolades after his death. His “New San Antonio Rose” was honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998. On March 15, 1999, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, Bob Wills was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame under the category "Early Influence." His plaque is near those he influenced and those who loved him—Bill Haley, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney, , and others. Other honors include induction into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame (1988) and the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame (2000). In 2007 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and he was an inaugural inductee into the National Fiddler Hall of Fame. Wills is also honored in Texas Music Hall of Fame. Turkey, Texas, in Hall County, where Wills spent much of his childhood, is home to the Bob Wills Museum. A monument on Main Street honors the “King of Western Swing,” and the town hosts the annual Bob Wills Reunion each April.

Wills bridged the gap between the race music of the 1930s and 1940s and rock-and-roll. Along the way he recruited a remarkable stable of talented musicians, including Tommy Duncan, Leon McAuliffe, Johnny Gimble, Tiny Moore, Al Stricklin, and others. His Texas Playboys, inducted with Wills in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, were also honored on their own in the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame in 1990. Wills is one of the few persons inducted in both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His magical sound has endured into the twenty-first century in both musical genres.

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XIX. Orvon Gene Autry Written by Jarad Brown

Gene Autry, the movie star known as the “Singing Cowboy,” was born Orvon Gene Autry in Tioga, Texas, on September 29, 1907. He was the first child of cattle rancher Delbert Autry.

A few years after his birth, the family moved to Ravia, Oklahoma. At age five Gene began singing in the church choir where his grandfather was a minister.

At age twelve he received his first guitar lessons from his mother on a guitar ordered through the Sears and Roebuck catalog. As a young man Autry was hired as a telegraph operator for the Frisco Railroad in Chelsea, Oklahoma.

One evening in 1927, during Autry's shift, Will Rogers overheard the young telegraph operator singing and playing guitar. During World War II, recording and movie star Gene Autry enlisted Rogers was so impressed that he suggested Autry in the Army Air Corps and served as a technical sergeant assigned to various duties such as riding in the Washington Birthday Celebration move to New York and try to find work on radio. Parade in Laredo, Texas, February 22, 1943. Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Prints & Photographs #1/142-D. Autry heeded Rogers's advice but was unable to establish a successful radio career and soon returned to Oklahoma. Autry was billed as the “Oklahoma Cowboy” on Tulsa radio station KVOO. In 1929 he signed his first record deal and returned to New York. Two years later he recorded his first hit, “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine,” which eventually sold a million copies. The recording set an industry record for sales and became part of the first album in history to go gold (500,000 units sold). The next year Autry married Ina Spivey, a schoolteacher from Oklahoma. In 1934 he began his Hollywood career as a singing cowboy in the Western movie In Old Santa Fe, starring Ken Maynard. The following year Autry played the lead in another Western named after his hit song “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.” By 1942 he had established a successful career in recording, touring, and moviemaking. All of these projects were put on hold, however, when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Autry returned in 1946 to his singing and acting career. He also began to invest some of his new-found fortune in television, radio, real estate, and other ventures. In addition, he formed his own publishing company in order to retain the rights to all of his songs.

As the popularity of B Westerns declined, Autry broke new ground as the first film actor ever to become a major television star. In 1949 he recorded “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which became the first record in history to go platinum (1 million units sold). In 1960 he expanded his financial empire further by purchasing the (later the California and then the Anaheim Angels) baseball franchise. Autry was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1969. In 1978 he published his autobiography, Back in the Saddle Again.

In 1981 following the death of his first wife, Autry married Jackie Ellam. Together they helped cofound the Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. The facility has since, through the merger of three interconnected institutions, become the Autry National Center of the American West. In 1995 he sold 25 percent of his baseball franchise to the Disney Corporation.

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At the time of his death on October 3, 1998, in Los Angeles, he had earned an unprecedented five stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. That same year he was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame. His numerous honors include induction into the Nashville , the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. ASCAP honored him with a lifetime achievement award. Gene Autry's birthplace of Tioga, Texas, held its first annual Gene Autry on September 29, 2001, and continued the event for several years. In 2011 he was inducted into the Angels Hall of Fame as that baseball team's first owner.

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XX. Dale Evans Written by Martin Donell Kohout

Dale Evans, actress, singer, and wife of , was born Frances Octavia Smith in Uvalde, Texas, on October 31, 1912, the first child of Walter and Betty Sue Smith, who farmed in Italy, Texas. She discovered in 1954 that her original name was Lucille Wood Smith, according to her birth certificate, but her mother insisted this was a mistake. The same document indicated that she was born on October 30, not October 31, but Dale Evans chose to accept the latter date as her birthday.

The Smith family moved to Osceola, , when Frances was seven, and she entered high school at the age of twelve. At the age of fourteen she eloped with Thomas Frederick Fox, two years older, who left her twice within the first six months of their marriage. After the birth of their son, Tom Jr., the following year, she moved back in with her parents, who had relocated to Memphis, Tennessee. She divorced Fox, who had left a third and final time, in 1929, and married August Wayne Johns. The two divorced in 1935.

Her show-business career began in Memphis while she was working as a secretary for an insurance company. Her boss overheard her singing to herself in Roy Rogers and Dale Evans arrive in San Antonio in to the office and suggested she appear on a perform at the annual Stock Show and Rodeo at the Joe and Harry local radio show the company sponsored. The station Freeman Coliseum. Radio and movie singing personalities like Rogers and Evans helped make “cowboy” music internationally that aired the show then asked her to become a popular and a symbol of Texas and the Southwest. UTSA Libraries regular. Special Collections, No. Z-2492-A-22738.

Evans's efforts to pursue a career as a singer took her from Memphis to Chicago, Louisville, and Dallas over the next few years, but she achieved only marginal success. In Louisville, where she had found work with radio station WHAS using the name Marian Lee, the station manager reportedly suggested she change her name to the more euphonious Dale Evans.

She then moved to Dallas to be near her parents, who had moved back to Italy, Texas, and found a job as a singer on radio station WFAA's Early Birds program. In 1937 she married a third time, to Robert Dale Butts, a pianist and bandleader whom she had dated in Louisville. Butts had moved to Dallas and got a job with WFAA as well. The couple moved back to Chicago, where Butts was hired as a composer-arranger with NBC and Evans joined the Anson Weeks Orchestra for a tour of the Midwest and West Coast.

After the tour she returned to Chicago, where she worked for local CBS affiliate WBBS during the day and sang in clubs at night. Hollywood agent Joe Rivkin heard her on the radio and persuaded her to try out for the female lead in the movie Holiday Inn, starring and .

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She failed to land the part, supposedly because she wasn't a good enough dancer (it went to Marjorie Reynolds instead), but executives at Twentieth Century Fox saw her screen test and signed her to a one-year contract. She had small parts in Girl Trouble and in 1942.

When her contract with Fox expired, she got a job as a vocalist on the Chase and Sanborn Hour radio show, starring Don Ameche, Jimmy Durante, and Edgar Bergen, but her option was not renewed in the fall of 1943. She signed a one-year contract with Republic and landed a singing part in the country musical Swing Your Partner. During the next year she appeared in several films, including Here Comes Elmer, Hoosier Holiday, and In Old Oklahoma (which starred John Wayne), while performing in numerous USO and Hollywood Victory Committee shows.

In 1943 Republic proclaimed its singing Western star Roy Rogers–born Leonard Slye in Duck Run, –the “King of the Cowboys.” Republic head Herbert Yates, inspired by the success of the stage musical Oklahoma!, decided that Rogers's next Western should feature a more prominent role for a female costar. The film was The Cowboy and the Señorita, and Evans won the role despite her lack of experience riding horses. The movie was an immediate success, and Rogers and Evans were paired in four more movies in 1944: Yellow Rose of Texas, Lights of Old Santa Fe, Song of Nevada, and San Fernando Valley.

Evans's marriage to Butts ended in divorce in 1945, and Rogers's wife Arline died of an embolism shortly after the birth of their son Roy Jr. in 1946. The following year Rogers proposed to Evans while they were sitting on their horses waiting to appear in a rodeo in Chicago, and they were married on December 31, 1947, at the Flying L Ranch in Oklahoma, where they had just finished filming Home to Oklahoma.

Rogers and Evans became probably the most popular husband-and-wife team in American entertainment history. By 1951, when their television series The Roy Rogers Show began its seven-year run, they had appeared together in twenty-nine movies; their weekly radio show was a huge hit; and there were more than 2,000 Roy Rogers fan clubs around the world, including one in London with 50,000 members–the largest such club in the world.

Dale Evans also enjoyed considerable success as a songwriter. In addition to Rogers's theme song, “Happy Trails,” she also composed such country and gospel music standards as “The Bible Tells Me So,” “My Heart Went That-a-Way,” “I Wish I Had Never Met Sunshine,” and “Aha, San Antone.”

But Rogers and Evans also had their share of suffering. Their family was a large one–in addition to Evans's son, Tom, Rogers had three children from his first marriage, and the couple adopted three other children and one foster child. They had one child together, a daughter named Robin, who was born in 1950. She was born with Down syndrome and heart defects, and her death two years later inspired Evans to write the first of her many inspirational books, Angel Unaware. Their adopted daughter Debbie, twelve, was killed in a bus accident in 1964, and their adopted son Sandy, eighteen, died the next year after a drinking binge while serving in the military in .

Rogers and Evans attempted to revive their flagging popularity in 1962 with the short-lived Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show, but eventually retired to Apple Valley, California, and devoted themselves to the Roy Rogers- Dale Evans Museum there. (The museum moved to neighboring Victorville in 1976.) Evans continued to write books testifying to her Christian faith and appeared at numerous religious meetings. The Texas Press Association named her Texan of the Year in 1970, and she was named to the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in 1995. She and Rogers were elected to the Western Music Association Hall of Fame in 1989. She also had three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her final show-business appearance was as the host of a television show called A Date with Dale for the religious Trinity Broadcast Network in 1996. Roy Rogers died in 1998. In 2000 she was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame. Dale Evans died of congestive heart failure in Apple Valley on February 7, 2001. She was buried next to Roy at Sunset Hills Memorial Park in Apple Valley.

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XXI. George Glenn Jones Written by Nick Roland

George Glenn Jones, renowned country music singer, son of Clare (Patterson) and George Washington Jones, was born at Saratoga, Texas, on September 12, 1931. Jones was the youngest of eight children. His father worked as a log truck driver in the timberlands of the Big Thicket area surrounding Saratoga. Outside of work, the elder Jones was a heavy drinker who frequently quarreled with his wife and would often force his children to sing songs for him after a night out at the local honky-tonks. Jones’s mother was a religious woman who took her son to church at a local Pentecostal congregation. George’s father gave him his first guitar when he was nine years old, and Jones learned to sing and play through his family and at church. In addition to his Pentecostal upbringing, the Grand Ole Opry radio show was a major early influence on Jones. and were childhood favorites.

In 1942 Jones’s father found work as a pipefitter in the shipyard at Beaumont. In the wartime boom- town, young was exposed to the Country music legend George Jones of Saratoga, Texas, ca. 1960s. music of the proliferating working-class honky- Courtesy of Dragon Street Records, Inc. tonks. He first played for money at a penny arcade on Pearl Street and soon became a regular busker on the streets of Beaumont. After discovering that he could earn money as a musician, Jones launched a professional musical career and never completed a formal education beyond the seventh grade. As a teenager, he first played on the radio for KTXJ in Jasper and he performed regularly in rowdy East Texas honky-tonks. At the age of eighteen he married his first wife, Dorothy Bonvillion, and she soon became pregnant. The marriage ended when Dorothy filed for divorce in July 1951, charging Jones with being a violent alcoholic. Jones was ordered to pay child support and quickly fell behind on the payments, for which he was jailed in September 1951. His first daughter, Susan, was born in October, and at a judge’s suggestion Jones joined the United States Marine Corps in November 1951 to avoid further jail time. He was stationed in San Diego, California, and served in the Marines until November 1953.

Upon his discharge from the Marines, Jones returned to East Texas. In early 1954 he signed with , founded by Jack Starnes and Harold Wescott “Pappy" Daily, and Daily became his manager and producer. “No Money in This Deal” was released as Jones’s first single under the Beaumont area Starday label in February 1954. Although the song failed to chart nationally, it was reviewed favorably in Billboard. During the early 1950s Jones performed regularly on KNUZ’s Houston Jamboree, played honky-tonk gigs in Texas and Louisiana, and worked as a disc jockey on KTRM-Beaumont. It was while working at KTRM that Jones reportedly acquired one of his nicknames, “The Possum,” due to his close set eyes and wide grin. In September 1954 he married his second wife, Shirley Ann Corley. She bore him two sons over the course of their marriage, Jeffrey Glenn Jones in October 1955 and Bryan Daily Jones in July 1958.

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In October 1955 “” became Jones’s first Top 40 hit, peaking at Number 4 on the Billboard country charts. As a result of his rising popularity, Jones was invited to become a regular cast member on the Louisiana Hayride in 1956, where he often shared the nightly lineup with Elvis Presley.

Jones briefly delved into rockabilly in the mid-1950s under the moniker Thumper Jones. During the early part of his career he did considerable songwriting as well. After making his first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry in early 1956, Jones became a regular member in August of that year. In 1959 he achieved his first Number 1 single with “White Lightning,” a song authored by another Starday musician, Jiles P. “” Richardson. Around that time, Jones made his home in Vidor just north of Beaumont.

The next decade saw Jones emerge as a major country music star, with more than fifty Top 40 hits, including three Number 1 singles—“Tender Years,” “She Thinks I Still Care,” and “Walk Through This World With Me.” In May 1964 Jones appeared alongside artists such as , Bill Monroe, and Buck Owens in the National Country Music Cavalcade of Stars, a two-day country music concert at Madison Square Garden that reportedly drew more than 25,000 fans. Despite Jones’s popularity and commercial success, his personal life became increasingly marred by drug and alcohol use. In 1968 Shirley Jones filed for divorce, blaming Jones for “harsh and cruel treatment”; Jones moved to Nashville.

In February 1969 George Jones married Tammy Wynnette, at the time an up-and-coming country music singer with a string of recent Number 1 hits to her credit. By the early 1970s Jones had severed ties with his longtime producer , and Jones and Wynnette lived in for a time. In October 1970 Wynnette gave birth to a daughter, Tamala Georgette. Until their divorce in 1975, the marriage of “Mr. and Mrs. Country Music” was notoriously rocky but artistically productive. between Jones and Wynnette such as “We’re Gonna Hold On,” “Golden Ring,” and “Near You” became canonical country songs, and the duo went on to sing together frequently even after their divorce. Jones also had Number 1 hits with “The Grand Tour” in 1974 and “The Door” in 1975.

In the late 1970s Jones’s drug and alcohol abuse, largely blamed for his failed marriages, spiraled increasingly out of control. He earned the dubious nickname “No Show Jones” during this period as a result of the dozens of shows at which he failed to appear, and he declared bankruptcy in 1979. Arrests for failure to pay child support and charges of assault also highlighted Jones’s downward spiral. In spite of his nearly incapacitating at the time, his Number 1 hit and perhaps most well-known song, “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” garnered Jones the Country Music Association Song of the Year Award for 1980, and he won a Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male. In the early 1980s he also had Number 1 hits with “Still Doin’ Time,” “I Always Get Lucky With You,” and a duet cover of Willie Nelson’s “Yesterday’s Wine” with Merle Haggard.

In 1983 Jones married Nancy Sepulvado, a divorcee from Louisiana. Under Sepulvado’s care, Jones finally turned the corner on his . In contrast to his reputation in previous years, during the 1980s and 1990s Jones became a dedicated touring musician. Although 1983‘s “I Always Get Lucky With You” was his last Number 1 single, Top 40 hits continued, and Jones frequently collaborated with artists from both country and other musical genres who viewed him as an American musical treasure and a representative of a bygone era of hard country. Jones’s turnaround rescued his reputation in the country music industry, and in 1992 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1994 Jones underwent triple bypass heart surgery. He published his autobiography, I Lived to Tell It All, in 1996.

While Jones never reclaimed the commercial success he enjoyed during the height of his career, he continued to place songs in the Top 40 in the 1990s and 2000s. Jones’s guest vocal on ’s “You Don’t Seem to Miss Me” won the Country Music Association award for Vocal Event of the Year in 1998 and became his last credited song in the Top 20. His May 1999 song “Choices” won a Grammy for Best Male Country Vocal Performance. Shortly before “Choices” was released, Jones relapsed from his years of sobriety. He was charged with driving under the influence after he wrecked his vehicle in a nearly fatal one-car accident in Tennessee. Officers responding to the incident found a half-empty liquor bottle in the passenger seat next to Jones.

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After undergoing court-ordered treatment, Jones continued to tour and to refrain from drugs and alcohol. In 2008 he was a Kennedy Center Honoree. He was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in 2010, and in 2012 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. On April 18, 2013, he was hospitalized in Nashville with a high fever and irregular heartbeat, forcing the cancellation of scheduled shows in Georgia and Virginia.

Jones died at the age of eighty-one on April 26, 2013, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. He was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Nashville. The George Jones Museum opened in downtown Nashville in 2015.

George Jones is widely considered the greatest country singer of all time. He was often seen as a representative of traditional or hard country as opposed to the pop-crossover sound favored by the Nashville recording establishment. His masterful use of melismatic vocal technique reflected the traditional religious singing traditions of his upbringing, and he represented in both song and lived experience what country music historian Bill Malone has referred to as the “moral and social dichotomy” of working-class southern life. In addition to multiple awards, over the course of his career Jones was credited with more than 140 songs in the Billboard Top 40, including thirteen Number 1 singles.

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XXII. Ace in the Hole Band Written by Grant Mazak

The Ace in the Hole Band has been country superstar George Strait’s since 1975. The original members, which included George Strait (vocals and guitar), Ron Cabal (lead guitar), Mike Daily (), Terry Hale (bass), and drummer Ted Stubblefield (who was replaced early on by Tommy Foote), met while they were students enrolled at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University).

The Ace in the Hole Band rose from the ashes of Stoney Ridge, a group that had included Daily, Hale, Cabal, Foote, and vocalist Jay Dominguez. In July 1975 Dominguez left the band, and Foote moved to

Houston after graduating from the university. The George Strait and the Ace in the Hole Band perform for the first time remaining members began posting flyers across at Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos on October 13, 1975. campus to advertise for a new vocalist. George Strait, Left to right: Mike Daily (steel guitar), Ron Cabal (lead guitar), at the time a young agriculture major, auditioned and George Strait (vocals and guitar), Ted Stubblefield (drums), Terry Hale (bass). Courtesy Terry Hale Collection. was quickly hired as lead singer.

The band played its first show as Ace in the Hole on October 13, 1975, at Kent Finlay’s Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos. Ted Stubblefield, who also was a member of Kent Finlay’s group, High Cotton Express, played drums for both bands for a short time. Foote returned to San Marcos to replace Stubblefield by January 1976, and the core Ace in the Hole lineup was formed.

During the mid-1970s Cheatham Street Warehouse provided a particularly fertile environment for the development of such groups as Ace in the Hole. Finlay booked a variety of dynamic young acts including , Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jerry Jeff Walker, Alvin Crow, and others, and the bands that played at Cheatham Street often came by on their nights off to listen to each other and engage in a spirit of friendly competition. Ace in the Hole’s main hometown competition at that time was Joe Bob’s Bar and Grill Band, led by Joe Bob Burris, a talented singer-songwriter who continued to perform locally in the early 2000s. Ace in the Hole played nearly every week at Cheatham Street for six years during the mid-to-late 1970s before it broke into the national market in the early 1980s.

From the outset Ace in the Hole played mainly traditional country music, including honky-tonk and western swing, by such artists as Bob Wills, Hank Williams, , George Jones, and Merle Haggard. In fact, the group had difficulty finding work in Austin venues, which were caught up in the “Progressive Country” movement at the time and had little interest in hiring a more traditional country band.

Around 1976 Mike Daily’s father, Don Daily (son of Pappy Daily, founder of D Records in Houston), decided to record the band. He arranged for the group to go to Doggett Studios in Houston Heights and cut the tune “The Honky Tonk Downstairs.” On the flip side was Strait’s own composition, “I Just Can’t Go on Dying Like This.” The single was released to regional radio stations throughout the Southwest, and it received on stations in Houston and Oklahoma.

Approximately one year later the band had added Bill Mabry on fiddle, and it recorded the song “Lonesome Rodeo Cowboy,” along with another Strait tune, “That Don’t Change the Way I Feel About You.”

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Within a year the band cut Blaker’s “The Loneliest Singer in Town” and another Strait composition, “I Don’t Want to Talk It Over Anymore.” During this session the band also recorded “Right or Wrong” and an instrumental version of “Little Liza Jane.” The three George Strait compositions were later released on the multi-platinum MCA box set George Strait: (1995).

In 1977 Cheatham Street Warehouse owner Kent Finlay, local songwriter Darrell Staedtler, and George Strait drove to Nashville in hopes of making connections for Strait in the Nashville music scene. At the time most Nashville record executives were promoting a pop-oriented country sound and were not interested in Strait’s more traditional approach. Nevertheless, Strait did record several good demos in Nashville and made some initial contacts that would eventually lead to his first record deal.

The most important contact Strait made in Nashville was reconnecting with MCA Records A&R man, Erv Woolsey, who had once owned the Prairie Rose nightclub in San Marcos where Ace in the Hole had performed. Through Woolsey, Strait would later sign his first record deal with MCA in 1981. By 1984 he had become one of the most popular entertainers in country music, and Woolsey left MCA to become Strait’s full-time manager. Strait’s commitment to more traditional country music would revolutionize the mainstream country market and inspire legions of younger “neo-traditional” artists.

The 1980s brought several changes to Ace in the Hole as Strait began touring nationally. In 1983 piano player Rondal Huckaby joined the group, and drummer Roger Montgomery replaced Tommy Foote, who became road manager, a job he continued to hold in 2014. In 1984 Ron Cabal left the band and was replaced by Rick McRae and Benny McArthur on . Fiddler Gene Elders joined the band in 1985, and in 1987 Mike Kennedy became the group’s newest drummer. In 1990 Cabal wrote a book entitled A Honky Tonk Odyssey, My Eight Years with George Strait. Cabal was later killed in 1996 in a hit-and-run accident outside of Austin.

Although Ace in the Hole is primarily George Strait’s touring band, the members also have recorded with Strait in the studio. Perhaps the most notable of their studio recordings was Strait’s 1987 release, “,” which was the first country song ever to enter the charts at Number 1. The band members also were featured in Strait’s critically and commercially-acclaimed 1992 movie Pure Country. In 1994 the Ace in the Hole Band recorded a self-titled CD without Strait that featured guest vocalists Darrell McCall and . The band’s success and solid reputation continued into the 2000s as they maintained a steady touring schedule with Strait, who was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2006 and named Artist of the Decade by the in 2009. That same year, in June 2009, Strait and Ace in the Hole headlined the opening of the new Cowboys Stadium (now AT&T Stadium) in Arlington to an audience of more than 60,000 fans.

In 2013 Strait announced that he was retiring from touring. Strait and the Ace and the Hole Band subsequently embarked on their final tour—“” tour. Their last performance took place on June 7, 2014, at AT&T Stadium in Arlington before more than 104,000 fans. It was the highest-attended single-show concert in the United States and provided the largest gross in sales. That concert also produced a live album and DVD. Strait won Entertainer of the Year awards from the Country Music Association (2013) and Academy of Country Music (2014).

As of 2015 the Ace in the Hole Band included Terry Hale (bass guitar), Mike Daily (steel guitar), Ron Huckaby (keyboards), Rick McRae (lead guitar and fiddle), Benny McArthur (lead guitar and fiddle), Mike Kennedy (drums), Gene Elders (fiddle and mandolin), Joe Manuel (acoustic guitar), John Michael Whitby (keyboards and guitar), and Thom Flora and Marty Slayton Jordan (backup vocals). Tommy Foote served as road manager. The band continued to perform, and some members also played under the name Texas Jamm Band. Mike Daily records and produces other artists and is active in music publishing with Tommy Foote.

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XXIII. Dave Stone Written by Nolan Porterfield

Dave Stone, innovative radio executive and popular on-air personality, was born David Proctor Pinkston in Post, Texas, on November 11, 1913, the son of James and Bessie (Proctor) Pinkston. When he was still in grade school, the family moved to Slaton, Texas, some fifteen miles from Lubbock. After graduating from Slaton High School, Pinkston enrolled at Texas Technological College (later ) in Lubbock as a journalism major but soon found that journalism was not his field. He transferred to Draughon’s Business College in Brownfield, Texas, thirty miles away.

After graduation, he was hired as office manager and accountant for the Chemical Company in Brownfield and held that position throughout World War II.

In 1933 Pinkston married Violet Marie Martin, and they became the parents of Carolyn Pinkston (now Graves) and James Pinkston. Radio personality Dave Stone sits in front of the microphone and a stack of mail at radio station KSEL in Lubbock, ca. late 1940s. Stone In late 1946 Dave Pinkston and his family moved back conceived of the idea for an all-country music radio station. On September 19, 1953, his idea became a reality when his new station to Lubbock, where he joined the staff of KSEL, a new KDAV in Lubbock went on the air. KDAV has been credited as the radio station, as traffic manager and bookkeeper. Like first station anywhere to program “one hundred percent country most other independent radio stations in those days, music.” Courtesy Darlene Youts. KSEL followed the usual practice of block programming, offering a variety of shows throughout the day that appealed to a broad range of listeners—an early morning farm program; followed by a “breakfast club” and cooking shows for women; Wayne Allen’s 950 Club, which featured pop and records; soap operas; news; sports; even Sepia Parade, a daily afternoon show devoted to records by black artists. At that time, country music on KSEL was limited to the thirty-minute Western Roundup, heard each day from 3:00 to 3:30.

As it happened, the deejay who hosted Western Roundup harbored a great dislike for country music. Passing Pinkston in the hall one day, he said, “Dave, I happen to know you got a lot of country records and you like country music and you can take that program.” Despite Pinkston’s protests that he knew nothing about broadcasting, the station manager insisted on the change. Thus “Dave Pinkston” became “Dave Stone,” proved himself a natural on the air, and the program was soon so popular that it was expanded to a full hour. Stone became known to his listeners as “the man with the smile in his voice,” and he began getting offers from other area stations. To keep him at KSEL, executives made him station manager in late 1948. The time-slot was again extended, and Stone initiated a live Saturday night show, known as the Western Jamboree. Audiences quickly outgrew the limited space at KSEL studios, and the show moved several times to larger venues, finally broadcasting from an old wartime hanger near the Lubbock Airport. The show featured such prominent Nashville acts as , the Maddox Brothers and Rose, , and .

With equal enthusiasm, Stone also promoted local and regional artists. , Tommy Hancock, and , among other up-and-coming acts, were given exposure on the Western Jamboree stage and in front of KSEL’s microphones.

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A bit later, Stone was the first to put Lubbock’s Buddy Holly on the air, as part of the Sunday Party, over KDAV. Stone was also highly instrumental in getting a demo tape of Buddy Holly to Decca executives, who promptly signed him to his first recording contract.

The overwhelming success of the Western Roundup and the Western Jamboree on KSEL gave Stone the idea for a highly original business model: a radio station that played only country music. He formed a partnership with a local realtor, Leroy Elmore, and applied to the FCC for a license. A station that played only one type of music was practically unheard of at the time, especially in small markets like Lubbock, and the FCC was reluctant to grant the license. They eventually relented, however, and the license became official in the late summer of 1953. Construction began on studios and a tower at what had been a cotton patch on the southern outskirts of Lubbock, and KDAV went on the air on September 19, 1953. Today, it is generally agreed that KDAV was the first station anywhere to program, as Stone put it, “one hundred percent country music.” With one partner or another, Stone (now often referred to as “Pappy” Stone), established KPEP, San Angelo (1954); KZIP, Amarillo (1955); and KPIK in Colorado Springs, Colorado (1957), each adhering to the all-country format. One of his partners in the San Angelo station was Slim Willet, famous as the composer of “Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes.”

A fair share of later-famous deejays and musicians also passed through the “Pappy” Stone studios, including (KZIP); (KDAV, before his long career at WBAP, Fort Worth); Charlie Phillips (KZIP, co- author of “Sugartime”); Arlie Duff (KPIK, KDAV, composer of “Y’all Come”); and a somewhat disheveled young (KDAV), who always looked as if he slept on a park bench and owned only two shirts, one laundered every second week.

In addition to his regular on-air schedule, Stone also co-hosted, with station manager Hi Pockets Duncan, KDAV’s weekly Sunday Party, two or three hours primarily devoted to local talent. Buddy Holly, still in high school, appeared on the show with fellow student Bob Montgomery (billed as “Buddy and Bob”). Sonny Curtis, who later wrote the theme for the Mary Tyler Moore program, performed on Sunday Party, along with , eventually a top session man in Nashville on steel guitar, plus the still struggling, undeveloped Waylon Jennings, and a host of other youthful aspirants who faded away and were never heard from again.

Soon Dave Stone was booking numerous national touring acts into Lubbock’s Fair Park Coliseum, the , Jones Stadium on the Texas Tech Campus, and area cities where he owned radio stations, promoting their live appearances over those stations. In early January 1955, he brought Elvis Presley to Lubbock for the first of several performances the King made that year in the city (see ELVIS IN TEXAS). Other headliners in country music shows produced by Stone were Ernest Tubb, Johnny Cash, Jim Reeves, , , Jerry Lee Lewis, , —in fact, almost every Nashville star of the time. A true devotee of country music, he formed fast friendships with most of them, and even as their fame grew, they remembered him as the man who had given their careers a welcome boost. His son, James Pinkston, tells of the time the family was vacationing in Los Angeles in the late 1950s. At the time, Elvis was filming Jailhouse Rock. When he got wind that Pappy Dave Stone was in town, he suspended production and brought Stone to the studio, then took him to lunch.

In 1955 Stone and his first wife divorced. Later that year, he married Neola Belle Bass Williams (whom he nicknamed “Pat”), who brought her two children, Vergil Williams and Darlene Williams (now Youts) to the union. After the death of Neola Belle in 1980, Stone remarried his first wife. In the early 1960s he had moved his family to Colorado Springs, Colorado, having established KPIK, where he continued to serve as general manager and also worked a shift on the air. When he retired in the late 1970s, he sold all of his radio properties.

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Stone was inducted into the Country Music Disc Jockey Hall of Fame in Nashville in 1999. The following year he was also honored by inclusion in the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame’s Disc Jockey Hall of Fame in Carthage, Texas. He died on February 18, 2004, at the age of ninety.

After being dormant for many years, the Lubbock call letters KDAV were revived in 1998 by a different company, airing rock-and-roll “” from the 1950s and 1960s.

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XXIV. Willie Nelson and the Birth of the Austin Music Scene Written by Joe Nick Patoski [From Texas Almanac 2012–2013]

Artist Jim Franklin created this poster for the opening of the Armadillo World Headquarters in 1970. It is part of the Texas Poster Art Collection at the Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin. Used by permission.

Over the summer of 1970, a loose collective of hippies, free spirits, and dreamers refashioned the old National Guard armory building at the corner of South First Street and , just across the from , into a concert hall and beer garden.

The Armadillo World Headquarters was all about music, a shared tolerance for marijuana, psychedelic drugs, and cold beer, and like its namesake had a hard-shell interior with a docile disposition. During its first two years of operation, the Armadillo brought in a parade of touring talent who otherwise would have bypassed Texas, including , Captain Beefheart, , Dr. John the Night Tripper, , the Flying Burrito Brothers, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Bill Monroe, and especially Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen.

But it wasn’t until the night of Aug. 12, 1972, when Willie Nelson walked onto the stage of the Armadillo that everything changed. That performance in front of a mixed crowd of hippies and rednecks is recognized as the starting point of the modern Austin music scene.

A vibrant music community was already in the making, articulated by several outsiders who relocated to Austin like Nelson did to make music unfettered by commercial restraints. Most prominent were Jerry Jeff Walker, a New York folkie from the scene who had written a hit song about a New Orleans street dancer called “Mr. Bojangles,” another singer-songwriter from Houston named Guy Clark, whose vivid story songs had been covered by Walker, and a lanky Fort Worth kid with high cheekbones and a taste for liquor named Townes Van Zandt, considered by his peers as the purist songwriter of all.

Walker also fronted the Lost Gonzo Band. Their live recording Viva Terlingua! — made in 1973 in the old Hill Country dancehall at Luckenbach (pop. 3) with fiddler Sweet Mary Egan and a harmonica player named Mickey Raphael — set the standard for rowdy Texas-style . It was the first “made-in-Austin” album to go gold.

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The Lost Gonzos — Gary P. Nunn, Bob Livingston, Michael McGeary, Herb Steiner, Craig Hillis, and Kelly Dunn — performed as the Cosmic Cowboy Orchestra whenever they supported Michael Murphey, the flaxen-haired, buckskin-loving singer-songwriter from Dallas with the two best-selling albums in Austin, Geronimo’s Cadillac and Cosmic Cowboy Souvenir. Murphey came out of the same Rubiyat Club folk scene in Dallas where a husky- voiced belter named B.W. Stevenson from Murphey’s high school, Adamson, developed his robust singing style that led to several hit singles, notably “My Maria,” No. 9 on Billboard’s pop singles chart and No. 1 on the adult contemporary chart in 1973.

Another Adamson grad and Rubiyat regular, Ray Wylie Hubbard, was beginning to make forays down to Austin from Red River, , where he had a music club, while another Rubiyat vet, Willis Alan Ramsey, recorded his debut album for ’s showcasing a country/folk/rock songcraft so exquisite he would never make another album.

Jerry Jeff Walker frequently worked as a solo act at Castle Creek, a listening room a block from the State Capitol that showcased singer-songwriters. Walker arranged for a friend of his from Florida named Jimmy Buffett to sit in between sets before getting his own gig. Castle Creek inspired a song Buffett was crafting called “Wasting Away In Margaritaville” that would become his calling card.

A San Antonio native named Doug Sahm came to Austin from the other direction, relocating from San Francisco where his rock ’n’ roll Tex-Mex flavored band, the Sir Douglas Quintet, had gone after their 1966 pop hit “She’s About a Mover.” A homesick Sahm chose Austin over San Antonio for its tolerance of people who looked and acted different. Besides, he had been playing the city since he was a seven-year-old lap steel guitar prodigy who sang country.

Music-making had historically been a provincial and low-key affair in Austin. Scholz’ Garten, established by August Scholz in 1866 and still the home of the Saengerrunde German singing club, was the city’s oldest drinking establishment.

The abiding appreciation of folk music and traditional music Willie Nelson during his first performance at the could be traced to 1909 when University of Texas assistant Armadillo World Headquarters in 1972. Photo by Burton extension school director John Lomax and professor Wilson; used with his permission. Leonidas Payne co-founded the Texas Folklore Society. Within six months, there were 92 charter members.

Fifty-five years later, Kenneth Threadgill’s filling station and beer joint on North Lamar served as the informal meeting place for folk music aficionados, including a young University of Texas student named Janis Joplin who showed up to sing and play at the weekly hootenannies. When properly inspired and lubricated, Mr. Threadgill would cut loose with yodels in the style of Jimmie Rodgers, country music’s first star.

Before Willie, traditional country music had been largely limited to a few bars and dancehalls such as Big G’s, Dessau Hall, Big Gil’s, and the Broken Spoke, and bands such as Dolores and the Bluebonnet Boys, the Moods of Country Music, Johnny Lyons and Janet Lynn & the Country Nu-Notes, Jess DeMaine and the Country Music Revue featuring Mary Margaret Kyle, and Bert Rivera and the Night Riders, whose leader had several years road experience as Hank Thompson’s steel guitar player.

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Freda & the Firedogs hang out in the Armadillo World Headquarters Beer Garden on July 30, 1972. “Freda” is famed blues performer Marcia Ball. Photo by Burton Wilson; used with his permission.

In 1970, Freda & the Firedogs, a band of like-minded college students led by a dark-haired Cajun pianist named Marcia Ball, aka Freda, tapped into the traditional country zeitgeist and started drawing an unusually strange mix of students, bikers, Mexican families, hippies, hillbillies, and old-time country music fans to the Split Rail Drive-Inn on South Lamar.

Similarly, a small clutch of white kids were drawn to East Austin to soak up the African-American sounds of performers such as Erbie Bowser, Blues Boy Hubbard, T.D. Bell, Hosea Hargrove, and barrelhouse pianist at clubs including the Victory Lounge, the IL, Charlie’s Playhouse, Ernie’s Chicken Shack, and Marie’s Tea Room Number 2. The white blues kids had their own playhouse, the One Knite on Red River Street, a half block from station where the Storm, featuring Dallas’ on guitar and Lubbock’s Lewis Cowdrey on harmonica, and the Nightcrawlers, the band headed by Irving drummer Doyle Bramhall and including Jimmie Vaughan’s little brother Stevie, were part of the weekly lineup.

Mexican-Americans had their own music scenes in clubs along East Sixth Street and in salons de baile on of town where conjunto combos fronted by Johnny Degollado (El Montopolis Kid) and accordion maestro Camilo Cantu and Tejano big bands such as Ruben Ramos, aka El Gato Negro, and the played for dancers.

Rock ’n’ roll bands played cover versions of popular songs at fraternity and sorority parties at The University of Texas, but by the mid-1960s, some bands began to dabble in original music, most significantly , a pioneering psychedelic band led by a yowling Travis High School dropout named that had a national Top 40 hit in 1966 called “You’re Gonna Miss Me” distinguished by an electric jug. The Elevators and like-minded rock bands worked in such places as the Old New Orleans around the UT campus.

By the late 1960s, Austin had its first venue, the at 300 Congress Avenue, inspired by music ballrooms where many Austin musicians and hangers-on had migrated. The Vulcan was the predecessor to the Armadillo, featuring local and touring , folk, and blues artists and

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led to the discovery of an albino blues guitarist from Beaumont named , who opened for blues giant . House bands included Shiva’s Headband and the Conqueroo, an eclectic folk-rock-blues- jazz group. Vulcan shows were promoted with posters created by , the creator of the Furry Freak Brothers, and other underground artists, and Jim Franklin, who made the armadillo into the iconic symbol of Texas hippies.

Willie Nelson became Austin’s music catalyst through his Nashville connections and extensive body of recorded work, and because he represented the kind of country music the rock ’n’ rollers and the folkies were trying to project in their own sounds. At 39, he was older than the student-aged musicians and had experience with publishing and recording contracts. And while he came to town clean-shaven with his hair barely covering the tops of his ears, he adapted quickly, letting his hair grow long, cultivating a beard, dressing on stage in blue jeans, tennis shoes, and T-shirts, with a bandanna around his neck or head, and an earring in his lobe.

The Vulcan Gas Company in Austin was the predecessor to the Armadillo and featured local and touring psychedelic rock, folk, and blues artists. Photo by Burton Wilson; used with his permission.

With bass player Bee Spears wearing a headband and moccasins in Indian fashion and drummer Paul English performing with a black cape with red lining draped over his shoulders, and new addition Mickey Raphael, an Afro-haired harmonica player who had been playing with B.W. Stevenson, Willie Nelson and band fit right in in Austin.

Nelson’s groundbreaking Armadillo performance in 1972 opened with a string of early songwriting hits — “Crazy,” “,” “Funny How Time Slips Away,” and “Nightlife” — to introduce himself to those in the audience who had never heard him before, then demonstrated his guitar-playing prowess as his band alternated sets with young country-rockers Greezy Wheels until closing time at midnight. Afterward, the show moved to a suite at the Crest Hotel across Town Lake that writers Edwin “Bud” Shrake and Gary “Jap” Cartwright had rented, where a guitar pulling ensued featuring Willie Nelson, with University of Texas football coach Darrell K Royal calling out requests and making sure the audience adhered to his rule to respect

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When Willie Nelson first performed at the Armadillo World Headquarters in 1972, artist Micael Priest created his “Willie Nelson in Concert with Greezy Wheels” poster. It is part of the Texas Poster Art Collection at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin. Used by permission.

musicians and the music they were making: “If I can hear you, then you are too loud. If you wish to socialize, please go out on to the front or back porch.” Those who failed to observe the rule were asked to leave.

Willie Nelson’s first show at the Armadillo coincided with the appearance of KOKE-FM, an Austin radio station that coined the phrase “progressive country” to explain its eclectic playlist, which included Ernest Tubb and classic Texas honky-tonk, Bob Wills and the Made-in-Texas sound called western swing, Nashville rebel Waylon Jennings, as well as , , Creedence Clearwater Revival, and lots of Willie Nelson, who also sang jingles for the station and played impromptu shows on the air with friends such as Kris Kristofferson.

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Progressive country would also be labeled as redneck rock, Texas music, and . Whatever it was, the music sounded like nowhere else but Austin.

In 1974, Willie added television to his Austin portfolio when he agreed to perform in front of cameras at Studio 6A on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin for KLRN-TV (now KRLU-TV), the Public Broadcasting Service television channel serving San Antonio and Austin. KLRN program director Bill Arhos, producer Paul Bosner, and director Bruce Scafe secured grant money to film a pilot for a live music series focusing on original Texas music. The pilot led to the first broadcast of Austin City Limits in 1976. The series is the longest running music program on American television.

Willie would proceed to further invest in the Austin music scene by buying the old Terrace Motor Inn on Academy Street, just off Avenue, and by helping transform the Terrace’s convention center into the Texas Opera House, later known as the Austin Opry House, where he built a recording studio, before moving his operations to near Spicewood in the Hill Country west of the city where his empire included the most modern recording facility in Texas, a golf course, a western town, and condominiums.

Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July picnic in 1973 near Dripping Springs was the first of many more to come. Photo by Burton Wilson; used with his permission.

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THE CROSSROADS OF MUSICAL CULTURES XXV. Bacas of Fayetteville Written by Brandy Schnautz and Laurie E. Jasinski

The first Baca Family Band—a Czech musical group— was formed in 1892 in Fayetteville, Texas, by Frank J. Baca. Baca was the son of Joseph Baca, who had emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Galveston in 1860. Frank displayed an amazing musical talent as a child and taught himself to play , alto sax, and slide before formally studying music. He married Marie Kovar in 1881, and they settled at Fayetteville, Texas. They had thirteen children. Frank was a member of the Fayetteville city band and a member of an informal family band before he officially formed the first Baca Band.

These groups performed traditional Czech polka and waltz music. In addition to attracting the talents of all thirteen of Frank Baca's children, the Baca Family Band drew participants from around Central Texas.

Upon Frank's death in 1907, his son Joe, who had won The John Baca Band, ca. 1929. The Baca bands of Fayetteville carried on a long tradition of celebrating their Czech musical local and national cornet competitions, assumed heritage. John Baca was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the leadership of the band. Demand for the group Texas Polka Music Association in 1991. Courtesy John Rivard—The throughout the area as entertainment for festivals and Texas Polka News. special events increased. Among the most noteworthy of their appearances was the band's participation in an enormous celebration at the Fayetteville SPJST (Slavonic Benevolent Order of the State of Texas) at the end of World War I.

In 1920 Joe Baca died, and his brother John assumed leadership of the band. Under John, the Baca Band played on Houston radio station KPRC in 1926 and 1927 and made phonograph recordings on the OKeh, Columbia, and Brunswick labels during the 1930s. The John Baca Band continued until John's death in 1952. Around 1932 John's brother Ray started his own band—thus resulting in the existence of two Baca family bands carrying on the legacy of Frank Baca.

Although the original Baca Band had already made plans for a national tour in 1906 (canceled by the death of Frank Baca), the band did not make its first out-of-state appearance until 1967, when Gil Baca, son of Ray, performed with his band at the Smithsonian Institution's American Folklife Festival. The Gil Baca Band toured Czechoslovakia in 1972 and also performed at the United States Bicentennial Celebration in Washington, D.C., in 1976. The Texas Polka Music Association bestowed Lifetime Achievement Awards on John Baca in 1991 and Ray Baca in 1997. John Baca's son and drummer, Clarence, who had joined his father's band in 1933, formed his own band in 1962 and continued to play until 1998. Ray Baca's son Gil continued to perform until his death in 2008. The Bacas of Fayetteville remain the state's best-known family Czech folk band in Texas. Band memorabilia is on display in the Fayetteville Area Heritage Museum.

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XXVI. Música norteña Written by Dan W. Dickey

Música norteña grew out of música Tejana, or “Tex- Mex music,” the music of Mexican Texans. The development of música Tejana is in turn interwoven with the history of its people from the 1700s to the present.

Without moving from South Texas, Mexican Texans have successively been citizens of Spanish Texas, of Mexican Texas, of the Republic of Texas, of the Confederate States, and of the United States of America. As a result, over the course of two centuries their music has evolved from a blending of early Spanish and Mexican music, French-European dance music styles filtered through Mexico, and Mexican and American popular music. In a cultural sense, from the 1700s until the early 1900s, the Tejanos were a Mexican provincial people, living in an isolated frontier area. Despite the Anglo-American political and economic domination of the area beginning in the mid-1800s, Tejanos retained their cultural ties with northern Mexico. But subsequently, Tejanos migrated from the farms and ranchos of South Texas to the urban industrial centers in Texas and throughout the United States.

Through the process of urbanization, and due to The Díaz Sisters (left to right: Clara, and Mary) played in increasing pressures to adapt to the dominant society, Victoria and San Antonio. Advocate Magazine, Victoria Advocate, Victoria, Texas, June 1907. UTSA Libraries Special Collections, No. Tejanos incorporated aspects of Anglo-American 92-196. culture, but they resisted becoming a totally colonized and absorbed people. They maintained a regional Texas-Mexican culture that is reflected in their musical styles. Little is known about the beginnings of música Tejana. As settlement expeditions emanated from central Mexico in the 1700s and 1800s, Spanish, Creole, and mestizo soldiers and settlers brought their music and dances to the Texas frontier. There are many paintings and diary accounts of fandangos or dances held in San Antonio and South Texas through the 1800s, but they give little description of the sound of the music besides calling it “Spanish” or “Mexican.” Small bands were composed of available local musicians who used whatever instruments were at hand. Violins and pitos (wind instruments of various types) usually provided the melody, and a guitar the accompaniment.

Historical information from the latter part of the century shows, however, that by the middle to late 1800s, Tejano musicians were playing Spanish and Mexican dance music less and were adopting a new European style that was trickling in from central Mexico. In the 1860s Maximilian, backed by his French army, ruled Mexico. In his court in , and in garrisons throughout the country, the European salon music and dances of the time, such as the polka, waltz, mazurka, and schottische, were popular. These styles, disseminated from France, were taken up by the Mexican people in various parts of the country, but nowhere were they more enthusiastically embraced than in South Texas by the Tejanos. South Texas musical culture was similarly influenced by Germans who began immigrating to South and Central Texas in the 1840s.

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These German Texans also favored European salon music and dances. At times they would hire local Tejano musicians to play for their own celebrations. By the late 1800s, informal Tejano bands of violins, pitos, and guitars were almost exclusively playing European salon music for local dances. But taking root in this frontier area, far from its European and Central Mexican source, this music was being thoroughly adapted to the Tejano taste. At the turn of the century the locally performed polkas, waltzes, and schottisches could truly be called Tejano or “Tex-Mex” rather than European.

One of the most unusual styles of música Tejana to begin its development at that time is música norteña (music of the north), or “conjunto music,“ as it is often called. (Conjunto literally means “a musical group.“) Música norteña embodied traits of Tejano music but also arose with the appearance of a relatively new instrument that was rapidly becoming popular among Tejanos on the farms and ranchos of South Texas. As a result, in the 1900s música norteña has become identified with the sound of the German diatonic button accordion. This instrument may have been brought and popularized by the Germans and Bohemians settling in Central Texas or by the Germans working in the mining and brewing industries in northern Mexico. Newspaper accounts show that by 1898 Tejanos in rural areas of the South Texas chaparral were playing their Texas-Mexican polkas, waltzes, schottisches, mazurkas, and redowas on a one-row, one-key accordion.

Norteña accordion music began as a solo tradition. The left-hand buttons of the instrument sound bass notes and chords, while the right-hand buttons give the consecutive notes of a simple scale. Since one person could play both melody and harmony on the accordion, it could substitute for a more costly band of musicians. Hence, partially for economic reasons, but also because of its sweet vibrato, the accordion gradually replaced the violins and pitos as the preferred instrument for dance music in rural areas. But because it was played around the ranchos for laboring people, the button accordion became associated early with working-class Tejanos. As more of them moved from the ranchos to the cities, the instrument was heard in the houses and cantinas of the barrios.

By the 1930s the popularity of the norteña style was such that accordionists, paired with guitarists or bajo sexto (a type of twelve-string guitar known in various parts of Mexico with lower bass strings and a different tuning) players, began recording their own ranch-style Tejano polkas. Following the lead of the guitarreros (singing guitarists) who were making “ethnic records” for American recording companies, the developing conjuntos also began commercializing their style and bringing nostalgia for the rancho to the city.

Although accordion dance music had been popular for some thirty years in rural areas, two men, Santiago Jiménez and Narciso Martínez, were responsible for pioneering the norteña style on recordings and radio broadcasts in the 1930s. Because of their popularity in recordings, their styles became models for a generation of musicians. Jiménez had a smooth, fluid style of playing the polkas and waltzes that he composed, and he emphasized the bass notes and chords of his instrument. Expanding his conjunto, he utilized a guitarist for harmonic accompaniment and added a tololoche or upright bass for a stronger bass line. Martínez, however, had a faster, more ornamented style than Jiménez, and emphasized the treble tones of his accordion. Rarely using the bass notes or chords of his instrument, he delegated the harmonic accompaniment and bass line completely to his accompanying guitarist. Both musicians used the newer two-row, two-key model of accordion.

In the 1940s, incorporating the singing tradition of the guitarreros into their music, these pioneer accordionists began to add song lyrics with duet harmonies to their instrumental dance music. The typical lyrics of lost love, often framed in a rural setting, seemed to reflect the working-class Tejanos' tie with the past on the rancho. By the 1950s música norteña was crystallizing into a mature style as a second generation of accordionists came to popularity in the cantinas, clubs, and dance halls. The conjuntos utilized new technology in their music and made some innovations, but to please their public they basically maintained the Tejano style.

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Tony de la Rosa, from Sarita, Texas, became an extremely popular performer in that decade. He used the more versatile three-row, three-key accordion and was one of the first to add a drum set to his conjunto. Playing in the larger dance halls, groups like his needed more volume, so amplification was used for the four instruments that by this time had become standard in the conjuntos: accordion, bajo sexto, bass, and drums.

Rosa's conjunto was one of the first of scores of groups to perform on what became known as the migrant trail. In the 1950s and 1960s, many poor Tejanos moved from Texas to jobs in agriculture and industry from California to the Midwest, thinking that a change of residence might bring a change in fortunes. Cities like Fresno, California, and Chicago, Illinois, accumulated large communities of transplanted Tejanos who would pay well to have conjuntos play for their weekend dances. After the late 1950s the conjunto of accordion, bajo sexto, electric bass, and drums, playing mostly polkas and valses rancheras (both with romantic lyrics), changed little, though its popularity grew. Flaco Jiménez, son of Santiago Jiménez, was the first to perform norteña music in concerts over the United States and Europe for general audiences and was enthusiastically received.

Through the late twentieth century the norteña style remained conservative and stable with minor refinements in quality and recording techniques. This era is probably best represented by the style of accordionist Ruben Naranjo from the Corpus Christi area, who died in 1998. Música norteña has also had its own category for many years in the Grammy awards, and a perennial winner in the early 2000s was the long- popular group of Ramón Ayala y Los Bravos del Norte. See also CORRIDOS, MUSIC, TEXAS-MEXICAN CONJUNTO.

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XXVII. Narciso Martínez Written by Teresa Palomo Acosta

Narciso Martínez, the “father” of the Texas-Mexican conjunto, was born on October 29, 1911, in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. His parents immigrated to the United States the year of Narciso's birth and settled in La Paloma, near Brownsville, Texas. The family often migrated from one town to another doing farmwork, and Martínez received little formal education. As a child he often listened to orquestas típicas, regional musical groups made up of violin, , bass, and guitar, but he preferred the accordionists who also played in the Rio Grande valley. In 1928 he was married; he and his wife, Edwina, had four daughters.

Martínez took up the accordion in 1928 and became proficient enough to play at dances.

Around the same time he moved to Bishop and Narciso Martínez, known as the “father” of the Texas-Mexican absorbed the accordion-playing traditions of the local conjunto, began playing accordion and recording in the 1930s. He Czechs and Germans during a three-year stay. continued performing into the 1990s. His powerful and fast playing earned him the nickname “Hurricane of the Valley.” Photograph by He purchased his first new accordion, a , in Clayton T. Shorkey, Texas Music Museum. 1930.

In 1935 he switched from the one-row button accordion to the more versatile two-row button version and also began his productive association with Santiago Almeida, a talented bajo sexto (twelve-stringed bass guitar) player. Working together, the two established the accordion and bajo sexto as the basic instruments of the conjunto and became well-regarded as a team. Their pairing led to Martínez's major innovation in the development of the conjunto. He emphasized the right-side melody and treble notes of the accordion, leaving the left-side bass notes to the bajo sexto player. Most other conjunto accordionists soon adopted this change.

In 1936 Martínez and Almeida started recording for Bluebird Records, a subsidiary of RCA. Their first record, “La Chicharronera” (“The Crackling”), became a big hit. After 1936 Martínez became the most prolific of the conjunto stylists, capable of recording up to twenty pieces in one session. He continued to record instrumental polkas, which were his most popular compositions, and other traditional forms such ashuapangos and Bohemian redowas for the Bluebird label until 1940. Some of his early pieces were “La Parrita” (“The Little Grapevine”), “La Polvadera” (“The Dustcloud”), and “Los Coyotes,” all of which reflected his close ties to his rural background. In 1946 he began to record for Ideal. As the house accordionist for this company, he accompanied some of its artists, notably the duet Carmen y Laura. Martínez remained a popular performer throughout the 1940s and was nicknamed “El Huracán del Valle“ (“The Hurricane of the Valley”) for his fast- paced accordion-playing. His Bluebird and RCA recordings were also well-received outside of Texas. In San Francisco, for instance, Basques relished his sound and eagerly bought his records. In the Bluebird Cajun series, Martínez was billed as “Louisiana Pete.” In the label's Polish series, Martínez and his band were marketed as “Polski Kwartet.”

Despite his artistic ability, however, Martínez, like many other conjunto pioneers, never earned much money as a musician, although his recording career during the brought him some financial rewards. Because Mexican Americans, his principal audience, could not afford to pay much, he had to take other jobs to

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support himself throughout his life, including work as a truck driver, field hand, and caretaker at the Brownsville Zoo.

To support himself in the 1930s he often played at outdoor public dances throughout the Valley. He also entertained at bailes de negocio, public “for-pay” dances where women earned money for their families by selling dances to men. In the 1950s, with his popularity still growing, Martínez joined other Mexican-American performers on the Tejano dance-hall circuit. He also toured New Mexico, Arizona, and California, and even played in Chicago. A new generation of conjunto musicians emerged in the mid-1960s, and Martínez returned to work as a field hand in Florida. In 1968 he recorded for ORO Records, a Tejano label in McAllen.

Despite the subsequent emergence of other accordionists, Martínez maintained his importance as a conjunto innovator and received accolades for his work. In 1976, for instance, he was featured in Chulas Fronteras (“Beautiful Borders”), a documentary film about Texas-Mexican music. He was inducted into the Conjunto Music Hall of Fame in 1982 and was honored the following year with a National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to the nation's cultural heritage. The 1985 publication of Manuel Peña's The Texas-Mexican Conjunto, History of a Working-Class Music brought Martínez critical attention. In 1989 Arhoolie Records reissued some of his work; the new record earned him a nomination for the Grammy Award for best Mexican-American recording of the year. In 1991 the San Benito Cultural Arts Center was dedicated to him.

In January 1992 Martínez released 16 Éxitos de Narciso Martínez (“16 Hits of Narciso Martínez”), his last recording, on the R y R Record label in Monterrey, Nuevo León. After he retired from his job at the Brownsville Zoo in 1977, he continued to play on weekends, traveling to engagements from his home in La Paloma. The annual Tejano Conjunto Festival in San Antonio also brought him before a new and larger audience. He was scheduled to appear at the event in May 1992 when illness forced him instead to enter the hospital. He died in San Benito on June 5, 1992. A funeral Mass was offered for him at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in La Paloma, and he was buried at the Mont Meta Memorial Park in San Benito. Martínez was an inaugural inductee into the Tejano R.O.O.T.S. Hall of Fame in 2000. The Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame in San Benito honored him with induction in 2002. He is also an inductee in the Houston Institute for Culture's Texas Music Hall of Fame. In 2014 the Narciso Martínez Cultural Arts Center in San Benito held its twenty-third annual Narciso Martínez Cultural Arts Center Conjunto Festival.

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XXVIII. Joseph Patek Written by David DeKunder

Joseph Patek, Czech bandleader, was born on September 14, 1907, to John and Veronica Patek in Shiner, Texas. His band, one of the best-known Texas Czech polka bands, had its origins with John Patek, Sr., in the 1920s. When he was a boy in Czechoslovakia, John became an accomplished musician. In 1889, at the age of twenty, he immigrated to America and played in community bands. In 1920 he formed the Patek Band of Shiner. As the years went by, his sons took music lessons and joined the band. During the 1930s, John Patek turned over leadership of the band to his oldest son Jim.

The Patek Band first recorded in San Antonio for the Decca label in 1937, but members were unhappy with the results because Joe claimed the recording director had rushed the band. In the early 1940s Joe took over The Patek Orchestra became well-known for its recorded version of the band from Jim and later renamed the group the “The Shiner Song,” which became the unofficial Texas-Czech anthem, Joe Patek Orchestra. and the Texas Polka Music Association recognized the tune as an “all time favorite song” in 1995. The orchestra, under the leadership of After World War II the Patek Orchestra found success Joe Patek, who received a Texas Polka Music Association Lifetime by recording for Martin, an independent San Antonio Achievement Award in 1991, developed its own unique sound with brass band arrangements and enjoyed success on radio and through label. numerous recordings. Courtesy John Rivard—The Texas Polka News. The best-known piece on the Martin label was “The Shiner Song,” a newer version of an old Czech ballad, “Farewell to Prague.” “The Shiner Song” became the unofficial Texas-Czech anthem. The band also recorded “Krasna ” (“Beautiful America”) and “Corrido Rock,” which became popular in the Mexican-American community. In 1995 “The Shiner Song” received special recognition from the Texas Polka Music Association as an “all time favorite song.” This was only the second time such an award had ever been given by the TPMA. From the time Joe Patek took over the band, it recorded more than twenty-four 78 rpms, more than twenty-four 45 rpms, and several tapes and LPs. One of the Pateks' most successful records was the “Beer Barrel Polka,” which sold more than a million copies.

The success of his recordings helped make Patek one of the most popular Czech polka bandleaders in Texas. The band played in rural towns throughout Texas and in larger cities, such as San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Angelo, or wherever a dance or social function was held. Starting in the 1950s, the Joe Patek Orchestra was booked every weekend a year or more in advance. Their increasing popularity can be measured by the way the band members traveled. In the early years under Joe, they used two cars to carry all members and instruments. Then, in the mid-1940s, the band members rode in the back of a panel truck on long benches. In later years, a station wagon was used to pull a trailer for the band instruments. The trailer, decorated with Shiner Beer emblems, became a well-known symbol of the band on Texas highways.

The Patek Orchestra had its own hour-long radio show on KCTI, Gonzales, starting in the mid-1940s. The broadcast was done live every Sunday afternoon for several years from Bluecher Park in Shiner.

In later years, because of the orchestra's busy schedule and longer trips, the broadcast known as the Patek Hour continued with recorded music until 1985.

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Patek is credited for establishing a different style of Texas polka with its harder sound and emphasis on swing. This style, characterized by martial brass band arrangements, differentiated the Pateks and Texas polka from the polka bands in other parts of the United States.

The Joe Patek Orchestra retired after playing its last performance at the Annual Fireman's New Year's Eve Dance on December 31, 1982, at the American Legion Hall in Shiner. Hundreds of people packed the hall to hear this final performance. The last song the orchestra played was “The Shiner Song.”

Joe Patek married Emily Novosad on May 21, 1934. They were married until Emily passed away in the early 1980s. They had seven children. Patek died on October 24, 1987, in Victoria, Texas, and is buried in the Catholic cemetery in Shiner. He owned and operated a grocery store and meat processing plant in Shiner, both of which were still in business in 2011. The TPMA honored him posthumously in 1991 with its Lifetime Achievement Award for “development of a unique sound in Texas polka music.” He is also an inductee in the Houston Institute for Culture's Texas Music Hall of Fame. Joe Patek's Orchestra can be heard on the Arhoolie Records compilation CD Texas Czech Bohemian–Moravian Bands, Historic Recordings 1929–1959.

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XXIX. Little Joe y La Familia Written by Teresa Palomo Acosta

During a more than fifty-year performing and recording history, Little Joe y La Familia has become one of the top Tejano bands. Over the decades, the group has developed a unique style, imbuing its sound with norteño, country, blues, and rock-and-roll music. Established in 1959 by José María de León Hernández, the band was initially known as Little Joe and the Latinaires.

Little Joe, whose musical innovations and leadership has ensured the band’s success, was born in Temple, Texas, on October 17, 1940, to Salvador Hernández and Amelia de León Hernández. The seventh of thirteen children, Little Joe had an early affinity for music. Barely into his teens, he began to play guitar and sing with his cousin’s band, David Coronado and the Latinaires. In the late 1950s, the Latinaires caught the attention of Torero Records, which brought out their first single, the rock-inspired instrumental “Safari, Part I & II.” In approximately 1959, when Coronado left the group, Little Joe became the band’s leader and renamed it Little Joe and the Latinaires.

In the 1960s Little Joe signed recording contracts with several Tejano labels, first with Corona in San Antonio and later with Valmon in Austin and Zarape in Dallas. Little Joe also started his own label, Buena Suerte, which he used to release the band’s Spanish-language recordings, and he used Good Luck Records for English- language recordings. He also established Leona Records and entered into a distribution contract with Freddy Records of Corpus Christi.

In the mid-1960s the Latinaires began their rise to popularity with their first album, Por un amor. Soon afterwards, the band’s Amor bonito also became a hit album. Having achieved a measure of success, the Latinaires recruited Tony “Ham” Guerrero, a talented and musically-trained trumpeter, to join the band. With Guerrero’s addition, the Latinaires began to evolve, ultimately becoming one of the “best-selling” Tejano orquestas.

By 1970 the “latinismo” Little Joe had discovered while traveling and performing in the drew him closer to his cultural roots. Moreover, Little Joe became committed to workers movement led by César Chávez and the movement that had emerged across the American Southwest. Soon, Little Joe changed the band’s name to Little Joe y La Familia, reflecting his dedication to the cultural and political contributions and struggles of his community.

During the 1970s Little Joe y La Familia became the leading band of La Onda Chicana (“Chicano Wave”) period of Tejano music. La Onda Chicana was ushered in with the Chicano movement, a time during which the Tejano orquesta musical tradition reached its pinnacle by combining “once and for all the ranchero and jaitón as well as the Latin and American, into a seamless, bimusical sound.” The high admiration in which the band was held drew top musicians to its ranks. Among them were Joe Gallardo, Luis Gazca, Joe “Mad Dog” Velásquez, Joe Medina, and Gilbert Sedeño.

In 1972, strengthened by the addition of these musicians and a growing musical sophistication, Little Joe y La Familia recorded the album Para la gente (For the people), which became a huge success in the Tejano community. Para la gente, which was filled with lush arrangements, also embodied the Chicano self-identity espoused by the Chicano movement. “Las nubes,” “Qué culpa tengo,” “La traicionera,” and “El disco,” some of the most popular songs on the album, were a synthesis of the best of the ranchero and jaitón traditions, outpacing what other Tejano bands had previously accomplished. “Las nubes” in particular remains a beloved and well-regarded artistic effort in code-switching between English and Spanish (Spanglish) in La Onda Chicana tradition. Little Joe referred to the code-switching as a capirotada or “ensalada de música” (a musical salad).

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By the early twenty-first century Little Joe y La Familia had amassed a large following across the state and nation. The band’s performances drew audiences from 38,000 to 50,000 for concerts at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, the Houston Astrodome, and Fiesta Broadway. In addition to its regular performance schedule, the group appeared at major festivals in Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, , Michigan, New Mexico, and Texas. As of 2015 the band continued to perform in a variety of venues.

The Smithsonian Institute and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have hosted the band during National Hispanic Heritage Week. In 1997 Little Joe received the Governors Award from the Texas branch of NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) for his contributions to the legacy of Texas music. He received the Smithsonian’s Lifetime Legend Award in 2001. Little Joe y La Familia was recognized with a 1991 Grammy for Best Mexican-American Album for Diez y Seis de Septiembre and a 2008 Tejano Album of the Year Grammy for Before the Next Teardrop Falls. The band also received other Grammy nominations in 1988, 1993, 1999, and 2003. Their Recuerdos (2010) won a Best Tejano Album Grammy in 2011.

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XXX. Texas Tornados Written by Gary S. Hickinbotham

Started by Doug Sahm in 1989, the now legendary band, Texas Tornados, was originally fronted by Doug Sahm, Freddy Fender, Augie Meyers, and Flaco Jiménez. Hailed at the time as a “supergroup of Texas legends,” they were signed by Warner Brothers Reprise and recorded their first album Texas Tornados in 1990 at the Fire Station Studios in San Marcos. The album hit Number 5 on the country charts, and a song on that album, “Soy de San Luis,” won the 1991 Grammy for Best Mexican-American Performance. The album was also released in an all- Spanish version titled Los Texas Tornados.

Sahm and Meyers of San Antonio had first gained prominence in the Sir Douglas Quintet in the mid- 1960s. San Antonio accordionist Flaco Jiménez was the son of conjunto legend Santiago Jiménez, Sr., and The Texas Tornados (front of stage, left to right) Augie Meyers, Doug Sahm, Freddy Fender, and Flaco Jiménez. Other longtime band Fender (born Baldemar Huerta in San Benito) made members include Speedy Sparks (bass), Oscar Tellez (bajo sexto), early strides in rock-and-roll as “El Bebop Kid” in the Ernie Durawa (drums), and Louie Ortega (guitar). Photograph by late 1950s and struck gold as a country and cross-over Dan Flores, Ernie Durawa Collection, Wittliff Collections, Texas State artist in the mid-1970s. Together they brought a blend University. of Tex-Mex rock, country, R&B, and conjunto that defined their unique sound and garnered glowing reviews. Reprise released four more Tornados albums, Zone of Our Own (1991), which was nominated for a Grammy; Hangin’ on by a Thread (1992); The Best of Texas Tornados (1994); and 4 Aces (1996). A song on the 4 Aces album, “Little Bit is Better Than Nada,” was used as the theme for the Kevin Costner movie Tin Cup (1996). The band toured extensively to promote their releases. In 1999 the Virgin label released Live from the Limo, a recording of a 1998 live show at Antone’s club in Austin.

The Tornados slowed down for a time when Doug Sahm died unexpectedly in 1999. Freddy Fender’s death in 2006 further depleted the front line complement. However, the 2005 New West Records release on DVD of the group’s 1990 Austin City Limits appearance, Texas Tornados—Live From Austin Tx, kept the group’s name in front of the public. During this time Doug’s son Shawn became a member of the band. Shawn began producing recordings by the Tornados, including unrecorded songs by Doug and new ones by Freddy. These recordings were released as an album titled ¡Está Bueno! in 2010 on Ray Benson’s Bismeaux label.

In the 2010s the Texas Tornados continued to perform, fronted by Shawn Sahm, Augie Meyers, and Flaco Jiménez. Several of the original sidemen were still with the band, including Louie Ortega (guitar), Speedy Sparks (bass), and Ernie Durawa (drums). Texas Tornados: A Little Bit is Better Than Nada—Prime Cuts 1990–1996, a two-CD set featuring remastered album cuts, rarities, and unreleased tracks, was released in 2015.

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XXXI. West Side Sound Written by Allen O. Olsen

An overlooked form of Texana and Americana music, San Antonio’s West Side Sound has been a mainstay of the River City and Texas for more than fifty years. This intercultural genre originated in the cantinas, house parties, and night spots on both the city’s east and west sides during the late 1950s. Young musicians of the city’s major ethnic groups—Chicano, African American and Anglo—went beyond the incipient racism of the period to create an original form of music that has developed from the horn-driven piano triplet R&B and rock- and-roll core to later incorporate conjunto and traditional country and western.

Early innovators included Charlie Alvarado and the Jives, the Pharaohs with Randy Garibay, Mando and the Chili Peppers with Mando Cavallero, the -Kings with Frank Rodarte, Sunny and the Sunliners featuring Sunny Ozuna, Sonny Ace and the Twisters, Rudy T, the Royal Jesters, Denny Ezba and the Goldens with Augie Meyers, Doug Sahm, the Markays featuring Rocky Morales, Clifford Scott, as well as Spot Barnett’s 20th Century Orchestra. Each was heavily influenced by early rock-and-roll, rhythm and blues, as well as Louisiana . Some of them were fortunate enough to back up national touring acts on the “Chitlin’ Circuit.” Doug Sahm, Spot Barnett, and Rocky Morales were regularly asked by Johnnie Phillips, owner of the Eastwood Country Club, to fill in temporary vacancies in the house band, and Morales became part of the Eastwood house band in the early 1960s backing up the likes of Redd Foxx’s comedy show and singer Della Reese. Barnett’s 20th Century Orchestra was the house band at Club Ebony. During the late 1950s many of these artists recorded for the local label including Sahm on “Why, Why, Why,” Barnett with “20th Century Part 1,” and Charlie and the Jives’ “For the Rest of My Life.” The West Side Sound received national attention in both 1963 and 1965 with Sunny and the Sunliner’s (still going by the name Sunny and the Sunglows) rendition of “Talk to Me” in 1963, which earned them an appearance on American Bandstand, and the Sir Douglas Quintet’s “She’s About a Mover” in 1965.

While purists of the West Side Sound maintain that the genre has remained strictly within the saxophone tradition backed by piano triplets, it has been argued that the music developed to incorporate other intercultural forms. This became apparent in the early 1970s when some of the musicians, including Sahm and Meyers, ventured more openly into the traditional country and western music that they listened to and performed when they were children. (Sahm was billed as “Little Doug Sahm” when he was less than fourteen years old and had the opportunity to sit in Hank Williams’s lap while the legend played the pedal steel at a San Antonio gig.) This part of the growth of the genre came to fruition in Austin during the heyday of the Cosmic Cowboy scene, and Doug Sahm moved there to take advantage of that city’s original music style. Rocky Morales and other native-born San Antonio horn players also appeared with Sahm there.

At the same time, conjunto music was wildly popular in San Antonio featuring the Alamo City’s conjunto impresario Flaco Jiménez. Sahm always greatly enjoyed that form of Mexican-American music and respected Jiménez and his music. In 1973 Jerry Wexler of invited Doug Sahm to record, and that he did on Doug Sahm and Band. Artists that appeared on that intercultural recording included San Antonio’s own Augie Meyers, bassist extraordinaire Jack Barber, Flaco Jiménez, songwriter and Atwood Allen, as well as music legends David “Fathead” Newman, Dr. John, and Bob Dylan. The album featured horn-driven piano triplets, traditional country and western, and conjunto.

The West Side Sound may have reached its apex of popularity during the 1990s. The late Randy Garibay became regionally popular with his three CD releases Barbacoa Blues, Chicano Blues Man, and Invisible Society.

During the decade the Texas super group the Texas Tornados formed with Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers, Flaco Jiménez, and the legendary Freddy Fender.

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The group won a Grammy Award in 1991 for the song “Soy de San Luis” on their debut album Texas Tornados. Doug Sahm formed his Last Real Band with San Antonio musicians Rocky Morales, Sauce Gonzales, Jack Barber, and others, and the self-titled album was nominated for a Grammy in 1995.

Flaco Jiménez toured internationally prompting the formation of conjunto groups in seemingly obtuse places as Japan and Holland. All of these recordings incorporate examples of early rock-and-roll and R&B, conjunto and other Latin styles, horn driven-triplets, and traditional country and western.

San Antonio’s West Side Sound stands as an example of the music that can be created when members of separate ethnic groups to collaborate. The music and the musicians can still be heard in the River City with the likes of Sauce Gonzales, the West Side Horns, Spot Barnett’s Eastwood Country Club Review, Frank Rodarte and his Chosen Vatos, Ernie Garibay & Cats Don’t Sleep, as well as Charlie Alvarado and Sonny Ace.

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XXXII. Zydeco Written by Roger Wood

Zydeco is a type of music that evolved from an acoustic folk idiom known as la-la, dating back to the 1920s and unique to black Creoles originally from rural southwestern Louisiana. The modern form emerged in Southeast Texas in the late 1940s and 1950s among immigrants from this ethnic group, who came to cities such as Houston and Beaumont to find employment. There they fused old Louisiana French music traditions with urban blues and R&B to create a distinctive sound.

In zydeco the primary lead instrument is the accordion, and the fundamental cadences come from the polyrhythmic manipulation of hand-held metal utensils such as spoons scraped for percussive effect against the surface of a washboard (known in French as le frottoir). But since the 1950s, zydeco instrumentation has included standard drums, electric bass, electric guitar, and even piano, organ, saxophone, and . Zydeco singing—plaintive vocalizing in a blues style—typically combines English and French.

Singer and accordionist Amédé Ardoin (1898–ca. 1950) is generally recognized as the most influential figure in the early development of Creole music. This native Louisianan made seminal la-la recordings, heavily influenced by traditional white played at a regular measured tempo, between 1929 and 1934. These included a session on August 8, 1934, at the Texas Hotel in San Antonio for the Bluebird/Victor company.

In subsequent years, la-la increasingly came to highlight Afro-Caribbean rhythms, in which accents shifted to various beats. The role of the washboard became more pronounced, laying the trademark “chanka-chank” foundation over which a featured accordionist would perform. And the repertoire began to expand beyond old- style French songs to encompass urban sounds and more technologically advanced instruments. These innovations occurred especially in Houston, where the black Creole immigrant population was concentrated in the Fifth Ward neighborhood known as Frenchtown, which was incorporated in 1922.

The origins of the word zydeco have been traced to a French lyric that surfaced first in various Creole folk songs in Louisiana: “les haricots sont pas salé” (roughly, “the snapbeans are not salted”). Zydeco derives from the first two words, “les haricots.” Among various attempts at making an English spelling correspond to the black Creole pronunciation, z-y-d-e-c-o eventually prevailed, under the influence of Houston folklorist Robert Burton “Mack” McCormick. He formalized the now-standard spelling in his transcription of lyrics for a two-volume 1959 record album A Treasury of Field Recordings on the 77 Records label. McCormick originally intended for the term to apply only to the fusion of Texas blues and Creole la-la that he heard in Frenchtown.

The first two recordings to use variants of the term zydeco to refer to a style of music and dancing (as opposed to the original French sense referring to a vegetable) were produced in Houston. One was issued around 1947 on the song erroneously titled “Zolo Go” by bluesman Sam Lightnin' Hopkins on , and the second appeared in the 1949 recording of “Bon Ton Roula” by rhythm-and-blues performer Clarence “Bon Ton” Garlow on Macy's Records.

The key event in the movement of black Creole music into the public venues of Houston occurred at Irene's Café on Christmas Eve 1949, when accordionist Willie Green played an impromptu concert that drew large crowds and established the zydeco sound as a form of popular entertainment. Soon after that, the owner of Johnson's Lounge in Frenchtown decided to cease booking big bands and to feature Creole accordion music performed by stalwarts such as Lonnie Mitchell, who later assumed operation of the club. Eventually the lease reverted to Johnson's heir, Doris McClendon, who rechristened the lounge the Continental Zydeco Ballroom, the city's (and probably the state's) premier venue for the music throughout the latter half of the twentieth century.

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One black Creole who moved to Texas in 1947 and became part of the Frenchtown scene was (1925–1987), generally acknowledged today as the “King of Zydeco”—the musician most responsible for popularizing the music. Among Chenier's innovations were the employment of the large piano-key chromatic accordion, which has a wider musical range than the traditional diatonic instrument, and the invention of the modern washboard vest, which expanded the musical possibilities for percussion beyond the limitations of the previously hand-held household utensil. In 1964 at the Gold Star Studio in Houston, Chenier recorded the classic song “Zydeco Sont Pas Salé,” in which the producer abandoned the French phrase les haricots for the potent new word.

Since then, with Southwest Louisiana, Southeast Texas has remained a hotbed of zydeco culture—home to recording and touring artists such as Chenier, Wilfred Chevis, Step Rideau, Brian Terry, Cedric Watson, Corey Ledet, and The Zydeco Dots. Contemporary zydeco has continued to evolve, incorporating progressive elements of various styles of popular music, especially including rock and hip-hop. Zyde-rap, the fusion of zydeco and rap, gained momentum in the 1990s and for a time was a dominant trend for young bands. In the early 2000s, however, a number of young artists took a neo-traditionalist approach to zydeco and performed old songs in the French language.

In 2007 the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences recognized zydeco as an acknowledged and established a new category for its Grammy awards—Best Zydeco or Cajun Music Album. Across Texas, especially in the southeast region, a number of festivals featured zydeco, including the Creole Heritage Zydeco & Crawfish Festival in Baytown in 2015.

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JAZZ! XXXIII. Eddie Durham and the Texas Contribution to Jazz History Written by Dave Oliphant [Southwestern Historical Quarterly (April 1993)]

It is scandalous that not one American history textbook, on any level, that I know of, has anything to tell our children about the greatest and most original music this country has created, and about the creators of that music.

—Dan Morgenstern, New Perspectives on Jazz

The Texas musician who probably contributed to more historical developments in jazz history than any other was Eddie Durham of San Marcos (1906–1987). Durham's career spanned some seven decades, beginning, according to his own account, in 1916, when he was ten years of age.1 During the 1920s and 1930s, Durham figured prominently in Eddie Durham recording with and the Kansas City Six, 1938. Durham, a native of San Marcos, Texas, pioneered the use of an amplified guitar in jazz. Courtesy a number of territorial bands in Texas; Alan Govenar, Documentary Arts, Dallas. in the rise of the Kansas City bands of Bennie Moten and Count Basie; in the success of the orchestras of and ; and, through his association with Lester Young and , in the creation of the cool and bop styles of the 1940s and 1950s. As a trombonist, guitarist, arranger, and composer, Durham demonstrates the truth of 's assertion that "the Southwestern musician tended to be well educated musically, which enabled him to meet the challenge of constantly developing styles."2 Indeed, Durham contributed greatly to a number of the important changes that took place during the 1930s and affected the entire future of jazz music. Of the major groups active during the Swing Era, only the orchestras of , , and were unaffected by the talents of Eddie Durham, though other Texans did contribute to these three orchestras, and Durham may have contributed indirectly to the music of the Hines band as well. No other Texas musician had such a varied and enduring impact on the history of jazz as did Eddie Durham. And while Durham is unique in this and other respects, he is also representative of the significant contributions Texans have made to jazz throughout its historical development.

In The Swing Era, the second part of his projected three-volume history of jazz, Gunther Schuller remarks that "it is always a source of surprise to discover in what diverse regions of the country many of the major and lesser figures of jazz were born and/or grew up."3 Speaking of the creation of a specifically Southwestern jazz, Ross Russell, in his classic study Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest, observes that "the state of Texas, the largest and most populous in the Kansas City-Southwest area, predictably yielded the

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greatest number of musicians and bands."4 While New Orleans, Chicago, New York, and Kansas City have long been associated with the historical rise and development of jazz, the contribution of Texas to this native American music has rarely been studied. Yet not only has the state produced a large share of major and minor jazz musicians, but many of them have determined in various ways this music's remarkable evolution. In general, the Texas influence on jazz history has come through the infusion of two types of popular regional music, blues and ragtime, which were developed by such Texas exponents as Blind Lemon Jefferson of Wortham (1897?–1930), Leadbelly (born Huddie Ledbetter in 1889 in Mooringsport, Louisiana, but raised in the Red River bottomlands near Caddo Lake in Texas), and Scott Joplin of Texarkana (1868–1917). In characterizing Leadbelly, Ross Russell identifies the "salient" features "of the Southwestern blues man—vitality, a roving disposition, a fierce independence, and a kind of Western arrogance that stems from pioneer self- reliance. These same qualities appear in varying degrees in many other singers from the area. . . ." Russell reports that Joplin was "a sober industrious man" who "composed, taught, and acted as organizer and leader of a small band," which with other ragtime bands of the area "were undoubtedly the models for the earliest dance and quasi-jazz bands of Kansas City and the Southwest."5 Joplin's piano music, in particular his Maple Leaf Rag (1899), helped create a "ragtime craze."6 Another important regional piano style related to blues and ragtime was boogie-woogie, which, according to E. Simms Campbell, originated in the lumber and turpentine camps of Texas and in the sporting houses of the state, and featured a "fast, rolling bass," "an undercurrent of tremendous power" that made it "power piano playing."7 Perhaps the earliest examples of this rhythm heard in Chicago, with which it is widely identified, were The Fives and The Rocks by George W. Thomas of New Orleans and of Houston (1908?–1926). The significance of The Fives, which was copyrighted in 1921, "lies in the effect that it had on Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis,"8 the two best-known boogie-woogie players from Chicago, who popularized the form in the late 1930s and early 1940s. George Thomas (1885?– 1937) was playing boogie-woogie in Houston in 1911, and his 1916 New Orleans Hop Scop Blues was probably "the first twelve-bar blues to be written and published with a boogie-woogie bass line.”9 In 1925 George's brother Hersal recorded his own Suitcase Blues, one of the "great barrel-house records."10 Barrelhouse or boogie woogie or honky•tonk was a style performed by all black piano players in Houston, Dallas, and Galveston, and "was often referred to as a 'fast western' or 'fast blues' as differentiated from the 'slow blues' of New Orleans and St. Louis."11 In tracing the impact of ragtime and boogie-woogie (or barrelhouse), Wilfrid Mellers has pointed out that it was through the great New York stride pianist James P. Johnson that both Duke Ellington and Count Basie were influenced by these Texas schools of piano playing, Ellington by ragtime and Basie in "the kind of honesty he achieved in his powerhouse manner," his "powerful 'striding bass' characteristic of Johnson," who enhanced "the more sophisticated rag-technique" by combining it with "the rugged virility of the barrelhouse chugging triads."12 Mellers also notes the influence of boogie-woogie on , one of the founders of modern jazz, characterizing his approach as "what happens to the boogie player after he has been blessed, or cursed, with 'the pain of consciousness."' Mellers adds that

Monk's Five Spot Blues uses all the traditional formulae of barrelhouse piano: the boogie rhythm, the teetering blue thirds, the rocking tremolos, the sharply chittering repeated chords in the treble. . . . Even when Monk starts from the compulsive energy of Latin American rhythm, as in Bye-ya, the texture turns into this nervous re-creation of barrelhouse tradition.13

In Early Jazz, the first volume of Schuller's jazz history, he points out that in the Southwest the blues have always had strong roots and that many of the best-known early blues singers were born and raised in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.14 Schuller finds in certain recorded performances by jazz bands of this region an indigenous blues spirit, which derived from a vocal tradition and which accounts for the musicians' instrumental style, with its "freedom and relaxation of phrasing (one is tempted to characterize it as controlled abandon), the melodic lines richly spiced with blue notes, the earthy, almost rough rhythmic feeling."15 In The Swing Era, Schuller even asserts that the Texas blues tradition is not only one of the oldest but "probably much older than the New Orleans idiom that is generally thought to be the primary fountainhead of jazz."16 While the influence of ragtime, a music marked by a steady bass part in 2/4 time and a generally syncopated treble, was

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slowly shaken off and replaced in the early 1930s by the "riff," a brief melodic idea or repeated group of notes,17 as utilized by the important Kansas City bands in which many Texas musicians came to play, the blues has remained a characteristic ingredient in the music of every major Texas jazzman from trombonist-vocalist Jack Teagarden of Vernon (1905–1964), the finest white blues singer in jazz history, to saxophonist of Fort Worth (b. 1930), whose revolutionary "free jazz" is thoroughly rooted in a highly vocalized blues phrasing and intonation.

Women blues singers from Texas were among the earliest to record, following Mamie Smith's 1920 Okeh recordings. In 1923 of Houston (1898–1986), a sister of George and Hersal Thomas, recorded Shorty George and Up .18 This recording by the "Texas Nightingale" is as early as any produced by the two best-known women blues singers, and Bessie Smith, to whom Wallace has been compared favorably.19 The Texan's blues style is described as "a mix of Southwestern rolling bass honky- tonk and Chicago shouting moan. . . ."20 In 1933, in Bessie Smith's last recording session, the "Empress of the Blues" was accompanied on trombone by Jack Teagarden, who as early as 1928 had himself recorded It's So Good, sounding like an itinerant Texas blues-shouter.21 The principal differences between Southwestern/Kansas City musicians working under the influence of their own blues tradition and musicians in the other centers of jazz activity—New Orleans, Chicago, and New York—were twofold. First, as Ross Russell notes, the Southwestern brand of the blues originated in the delta region of Mississippi and Louisiana, but with the westward migration "to new locales in Texas," the black experienced "a new hope, a new vision of emancipation, and the music began to change. The blues became less cryptic, more outspoken, more powerful and exuberant in delivery, more traveled in reference."22 The greater freedom of movement allowed to in the Southwest also brought them into contact with white musicians like Bob Wills and Jack Teagarden, the latter subsequently becoming one of the first white jazzmen to record with blacks, and continuing to perform in mixed groups throughout his lifetime.23 The second difference between musicians from the Southwest and those from other regions was that the Southwesterners stayed closer to their blues roots or returned to them more regularly throughout their careers, whereas the musicians from other parts tended to gravitate more and more toward pop tunes and even what was referred to as hoakum and hilarity.

Along with these general influences on jazz, individual Texas musicians have contributed to the Jazz musician Jack Teagarden, 1920. Teagarden of Vernon, development of this native American music at many of Texas, was the featured trombonist with the Ben Pollack the most significant moments in its history. One of the orchestra from 1928 to 1933, with from very earliest and most influential events was the 1934 to 1938, leader of his own band from 1939 to 1947, and with the All-Stars from 1947 to 1951. composition in 1902 or 1905 of King Porter Stomp, a Duncan Schiedt Collection. piece written by the self-proclaimed inventor of jazz, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll" Morton (1885?–1941).24 In recalling the circumstances of this composition for his biographer, Alan Lomax of Austin (who along with his father John Lomax discovered and first recorded Leadbelly), Morton claimed that King Porter Stomp was a great favorite of many bands and was the cause for a number of them gaining considerable fame.25 This claim is amply supported by the historical record, to which

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several Texas musicians contributed, among them of Beaumont (1916–1983), of Corsicana (1912–1974), and of Dallas (b. 1921).26 Although Lomax was not himself a jazz musician, his role in documenting Morton's life and in bringing him to the Library of Congress in 1938 for a series of historic piano recordings of his compositions was indeed a significant contribution to our knowledge of early jazz history.27

No Texans formed part of Morton's most important band recordings, with his Red Hot Peppers from 1926 to 1928. Nor did a Texan participate in the seminal recordings made by King Oliver and Louis Armstrong in 1923, in the 1925 and 1927 dates with Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven, nor in Armstrong's recordings with the band of 1927. Yet Texans did play a part in perpetuating the traditions of these three formative figures, in particular the rough performances of their famous tunes or solos, as in the cases mentioned above of Harry James, Tyree Glenn, and Jimmy Giuffre on recordings of King Porter Stomp. In 1937 James also rendered a popular version of King Oliver's Sugar Foot Stomp (also known as Dippermouth Blues) with the Benny Goodman band. Lammar Wright of Texarkana (1907–1973), who carried on the King's tradition with his Oliver-inspired trumpet work with 's orchestra in the 1930s,28 may be the first Texan recorded in a jazz performance, in 1923, the same year in which Oliver himself was first recorded. Even at this early date Wright's cornet sound is Oliver-like on the recording he made of Elephant Wobble with Bennie Moten (Historic HLP-9). In 1926, the year of 's first great recordings with his Red Hot Peppers, Wright was present at another session with the Moten band when it recorded a Morton tune, Midnight Mama (available on Halcyon HDL 108). That a Texan was not only active in the early years of jazz recordings—and as one music historian points out, "the chief documents of Jazz history are the performances on phonograph records, which were very rare before 1923"29—but sounded like the leading jazz cornetist of the day indicates that Texas musicians were fully aware of developments in jazz. Despite the absence of Texans on the early recordings of Morton, Oliver, and Armstrong, Texas jazzmen were present as members of many of the most important bands on crucial recording dates in the history of this music, beginning in the 1920s and extending up to the present time with the work of Ornette Coleman and John Carter (b. 1929), both of Fort Worth, and Bobby Bradford of Dallas (b. 1936).30

While Eddie Durham's roles in the history of jazz were more varied than those of any other early Texas musician and his presence in a wider variety of influential groups had the greatest impact on jazz history, he did have at least one serious competitor during the transitional period from swing to bop. As a saxophonist and arranger, of Dallas (1910–1989) played a unique role in the development of modem jazz in the late 1930s and early 1940s while a member of the bands of Earl Hines, Boyd Raebum, , , and . According to jazz encyclopedist , the " thread" running through these bands was Budd Johnson, whose advanced arrangements helped shape their conceptions during the rise of the Bop movement.31 Yet jazz historian Hugues Panassié observed that Johnson's advanced arrangements for Eckstine, Herman, Raebum, and Gillespie "particularly lend themselves to swing; they are in the great Kansas City tradition, resembling those of Eddie Durham and the Count Basie style."32 In a sense, then, Johnson's style was beholden to Durham, and through this influence on Johnson, Durham may also be said to have affected the course of jazz during the years when Johnson was arranging for the leading bebop ensembles. Just as Johnson was a "common thread" running through a number of transitional bands of the early to mid-1940s, Eddie Durham made singular contributions to three of the most famous big bands of the Swing Era, those of Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, and Glenn Miller. But even before the mid to late 1930s, Durham was also a central figure in the emergence of the Kansas City style as developed by the Bennie Moten orchestra from 1929 to 1932. A recent review in Down Beat recalls the recordings of the Moten band in this way: "the 1932 Moten date (its last) still stands as one of the dozen or so most thrilling single sessions in this history of jazz. Here is the epitome of the Kansas City big band sound before it became absorbed into the swing movement."33 It was this early big band sound that Durham helped to forge, as he later contributed both to the swing movement that absorbed the Kansas City style and to the cool and bop revolution.

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Eddie Durham's musical career began, as it did for a number of other Texas jazzmen, among them Budd Johnson and Jack Teagarden, through his forming part of a family of musicians.34 Eddie's cousin Allen Durham (place and date of birth unknown), who also played trombone, has been cited as the best soloist, along with Mary Lou Williams, on the first recording made by Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy in 1929.35 Another cousin, of Denton (1909–1939), has been described as "one of the finest tenor saxes of all time" and is considered the father of a school of Texas tenor sax players that includes Buddy Tate of Sherman (b. 1914) and (b. 1922) and Arnett Cobb (1918–1991) of Houston.36 Eddie had six brothers, all of whom played instruments; his father, who died early in Eddie's life, played the fiddle and performed at square dances, as did Bob Wills. Eddie remembered that although his father "instilled a love of music in his children," he could not read music: "he didn't want to even see music. . . . He figured that people couldn't hear you read; they hear you play."37 Eddie's oldest brother Joe, however, "subscribed to lessons from what was called the U.S. School of Music," a system which taught only two- and three-part harmony: "A sixth was unknown."38 Eddie Durham's early exposure to music theory would have far-reaching effects on jazz history, for the Texan later taught himself how to write five- and six-part harmony and to add sixths and ninths to his and others' arrangements of many outstanding tunes of the Swing Era. Durham's early training in the rudiments of music theory was an even more significant factor in determining his contributions to jazz history than his ties to a Texas blues tradition.

After playing with his siblings in the Durham Brothers Band, Eddie went on the road at the age of eighteen with the "101 Ranch Brass Band, a marching band that played circuses."39 With the 101, Durham learned to write; to express, as he put it in one interview, his own voicing.40 I could experiment with harmony because I could get four and four French horns together. I had to learn five- and six-part harmony myself because no one was teaching it. We played Yankee Stadium with that show, and then they went to Europe. That's why I quit.41

In 1926, Durham joined 's Dixie Ramblers and later played for a short time with Gene Coy's Happy Black Aces out of Amarillo. Andy Kirk, a member of the George Morrison Orchestra in Colorado when Coy's band visited Denver, recalled how the musical establishment in the mile-high city was "shook up" by the "hottest and liveliest music" they had heard.42 These "territory bands" not only provided entertainment for audiences in the region, they also served as "traveling 'music conservatories,"' or training organizations in which young players could develop their skills as players or arrangers, and in general come into their own musically and professionally.43

In 1927, following his stay with Coy's band, Durham was picked up by the Blue Devils out of Oklahoma, a band that operated on the "commonwealth plan." Hirings, firings, itineraries, fees, in fact all important decisions were left to a majority vote; earnings were pooled, the net divided equally, and, if one of the musicians had a personal problem, his needs were considered.44

The Blue Devils, characterized by Gunther Schuller as "a spunky outfit who would take on all comers," and which contained "at one time or another some of the best players of the region," included several Texans who had joined shortly after it was organized in Oklahoma City around 1923. The first of these was saxophonist of Altdorf, near Ennis (b. 1904).45 Other Texans in the band were Oran "Hot Lips" Page of Dallas (1908–1954), who was picked up in Austin, where he had been playing with Eddie and Sugar Lou's Band, and Dan Minor, also of Dallas (1909–1982), who replaced Durham on trombone when the latter left the Blue Devils in 1929 and who later joined Durham on the historic 1932 recording of the Bennie Moten band. Notable members of the Blue Devils also included Bill (later "Count") Basie, Alvin Burroughs, Lester Young, , and Jimmy Rushing. According to Ross Russell, seven members of the Blue Devils, including Texans Buster Smith, , and Eddie Durham, were among "the finest musicians produced in two decades of jazz in the Southwest."46 Unfortunately, Durham's contributions to the Blue Devils cannot be heard, since the band only recorded once, in 1929, after the trombonist had left to join Bennie Moten's Kansas City band. Yet there is at least one clear indication of Durham's importance to the Blue Devils, and that is the fact that after losing a battle of bands against the Blue Devils in 1928, while Durham was still a member of the Oklahoma City group,

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Bennie Moten set out "to buy up and take over the Blue Devils intact."47 The first to go over to Moten were Basie and Durham.

By October 1929, a month before the Blue Devils' only recorded session in November, Durham is already present on a Moten recording on both trombone and guitar. Durham said that he always liked the trombone "because a guy could make it sound like he was crying,"48 which suggests the Texan's early attraction to the blues tradition and anticipates Ornette Coleman's plastic saxophone in the 1960s, which also would moan and weep. Although he was rarely featured as a soloist, Durham began playing 'Jazz breaks" on the trombone as early as his time with the circus band, which "stayed very close to the melody."49 He remembered trying to solo a bit and found that “it wasn't hard for me to learn the value of notes, but a guy who could swing a break was something new to them. So when we played for dances at night [in addition to their circus work], I asked them if I could swing in the jazz breaks. They were all trained musicians playing solid trombone— not faking—so jazz breaks on trombone were different.”50

On the Moten recording of 1929, Gunther Schuller notes that like Bill Basie's piano solos, which tend to be Oran "Hot Lips" Page of Dallas, the featured cliched yet reveal his potential talent as an original stylist, trumpeter with the Blue Devils and Bennie Moten Durham's solos "are also somewhat unformed, but they during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Duncan certainly reveal the advanced harmonic and rhythmic Schiedt Collection. thinking of a man who was to become an important arranger in the Kansas City style, and as such are beyond the stylistic frame of reference set by the Moten band at that time.”51 Schuller goes on to remark that only a year later, in October 1930, after Hot Lips Page and Jimmy Rushing had joined from the Blue Devils, it was "above all, an arranger [who] was beginning to reshape the [Moten] band's destiny: Eddie Durham."52 The migration of Texas jazzmen to Kansas City was due in large part to a political climate which allowed prostitution and the sale of bootleg liquor at thriving night spots that furnished entertainment in the form of live jazz bands.53 Many of the major jazz figures of the time were Texans who had left their home state for job security and for the attraction of recording contracts. This was the case with Moten's band, which found regular work at the top night clubs and was being recorded by RCA Victor.54 In December 1932, after the prodigious bass player Walter Page had become the last Blue Devils member to join Moten, the band traveled to Camden, New Jersey, to make a recording that produced several masterpieces in jazz literature, among them Eddie Durham's of Moten Swing.55 The significance of Durham's writing is summarized by Gunther Schuller when he observes that as early as the 1930 Victor recording, the Moten band, using Durham's arrangements, had developed a beat that was moving in the direction of a flowing four•beat rhythm rather than the more common two-beat, and was "clearly headed toward the marvelous swing of the 1932 Toby [a riff by Durham], Moten Swing, and of Wales. That Too, Do [also by Durham] is a slow blues, which incorporates Rushing singing Sent for You Yesterday in the same style as the later famous Basie recording [in Durham 's classic 1938 arrangement]."56 Martin Williams summarized the achievement of the 1932 recording session as follows:

Moten's Swing [sic] succinctly reveals what this band achieved. Here, by late 1932, was a large jazz orchestra which could swing cleanly and precisely according to the manner of Louis Armstrong—a group which had grasped his innovative ideas of jazz rhythm and had realized and developed them in an ensemble style. Further, the piece features original melodies on a rather sophisticated chord structure borrowed from a standard popular song.57

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After the unexpected death in 1935 of Bennie Moten at the height of his powers as a band leader, the baton passed to Count Basie, and Durham contributed significantly to the great Basie bands of the later 1930s. Beginning in 1936, these bands numbered among their ranks many Texans, including the entire brass section of his first group: Joe Keyes, Hot Lips Page, and, according to Ross Russell, Carl Tatti Smith on trumpet and Dan Minor on trombone. Basie's bands in the 1940s and 1950s included such Texans as saxophonists Buddy Tate and Illinois Jacquet, bassist Gene Ramey, drummer Gus Johnson, and trombonists Bill Hughes and Henry Coker. Of the other great bandleaders of the Swing Era, Benny Goodman featured two major , Teddy Wilson of Austin (1912–1986) and Harry James of Beaumont (1916–1983).58 Duke Ellington had but one Texan in his bands before 1950: Tyree Glenn, mentioned earlier as a member of Cab Calloway's orchestra, who joined Ellington in 1947 and left an indelible impression in his roles both as a trombonist, carrying on the tradition of

Tricky Sam Nanton's use of growls and wa-wa effects, and as a vibraphonist, contributing memorable solos on an instrument not Gene Ramey of Austin, bassist in the early 59 1940s with the Jay McShann band, which previously featured in Ellington's music. Jimmie Lunceford featured , pictured here in dark showcased a single Texan: Eddie Durham. The Texas contribution glasses (left), on alto sax. Duncan Schiedt to the Basie band was owing largely to the state's proximity to Collection. Kansas City, but the Texans were responsible for much of what is considered Basie's Kansas City style, as later discussion will clearly indicate.

Some two years before Moten died, Durham had already departed for the East Coast to play with , whose band at the time included Teddy Wilson. The following year Durham joined up for what would be a two-year stint with Jimmie Lunceford, a rising star who had been trying to lure Durham away from Moten for some time.60 With the "Lunceford Express," Durham served as trombonist, composer-arranger, and guitarist, and although he had earlier made his mark as an arranger and trombonist with Moten, his work as a guitarist, which had been present only on a few early recordings, was to become during his Lunceford years a prominent part of his historical achievement. Durham had begun his career on banjo, then took up the four- string guitar, later adding the trombone and the six-string guitar. He asserted that he "could have been a kind of genius on that six-string guitar, but after I started getting up in the world I divided my time between arranging, composing, trombone, and guitar, not sticking to anyone."61 There is probably a great deal of truth in Durham's assertion about his potential on the guitar, which is evinced by his fine improvised solos with Lunceford and by his performances on the classic small group recordings of 1938 with the Kansas City Four and Five. But as has been noted by every commentator on Durham's career, it was the 1935 recording with Lunceford's orchestra of a rather inane tune entitled Hittin' the Bottle, which Durham arranged, that marked the Texan's first recorded experiment with an amplified guitar. In discussing Durham's introduction of an electrified sound, Gunther Schuller observes that because jazz orchestras were becoming larger in size and power, the acoustic guitar lost its listeners, and since Durham wanted to exploit the melodic possibilities of the instrument, he came up with a tin resonator that could project his solo and ensemble work.62 Durham described his invention of a homemade amplified guitar in a 1985 interview:

I made a resonator with a tin pan. It was back in the early 1930s. I'd carve out the inside of an acoustic guitar and put the resonator down inside there. It was the size of a breakfast plate. I'd put something around the guitar to hold it. And when I hit the strings, the

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pie pan would ring and shoot out the sound. I didn't have to do that for long because I ran up on a National. It had a resonator in it.63

The impact of this innovation on the history of jazz guitar can best be measured by the work of those who followed Durham's lead. The most important was Charlie Christian of Dallas (1916–1942), whom Durham claimed to have introduced to a form of the amplified guitar in 1937. At this time Durham was still with Lunceford and was playing in Oklahoma City, where Christian grew up, when one day Charlie showed up with an old beat-up guitar that had cost him five dollars [Christian having originally played the string bass with the Alphonso Trent ]. He had big eyes to sound like a saxophone [which is possible on an electric guitar], and I showed him how by using down strokes he could get a sharper tone, and how if you use the up stroke you get a more legato sound, which the horns couldn't get. With no legato the sound is more like a horn, but it takes an awful fast wrist to play the down stroke.64

As Durham acknowledges, Christian learned quickly and was soon playing single-string solos on electric guitar. In 1939 Christian joined Benny Goodman's sextet, and before his untimely death from tuberculosis in 1942, he participated Charlie Christian of Dallas. Christian's brief career as the first major electric guitarist in jazz history was highlighted by his work in the after-hours which led to the with the Benny Goodman band from 1939 to 1941 and his bop revolution of the 1940s. In fact, Christian is experimental bebop recordings with Dizzy Gillespie and credited with giving the name "bebop" to the Thelonious Monk at Minton's in Harlem in 1940. Larry Willoughby movement, by humming onomatopoeic Collection, Courtesy of Huey Meaux. phrases.65 In addition to their impact on the history of jazz, Durham's experiments with an amplified sound influenced the development of rock and roll, which "unleash[ed] on the world . . . the earsplitting decibels and sonorities of modern rock guitars."66

In many ways, Durham's work with the electric guitar represents an extension of the blues tradition within the tradition of Southwestern guitar playing. Just as Durham's interpolations in Hittin' the Bottle with Lunceford's orchestra are blues responses, so too were Charlie Christian's contributions to modern jazz based on Southwestern blues. Gunther Schuller characterizes this aspect of Christian's guitar playing in his comments on Profoundly Blues. Schuller considers something of a masterpiece in that it contains "three superb blues choruses, fascinating in their 'older' style, showing clearly how far back Christian's roots go in the Southwestern blues tradition, and notable for their pared-down simplicity and sustained, eloquent storytelling mood."67 Schuller further defines the blues connection when he comments on Christian's solo work on Breakfast Feud: "Not only does Christian emulate the type of twangy slides, scoops, and string-crossings [of country blues guitarists], but he also uses less syncopation, staying more on the beat and relying a great deal on straight even eighth-note lines."68 Of the latter trait, Schuller elsewhere observes that such even-note lines were common among country-style Texan guitarists like Leon McAuliffe and Zeke Campbell, who played with Bob Wills and the Light Crust Doughboys. While Schuller acknowledges that these Western swing musicians performed in a rhythmic style that was "more 'square' and less swinging, the similarity is undeniable."69 Schuller's point is that Christian would have heard these bands both on radio and on recordings in the

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Oklahoma area and, although he may not have taken his style directly from these Texan guitarists, "a guitar tradition of the kind he represented and perfected was already of long standing by the time he burst onto the scene in New York in mid-1939."70 It was this tradition that Eddie Durham helped pass along to Charlie Christian and to modern jazz.

Durham's own guitar performances, in particular his solo work on several tunes recorded in 1937 and 1938 with Count Basie, demonstrate his advanced thinking, for they look forward to Christian's sound and conception, which Al Avakian and Bob Prince described as a blues riff approach that "gave a full range of expression to the guitar, utilizing all its basic rhythmic, melodic, and sound potential." Like some of Durham's solos with the Basie band, Christian's improvisations bring forth "a new, mobile, swinging jazz . . . . familiar in their basic blues allusion."71 Other striking examples of Durham's guitar playing came during his recordings in 1938 with members of the Basie unit, referred to as the Kansas City Four and Five. discuss these performances in relation to Durham's association with Basie and his band members, but for the moment it is important to consider another major aspect of Durham's achievement: his work as a composer-arranger during his stay with Lunceford. As he had done for Bennie Moten's band and probably for the Blue Devils, Durham helped account for the success of the "Lunceford Special," even doing an arrangement of a hit tune of this title that was typical of Durham's writing in giving "ample solo space for four of the band's major soloists and a generally spirited performance."72 Gunther Schuller describes the emergence of Eddie Durham as a new arranger in the Lunceford band when he analyzes Durham's "fine composition and arrangement in Oh Boy, especially ingenious in its use of the versatile five-man sax section (which was sometimes enlarged to six by the addition of Lunceford himself on alto)."73 Schuller's discussion of Durham's writing and arranging is valuable for two reasons: first, it recalls the importance of Durham's early training in music theory; and second, it indicates why Lunceford wanted Durham's services in his organization, which was made up of highly intelligent, mostly college-educated musicians who aimed at creating a sophisticated brand of jazz that appealed to white and black audiences alike. Durham fit in because he was musically adept, even though he had not studied at in Nashville, as had many of the members of Lunceford's orchestra.74 Most commentators on the Lunceford "book" have noted that the blues, which were often the basis of Durham's compositions for the Basie band, were not an essential part of the Lunceford orchestra's musical offerings, and that the Lunceford sound encompassed a wide variety of styles, featuring musicians who could play with precision and great power. Durham's versatility as both a composer-arranger and a soloist allowed him to contribute significantly to the success of the Lunceford organization and thus to important developments in the Swing Era.

Among the works Durham composed and arranged for Lunceford, in addition to Hittin' the Bottle, Lunceford Special, and Oh Boy, were Harlem Shout, Avalon, and Runnin' a Temperature; two arrangements of tunes by Duke Ellington which he did not record but gave to Lunceford (Bird of Paradise and Rhapsody Junior); and Pigeon Walk. The great variety in Durham's arranging is evident from this mix, which includes a piece built on Kansas City riffs (Harlem Shout, which Durham called a flagwaver, adding that Lunceford's orchestra "always opened and closed the show with a number of mine"),75 a standard (Avalon, which contains the riff that "also provides a climax for [Count Basie's] One O'Clock Jump'"),76 two novelty tunes (Hittin' the Bottle and Runnin' a Temperature), the Ellington compositions, and a number that involves the musical depiction of a pigeon's bobbing movement. Even though Durham's arranging was frequently based on the Kansas City riff style, he was also successful with all these distinctive types of arrangements. Perhaps most representative of his achievement is Pigeon Walk, which achieves what critic Charles Fox considers one of Durham's best scores for the Lunceford orchestra.77 Based on a tune by James V. , Pigeon Walk is essentially a novelty number that attempts to evoke in music the stiff, jerky walk peculiar to the bird of the work's title.78 As Gunther Schuller notes about Hittin' the Bottle and Runnin' a Temperature, such novelty numbers "stimulated not only the arrangers' musical imaginations, often directly inspired by the lyrics, but also brought a welcome element of humor and wit. And this was one of the important ingredients that made the Lunceford band such an entertainment delight."79 Eddie Durham's ability to respond to a tune like Pigeon Walk and to turn it into something of a jazz classic both for Lunceford and, as we shall see, for Count Basie is another indication of the

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truth of Frank Driggs's assertion that "the Southwestern musician tended to be well-educated musically, which enabled him to meet the challenge of constantly developing styles."

In the summer of 1937, Durham rejoined Count Basie, who had carried on in the Kansas City style, bringing together some of the former members the Moten band. According to Chris Sheridan, Basie's bio•discographer, it was the return of Durham that, "above all, ensured the Count's permanence, by providing the necessary formality and polish in a way that preserved the band's individuality."80 Gunther Schuller suggests, in fact, that it was with the recording of Durham's composition John's Idea, arranged by , that the Basie band first achieved "a degree of creative and performance cohesiveness that might qualify as both distinctive and truly creative. "81 Schuller mentions three other instrumental numbers by Durham that "had a salutory [ sic] effect on the band," Time Out, Topsy, and Out the Window.82 Schuller does not indicate that Time Out is the same tune as Pigeon Walk, though Charles Fox does in The Essential Jazz Records.83 On the Basie recording of Pigeon Walk under the title of Time Out, the original composer, James V. Monaco, is not credited, but then this was fairly typical of jazz recordings that employed the chord changes of a popular tune and created in many ways a quite different piece of music. While Time Out is recognizable as the same tune, the differing arrangements and performances reveal the contrasting styles of the Basie and Lunceford bands. Pigeon Walk and Time Out are not only highly instructive for an understanding of the peculiar styles of these two great swing orchestras, but also for an appreciation of Durham's arranging skills and talents as a pre-bop guitarist.

Pigeon Walk was recorded by Lunceford on November 5, 1937, after Durham had already left to join Basie.84 Durham's departure may explain the guitar interpolations by Al Norris of Kane, Pennsylvania (1908– 1974), which are delivered on an acoustic guitar and are basically four-square chordings. (As a team on The Merry Go Round Broke Down, recorded on June 15, 1937, Durham and Norris perform what Gunther Schuller calls a very rare combination of low register electric guitar chords against an acoustic guitar.)85 In many ways the Norris interpolations in Pigeon Walk are more in keeping with the tune's stiffness as performed by the Lunceford orchestra than with Durham's electric guitar style. Also, Pigeon Walk emphasizes the precision of the various sections as they execute their passages to an almost stomping beat, with solos limited to the kind of rigid, four-square rhythm that does not allow for imaginative improvisation so much as it serves to replicate the stiff motion of the tune's namesake. Durham thus provided an arrangement that was made to order for Lunceford's style, which, again, offers precision section work and solos that are designed to characterize the original tune or to relate musically to a tune's lyrics.

Time Out was recorded by the Count Basie band on August 9, 1937, and is a typical example of the Kansas City riff style with its emphasis on swinging, imaginative, blues-derived solos. Here the Pigeon Walk theme is stated briefly and then Herschel Evans on tenor bursts out passionately for four bars in his patented "Texas tenor" style. This style was in the tradition of the tenor giant , but was of "a softer sonority, played with less vibrato and more blues inflection."86 Evans is followed by Lester Young on tenor in one of his classic "cool" but hotly swinging solos. Of this recording and Young's performance, Martin Williams observes that

Many of the best early Basie arrangements were casually worked out by the band's members in the act of playing, and many others were revised by them in the act of replaying. But when scores were written for the band, Basie himself would frequently cut and simplify them, and one can well imagine that this happened to Eddie Durham's Time Out. Durham seems to have profited from, and improved on, 's Blue Lou, and his structure encouraged a fine effect of suspense during Lester Young's solo. The resultant Time Out is an exemplary Basie arrangement: its ideas are sturdy and it is flexible, it might be expanded almost indefinitely—by more solos, longer solos, and by repeats of its written portions— without losing its casual, high effectiveness. (And incidentally, the performance of that piece shows how much technical polish the band could achieve by 1937.)87

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After Lester Young's solo, the theme is repeated and then followed by a Buck Clayton solo on muted trumpet, also characteristic of the driving Kansas City style. Next comes Durham himself on electric guitar, with a solo that predates Charlie Christian's revolutionary recordings and yet sounds so close to his work that it could easily be mistaken for that of the guitar master. Durham's single-note lines are in dramatic contrast to the stiff, traditional solo by Al Norris on Pigeon Walk and again demonstrate the flowing drive of the Kansas City brand of swing. Finally, Basie takes his turn with a -inspired solo that is typical of the leader's stride piano, backed by the subtle but powerful rhythm section of Jo Jones on drums, Walter Page on bass, and Freddie Green on guitar.88 As the band rides out, the Durham arrangement has the sax and brass sections punctuating in the riff mode made famous by the Bennie Moten band and perpetuated by Basie. The excitement generated throughout this performance makes it clear why Durham's Time Out is "almost always included in listings of the Best of Count Basie."89 And once again, this rendition of Monaco's Pigeon Walk demonstrates Durham's ability to adapt a tune to the style of the band for which he was arranging.90

The rise of the arranger as the principal figure in determining the style and emphasis of the big band during the Swing Era inevitably brought about a decline in the jazz quality of the music performed by the successful bands led by Lunceford, Calloway, Fletcher Henderson, , and such white leaders as Goodman, , and . Smaller ensembles like Goodman and John Kirby's sextets emerged in an attempt to restore the prominence of the jazz soloist and to replace the arranger, who had come to emphasize section work, adding more reed and brass instruments in order to produce louder sounds, higher notes, and a greater array of tone colors and flashy effects, with the end result that the big band became unwieldy and unprofitable.91 While Eddie Durham, as we have seen, was praised for providing many opportunities for soloists in his own arrangements, he too was responsible in part for the demise of the big band's popularity as an outlet for authentic jazz. On the other hand, Durham made possible some of the most important small group recordings of the period.

In 1938, under his own leadership, Durham was the arranger and electric guitarist for a session of the Kansas City Five, which also featured four other Basie sidemen: Buck Clayton on trumpet, Jo Jones on drums, Walter Page on bass, and Freddie Green on acoustic guitar. This session was produced by John Hammond on March 18 for Brunswick/Vocalion, but when the recording company decided not to issue it, it was sold to of Commodore records. He organized another session on September 27, utilizing the same five musicians but adding another Basie sideman, Lester Young on tenor, to form the Kansas City Six. Jazz critic declared: "The 1938 Kansas City Six sides are among those half dozen collections I'd grab for if the building started to burn. I've been listening to the 78's off and on since they were first released and they are among those exceedingly rare works of man that do not become stale."92

Although the principal interest in the 1938 sessions has been with the tenor performances of Lester Young and with his infrequent but highly prized solo appearances on clarinet, Durham's role in these two small•group recordings is historically significant for several reasons. First, the Kansas City Five session was the first time an electric guitar was used on a jazz recording. (On the earlier Lunceford performance of Hittin' the Bottle, Durham had used a tin resonator in an acoustic guitar rather than an electric guitar.) Second, the March 18 session furnishes the fullest evidence of Durham's influence on Charlie Christian and also demonstrates Durham's skill on the electric guitar. And third, as an arranger, Durham offers here the essence of the Kansas City jam sessions that had already produced two great in Lester Young and Herschel Evans and would soon account for perhaps the greatest genius in jazz history, alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker.93 Even though jazz critic Eric Thacker has found fault with Durham's arrangements for Young's clarinet, especially on in New Orleans, he points out that the success of the unusual combination of trumpet and electric guitar, in the quintet performances, is substantially due to [Durham's] linear and harmonic imagination. [Buck] Clayton's indefinable amalgam of delicate sounds (whether his instrument is muted or open) and interior force complements Durham's conception beautifully, as their shared passages in Laughing at life well show. In I know that you know and Good morning, blues, wittily-timed guitar chords urge on the several swinging Clayton improvisations and a solo by Page.94

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These sessions showcase the multitalented Texan as trombonist (on Paging the Devil), guitarist, and arranger, and represent the culmination of a career that produced some of the finest jazz ever recorded. They were forward-looking in their emphasis on the cool, intimate sound of a small ensemble; their prophecy of the coming bop revolution; and their summing up of the Kansas City style that owed so much to Durham, Hot Lips Page, Buster Smith, and other Texan and Southwestern figures who rose from the ranks of the territorial bands to contribute to an approach to jazz that has remained vital ever since. Following the lead of Charlie Christian, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker, other Texans like Jimmy Giuffre, Ornette Coleman (in conjunction with Oklahoman Don Cherry), and John Carter would extend the Kansas City tradition into the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

Prior to Durham's small-group sessions, an historic Basie-led quintet had recorded on October 9, 1936, under the name Jones-Smith, Inc., after drummer Jo Jones and trumpeter Carl Tatti Smith. This was in fact the first recording date for Lester Young, arranged by producer John Hammond and avant garde in the same way as the Kansas City Five and Six recordings. Gunther Schuller claims that the Jones-Smith session represents "a harmonic freeing-up of the language of jazz," which led to the work of bop and such later modern jazz giants as Ornette Coleman, , and Eric Dolphy, though only "in a very simple, perhaps even embryonic form."95 On this important recording the one Texan present was the little-known Smith, of Marshall (ca. 1908– 1950s?), who apparently substituted for Hot Lips Page at the last minute. Not only does Smith perform impressively in taking the place of another Texan who was clearly a more notable trumpeter, but he demonstrates how effectively Southwestern musicians "had begun to transform [Louis] Armstrong's concepts into a more riff-oriented linear style."96 Smith 's performances, fluent and well-shaped, at times inspired, are evidence that there were many superb players in the Southwest whose part in jazz's ongoing development has been largely unrecognized. has never figured as a prominent jazzman, nor has he been identified in most jazz histories as a Texan, as has been the case for many Texas musicians mentioned here.97

Eddie Durham's career did not end with the Kansas City Five and Six sessions, but these recordings do epitomize his most significant contributions to jazz history. In later years Durham led an all-woman jazz orchestra; brought together a number of early Kansas City figures for small group sessions; led a big band that competed with the bands of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman; made his arranging skills available to Miller, Artie Shaw, and other big band leaders; and remained active into the 1980s.98 The story of Durham's arranging for Glenn Miller merits re•counting because it not only involves another aspect of the Texan's work but recalls the bigotry that all black musicians faced, regardless of their talents and skills. At a time when whites often considered blacks shiftless and incapable of intellectual pursuits, African American jazz musicians suffered economically in spite of their proven artistry and intelligence. Durham's arrangement for one of Glenn Miller's , , earned him a mere five dollars, while it made the bandleader a millionaire.99

In recounting his experiences with Miller, Durham stopped short of discussing any particular compositions or the remuneration for his services. In a 1971 interview Durham merely told why he had gone to Miller with his "book." Having left Basie in 1938, Durham organized in 1940 a mixed band, which included fellow Texan Buster Smith and a white altoist, but was told by the president of a local union that "it was too smooth for a colored band, and that I'd be more successful if l went with Glenn Miller."100 Durham believed in his group and was doing so well that he was hurting the business of some of the big-name bands, but in the end he was talked out of keeping his unit together and offered his talents to Miller instead. Walter Gilbert Fuller's account of Durham's work for the white bandleader is more specific and even credits the Texan with giving Miller his famous sound by using a lead clarinet on top of the band, a device Durham had earlier employed in arrangements for Jimmie Lunceford.101 Among the arrangements which Durham supplied to the Miller orchestra were those for such numbers as Sliphorn Jive, Wham, Gum Island Special, Tiger Rag, Baby Me, and I Want to Be Happy. Bio•discographer John Flower attributes the original arrangement of In the Mood to Durham on the basis of a radio interview:

Chummy MacGregor, reading from his forthcoming book " Revisited" [no such title is known to exist], stated that the band bought an arrangement of "In

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the Mood" from Eddie Durham for five dollars. All they used of the original arrangement were the two front saxophone strains and another part that occurred later on in the arrangement. MacGregor mentioned that additional solos were added to the original arrangement and he wrote the finishing coda. Miller probably edited some of the arrangement along with MacGregor (and others?).102

While In the Mood represents a falling away from true jazz and the growing, almost universal dependence of the big bands on written compositions that called for very little improvisation or spontaneity, Durham's work for the Miller organization illustrates once again his great versatility as an arranger. As we have seen, Durham tried to allow in his arrangements for the essential jazz ingredient of individual solos, but with greater emphasis on a pre-arranged performance rather than a looser, more individualistic approach, even his compositions were doctored for popular consumption. Although Durham was involved in these big-band developments, he himself remained close to the spirit of the blues-infused Kansas City tradition, which would be revitalized in the mid to late 1940s and early 1950s by Charlie Parker, carried on through the 1950s by Count Basie and by Jimmy Giuffre in his work with , and extended by Ornette Coleman and others into the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.103

Although the story behind In the Mood is appalling, it reflects the dedication of those like Eddie Durham who contributed to jazz in spite of prejudice and exploitation. As a versatile and highly proficient musician who was willing to experiment with new approaches to jazz, and who was capable of adjusting to changing styles, Durham was representative of black and white musicians of his own and later generations. Among the contemporaries who shared Durham's versatility and adaptability were Jack Teagarden, the finest white blues singer and perhaps the greatest trombonist in all jazz, member of many historic ensembles, bandleader, and musical ambassador; Tyree Glenn, trombonist, vibraphonist, and member of a wide range of groups, from the Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington orchestras to Louis Armstrong's last All-Stars (Teagarden having been in his first104); and Budd Johnson, a fine soloist on tenor and alto, composer, and eclectic arranger. From the modern period, Jimmie Giuffre has been equally accomplished on clarinet and on tenor and baritone sax and composed such classics as Four Brothers, "one of the most conspicuous successes of the modern jazz era," and Suspensions.105 Ornette Coleman has played plastic alto sax, tenor sax, trumpet, and violin; composed the classic Lonely Woman; organized and performed on the album Free Jazz, which features two quartets engaged in extended improvisation for some forty minutes nonstop; and taken part in concerts blending jazz and .106

Eddie Durham and his fellow Texans were enduring figures who changed with and yet remained true to the Southwestern traditions from which they took their inspiration. A few, like Herschel Evans and Charlie Christian, died tragically young, but their legacy was large, given their limited number of years as mature musicians. Native Southwestern jazzmen like Durham have exhibited above all an openness to change and innovation, an Emersonian self-reliance, and an adventuresomeness that has led them to participate in widely divergent groups, to which they have effectively adapted themselves and to the common funds of which they have made a significant and lasting contribution.

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ENDNOTES

* Dave Oliphant is the editor of The Library Chronicle at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of The University of Texas at Austin and a part-time English instructor at Austin Community College. He has taught a course on jazz and literature for the university's Humanities Program and has published Austin (1985), a book- length poem on the city and the man, and Maria’s Poem (1987), winner of an Austin Book Award.

1 George Hoefer, "Held Notes: Eddie Durham," Down Beat, XXIX (July 19, 1962), 57.

2 Frank S. Driggs, "Kansas City and the Southwest," in Nat Hentoff and Albert J. McCarthy (eds.), Jazz: New Perspectives on the History of Jazz . . . (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1959), 192.

3 Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930–1945 (New York: , 1989), 562.

4 Ross Russell, Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 54.

5 Ibid., 35–36 (1st quotation), 42 (2nd–4th quotations). Blind Lemon Jefferson has been called "the king of the country blues" and "the most famous male blues singer who ever lived, rivaling Bessie Smith for popularity among the record-buyers of his time . . . a propulsive force in blues history. Nearly every blues guitarist who has since sought to impress listeners by laying down a flashy riff is his indirect disciple. . . ." Liner notes by Stephan Calt to Blind Lemon Jefferson: King of the Country Blues (Yazoo 1069).

6 Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime: The True Story of an American Music (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1950), ix. The authors consider Joplin "the towering figure" of ragtime, which "spread like wildfire" and "has lived on in jazz and even in ; . . . our last fifty years of popular music have had a lilt and a syncopated lift that they never knew before ragtime came . . . the new 'serious' [classical] compositions are full of ragtime's echoes” (pp. xi, 3, 0).

7 E. Simms Campbell, "Blues," in Frederic Ramsey, Jr., and Charles Edward Smith (eds.), Jazzmen (1939; reprint, 1967), 112.

8 Peter J. Silvester, A Left Hand Like God: A History of Boogie-Woogie Piano (New York: Da Press, 1989), 50. This work discusses the lumber industry and the railroads connecting the camps and towns where itinerant pianists traveled the barrelhouse circuit. Silvester reports that "Using these towns [Galveston, Houston and Richmond] as their bases was the group of pianists—including such men as Conish Pinetop Burks, Son Becky, Robert 'Fud' Shaw [of Stafford, Texas (1908–1985)] and Edwin 'Buster' Pickens—known as the 'The Santa Fe' or the 'Santa Fe Group.' The railroad, with a main line running north from Galveston and Houston through Texas into Oklahoma, together with its side lines branching off to the east and the west, claimed to serve eighty-eight Texas counties" (pp. 26–27).

9 Ibid., 47. In 1930, Bessie Smith recorded Thomas's composition, the copyright to which he reportedly sold for the price of a railroad ticket in order to visit his dying mother (p. 49). Thomas's death date has been variously reported as 1928, 1936, and 1937.

10 Rudi Blesh, Shining : A History of Jazz (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), 311. Blesh mistakenly identifies Hersal Thomas as a native of Chicago (p. 303).

11 Campbell, in Ramsey and Smith (eds.), Jazzmen, 113.

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12 Wilfrid Mellers, Music in a New Found Land: Themes and Developments in the History of American Music (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 279 (2nd–4th quotations), 314 (1st quotation).

13 Ibid., 336.

14 Gunther Schuller, The History of Jazz. Volume I, Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 284.

15 Ibid., 289.

16 Schuller, The Swing Era, 563.

17 See Russell, Jazz Style, 48–49, for a discussion of both ragtime and riff (quotation, p. 49).

18 Daphne Duval Harrison, Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920s (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 113, 260, 263.

19 Ibid., 14 n. (quotation). In Shining Trumpets, Rudi Blesh observes that Sippie Wallace "has a voice of beautiful quality but its power is chiefly in the upper register, the lower range lacking the full richness and force which Ma and Bessie possessed" (p. 139). He also comments that her work of the early period "was of great importance; its varied nature is interesting and sometimes significant" (p. 140). As late as 1966, a European reviewer wrote that "Sippie Wallace astonished by the breadth of her singing and a delivery recalling Bessie Smith." Harrison, Black Pearls, 137. Two other important Texas blues singers of the period, also from Houston, were Hociel Thomas (1907?–1952), a niece of Sippie Wallace, and Victoria Spivey (1906–1976), both of whom are discussed in the Harrison book. In Blesh's book he describes Hociel Thomas's voice as one "of fruity richness, a little less powerful than that of Ma and Bessie" (p. 136). Both Hociel Thomas's Lonesome Hours (1926) and Sippie Wallace's Special Delivery Blues (1926) feature Louis Armstrong on cornet as well as brother Hersal on piano.

20 Harrison, Black Pearls, 121.

21 See Schuller, The Swing Era, 591, 600–601, 606; and Russell, Jazz Style, 128. Teagarden not only participated in Bessie Smith's last recording session on November 24, 1933, but was present for the debut recording of the great modern jazz vocalist three days later. Billie Holiday: The Golden Years, Columbia C3L 21. Both of these sessions also included Benny Goodman on clarinet, and both predate what Gunther Schuller calls Goodman's first performance with a black musician on December 18, 1933. Schuller, The Swing Era, 530 n. Teagarden's solo on Holiday's first recorded song, ''Your Mother's Son-in-Law," is a typical example of the Texan's free-wheeling but technically secure, highly spirited, and inimitable style. He was also at home in the slow blues, of which he is considered one of the finest players in jazz history. Charles R. Townsend, in San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976), writes that Bob Wills of the Panhandle (1905–1975) remembered hearing Bessie Smith as a young man in the 1920s and thinking her "the greatest thing I had ever heard" (p. 40). Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, "Mother of the Blues," has often been credited with taking Bessie on tour with her, though no proof of this has been offered. Dan Morgenstern, in notes for the 1992 Milestone compact disk entitled Ma Rainey (MCD-47021-2), reports that "There is some evidence that they did work together briefly near the end of Ma's career, in an early Thirties stock show in Fort Worth."

22 Russell, Jazz Style, 34 (1st quotation), 34–35 (2nd quotation).

23 Ross Russell reports that "in his early years as a jazz musician . . . Teagarden remained as close to Afro- American music as the prevailing segregated structure of society permitted. Later, as an established jazz star in the East, Teagarden was one of the first white musicians to make records with black musicians." Russell cites in particular the March 5, 1929, date with Louis Armstrong as among "the first mixed recording sessions in discography. The results . . . were outstanding and serve to illustrate the disservice done to musical culture in this country by the American apartheid system" Russell, Jazz Style, 123.

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24 According to Gunther Schuller in Early Jazz, the date of King Porter Stomp is "variously given" as 1902 or 1905 (p. 136 n.) Scott Joplin's second wife Lottie raised the possibility that Joplin influenced this important composition when she wrote that "In the early 1900's Jelly and another man named Porter King were working on a number of their own. Apparently, they got stuck. Anyway, they mailed it off to Scott, asking him to help. Later, when he completed it, Scott mailed it back but it didn't get published until years afterward. By then, Scott and Porter King were dead, so Jelly named it after his own friend, calling it 'King Porter Stomp.'" See James Haskins, Scott Joplin (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), 122–123.

25 Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz" (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950), 121.

26 Lomax lists among "the best known recordings" of King Porter Stomp the one by Harry James on Brunswick 8366. Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll, 267. Although James was born in Albany, Georgia, it was in Texas that he won a state solo contest at age fourteen, attended high school in Beaumont, and began playing professionally with local bands. Tyree Glenn performed King Porter Stomp with the Cab Calloway orchestra on a 1940 session, available on Alamac OSR 2407, and was among those, including Dizzy Gillespie and , who contributed "driving . . . solos of quality." Albert McCarthy, Big Band Jazz (London: Barrie & Jenkins Ltd., 1974), 214. Jimmy Giuffre performs on baritone in a rousing version of King Porter Stomp on 's Adventures in Rhythm (Columbia CL 604) from 1953. In his liner notes, Rugolo does not refer to Jelly Roll Morton as the composer of King Porter Stomp: "I've always felt that this great old standard, made famous by Benny Goodman, could be redone in a more modern setting—and here it is." Rugolo does not credit Fletcher Henderson either, even though it was his arrangement that Goodman performed in 1935, and in fact Henderson's own earlier band had performed King Porter Stomp in 1928, featuring the great early trombonist Jimmy Harrison, who, along with Jack Teagarden, originated a modern approach to the instrument. Gunther Schuller asserts that Henderson's "1932 recording [of King Porter Stomp] and its remake by Goodman in 1935 was to become the single most influential ensemble idea in the entire Swing Era." Schuller, Early Jazz, 268.

27 Schuller, in Early Jazz, declares that Lomax's "book, based on recordings Morton made at the Library of Congress, is a moving, sympathetic, and definitive account of Morton 's life" (p. 136 n.) Schuller also credits Lomax with first pointing out that "trombone phrasing is the Jelly Roll trademark" (p. 148). Lomax's book also aids in understanding how Morton brought together ragtime and blues to form jazz. Martin Williams, in what Gunther Schuller considers the definitive essay on Morton, credits Alan Lomax with seeing this composer- performer 's music as "an ingenious combination" of "'Downtown' and 'Uptown' New Orleans elements .. ." The Jazz Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 23. Williams also notes that "It is among Southwest musicians that one can gather the verbal evidence of Morton's influence" (p. 45).

28 Lammar Wright began his "formidable career" as "the best player" in Bennie Moten's Kansas City band. He was later a principal member of the Missourians, a band that was still close to ragtime in 1929 and 1930 when it "took New York by storm," giving Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington "many an uneasy night." According to Schuller, the Missourians "displayed an elemental, fiery drive that probably no other band in New York could match." Cab Calloway eventually took over the Missourians and transformed it into his own successful swing band, and again Wright was an important member who remained with Calloway until 1947. Of the Calloway orchestra's performance on December 23, 1930, of , Schuller comments that this piece, on which Wright is "prominently featured," is "amazing to this day for its hell-bent break-away tempo, upwards of 300 to the quarter-note beat . . . a staggering technical achievement for its time and, if memory doesn't fail me, the fastest tempo achieved by any orchestra up to that time." Schuller, The Swing Era, 334 (6th quotation), 336 (7th quotation), 340 n. (1st quotation); Schuller, Early Jazz, 270 (3rd quotation), 271 (4th and 5th quotations), 284 (2nd quotation).

29 William W. Austin, Music in the 20th Century from Debussy Through Stravinsky (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966), 173; quoted in Frank Tirro, Jazz, A History ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 83.

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30 Martin Williams has written of Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz (1960) that it was "remarkably conceived and remarkably influential," and that it "has the stuff of life in it as no other recorded performance I know of." Of a later composition, Trouble in the East (1969), Williams writes that it "had the timeless joy and melancholy of the blues running through it. It had its feet planted on the and it spoke to the gods. It was one of the most exciting, beautiful, and satisfying musical performances I have ever heard." Williams, The Jazz Tradition, 244 (1st quotation), 245 (2nd quotation), 246–247 (3rd quotation). In 1987, wrote in that "Saxophonist Ornette Coleman remains the greatest, and bravest, living composer and improviser in modern jazz." Fricke, The Year in Records," Rolling Stone (Dec. 17–31, 1987). Working with trumpeter Bobby Bradford, John Carter has produced what British critic Michael James called in 1973 "an outstanding contribution to that part of our cultural patrimony still known, for better or worse, as jazz." Liner notes for Secrets, Revelation 18. In 1988, Carter and Bradford released Comin' On, on which critic Art Lange finds that their "horns mesh in mutual agreement as they survey the new sonic architecture." Liner notes for Hat Art CD 6016, p. 4. In a review of the Carter-Bradford album Shadows on a Wall in the March 1990 issue of Down Beat, Bill Shoemaker writes that "Anyone claiming a serious interest in American music needs to hear Roots and Folklore, and there's no better place to start than at the end [i.e., Shadows on a Wall, which is 'a fitting conclusion' to Carter's five-suite series entitled Roots and Folklore: Episodes in the Development of American Folk Music]" (p. 29). Bradford, a native of Cleveland, Mississippi, moved to Dallas at the age of ten, attended high school there, and studied music at the University of Texas in Austin. He was a member of the Ornette Coleman quartet in the early 1960s, and appears on Coleman's 1972 album Science Fiction. LeRoi Jones, "Introducing Bobby Bradford," Black Music (New York: William Morrow, 1967), 99–103.

31 Leonard Feather, The New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz (New York: Books, 1960), 270. Feather credits Johnson with "organizing the first bop record date ever cut (a Coleman Hawkins session featuring Gillespie early in ’44)," with being "a member of the first organized small bop combo," and as a soloist with helping bring about "the full emergence of bop." As a fine alto and tenor saxophonist, a clarinetist whose tone sounded "for all the world like a premonition of Ornette Coleman," and a valued composer-arranger who "had grown up with all the Southwestern territory bands—Alphonse Trent, Troy Floyd, Jesse Stone, Terrence Holder, Coy's Happy Aces, as well as a short stint with Louis Armstrong in 1933," Johnson brought to the Earl "Fatha" Hines band the influence of the new "cool" tenor sax style and served as "surrogate director" by raising the band's performance standards as well as the quality of its repertory. Johnson contributed such hit compositions and arrangements as Piano Man, Father Steps In, XYZ, G. T. Stomp, and Grand Terrace Shuffle, the last two named for the nightclub where the Hines band played for eleven years, from 1928 to 1939. All of the Johnson tunes and performances mentioned are available on RCA Victor LPV-512. Feather, New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz (1st–3rd quotations); Schuller, The Swing Era, 285 (5th and 6th quotations), 289 (4th quotation).

32 Hugues Panassié and Madeleine Gautier, Guide to Jazz, ed. A. A. Gurwitch, trans. Desmond Flower (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956), 146.

33 John McDonough, "A Century with Count Basie," Down Beat, LVlI (Jan., 1990), 36.

34 Budd Johnson's brother Frederic H. "Keg" Johnson (1908–1967) was a prominent trombone soloist with the Cab Calloway orchestra from 1934 to 1948. The Johnson brothers' father was a cornetist and choirmaster in Dallas, and Keg studied music with Booker T. Washington's daughter and with other private teachers. Feather, New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz, 289.

Jack Teagarden's brother Charlie (1913–1984) is considered "one of the Swing Era's better jazz trumpeters. Blessed with a full, well-centered tone (like his brother Jack's), Charlie was effective in ballads as well as jazz solos." Schuller, The Swing Era, 605 n. Another brother, Clois Lee "Cub" Teagarden, and a sister, Norma Louise Friedlander, played drums and piano respectively, having studied with their mother Norma Louise on both piano and violin from age six (Jack began trombone at age seven). Feather, New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz, 438–439. As noted earlier, the Thomases of Houston (George, Hersal, Sippie, and Hociel) were also a family of musicians, who were important to early blues and boogie-woogie traditions.

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35 Schuller, The Swing Era, 351.

36 Panassié and Gautier, Guide to Jazz, 62 (quotation); Raymond Horricks, Count Basie and His Orchestra: Its Music and its Musicians (London: Victor Gollancz, 1958), 118–124. Horricks quotes Basie drummer Jo Jones as saying that "Herschel Evans was a natural. He had a sound on tenor that perhaps you will never hear on a horn again" (p. 118). Evans's most famous solo was on Blue and Sentimental, recorded with Basie in 1938. He was also responsible for two exceptional compositions for the Basie orchestra: Doggin 'Around, on which he takes one of his finest recorded solos, and Texas Shuffle, also recorded in 1938. Gunther Schuller, in The Swing Era, provides a close analysis of Texas Shuffle to reveal "something of the simplicity of method and cumulative energy fundamental to one of the better prototypical Basie-style riff arrangements" (p. 242). Schuller considers the final half-chorus of the piece "a minor miracle of musical-culinary artistry," with Evans mixing ingredients and blending them deliciously into "one indescribably beautiful coalescent sound" (p. 244). Later Texas tenor men include Booker Ervin of Denison (1930–1970) and John Handy of Dallas (b. 1933), both of whom were important members of Charlie Mingus's Jazz Workshop, as was trumpeter Richard Williams of Galveston (1931–1985). Yet another Houston tenor is Harold Land (b. 1928), who joined the Clifford Brown- Quintet in 1954.

37 J. A. Siegel and J. Obrecht, "Eddie Durham: Charlie Christian's Mentor, Pioneer of the Amplified Guitar," Guitar Player, XIII (Aug., 1979), 55 (1st quotation), 55–56 (2nd quotation).

38 , The World of Count Basie (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1980), 60.

39 Hoefer, "Held Notes," 54 (quotation). Stanley Dance in The World of Count Basie reports that the 101 Ranch Band "originated at the second largest ranch in the country, the King Ranch in Texas being bigger" (p. 61). Presumably this is a reference to the 101 Ranch in Oklahoma, which also had a Wild West Show connected with it, perhaps accounting for the existence of a traveling circus band of the same name. Curiously another 101 Ranch was one of the first cabarets established in New Orleans, "originally a low dive and hangout for river roustabouts, gamblers, and cutthroats. . . . For the next seven years [from 1910 until the closing of Storyville in 1917 by order of the U.S. Navy], some of New Orleans' hottest musicians played here, including Joe Oliver . . . [Sidney] Bechet . . . and 'Pop' Foster." William Russell and Stephen W. Smith, New Orleans Music," in Ramsey and Smith (eds.), Jazzmen, 33.

40 Dance, The World of Count Basie, 61.

41 Siegel and Obrecht, "Eddie Durham: Charlie Christian's Mentor," 56.

42 Russell, Jazz Style, 59.

43 Schuller, The Swing Era, 772.

44 Russell, Jazz Style, 77.

45 Schuller, Early Jazz, 293 (2nd quotation), 296 (1st quotation). In Jazz Style, Russell writes that Buster Smith "comes closer than any other musician to being the archetypal jazzman of the Southwest" (p. 74). Schuller comments that Smith's alto solos "are especially fascinating because the tone, with its sinewy fullness and slight edginess, was clearly emulated by [Charlie] Parker." Schuller, Early Jazz, 298. Another Texas alto saxophonist thought to have influenced Charlie Parker was Herman Walder of Dallas (b. 1905). For the latter and for interviews with a number of Texas jazzmen who were active in the Kansas City area, see Nathan W. Pearson, Jr., Goin' to Kansas City (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

46 Russell, Jazz Style, 80.

47 Ibid., 83; Schuller, Early Jazz, 295 (quotation)

48 Dance, The World of Count Basie, 66.

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49 Ibid., 62.

50 Ibid.

51 Schuller, Early Jazz, 304. The most fully developed, extended solo of this period by Durham is heard on the October 24, 1929, recording of New Vine Street Blues. Here Durham performs on acoustic guitar in the rather stiff style of Eddie Lang, as in the latter's 1927 solo on For No Reason at All in C with and Frankie Trumbauer. Unlike Lang, however, Durham alternates single-note lines with modulating chords, which is typical of his solos in the coming decade but not of the more relaxed, entirely single-note lines of his 1937 performance on Time Out, which looks forward to the work of Charlie Christian. See Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra (1929–1932): Basie Beginnings (RCA 9678-4-RB).

52 Ibid., 305.

53 Ross Russell devotes the third chapter of his Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest to the political regime of Mayor Tom Pendergast that made possible the night life in Kansas City, as well as to "the town's position in the world of show business and its reputation as a friendly host to traveling comedy companies, acts, minstrel companies, and road shows that began to tour the country at the end of the last century" (p. 11). Russell also suggests that "Had it not been for the fortuitous circumstances favoring Kansas City, it is possible that Texas might have rivaled the provincial capital as a center of jazz style" (p. 54).

54 Raymond Horricks claims that Eddie Durham "arranged [contracts] for several of the [Moten] band's Victor recordings." Horricks, Count Basie and His Orchestra, 168.

55 In Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie, as told to Albert Murray (New York: , 1985), Basie states that "Eddie Durham and I came up with the number that went into the book as 'Moten Swing.' It started out as our thing on a pop tune called 'You're Driving Me Crazy,' but we were not trying to work that up into anything. . . . I came up with a little something that Eddie liked. . . .We played over what he had put down [Durham notating in written form what Basie tried out on the piano], and then I just went on and tried something, and he picked up on that, and I said, 'You got it.' I cut back out to have another little nip because I knew he knew where it went from there. "That's how we came up with that one, and we had to name it something, so we just said, 'Hell, call it "Moten Swing,"' because it really was for the band, and it turned out to be the most famous number associated with that band. . . . It was copyrighted in the name of Bennie and Buster Moten, but Eddie Durham and I were the ones who wrote it out together" (p. 127).

56 Schuller, Early Jazz, 305. In The Swing Era, Schuller refers to Durham's Toby as "hair-raising, exciting" (p. 206).

57 Martin Williams, liner notes for Count Basie in Kansas City, Bennie Moten's Great Band of 1930–1932 (RCA Victor LPV-514). Williams remarks of Oh! Eddie, another tune by Durham that was recorded on November 30, 1930, that "the last chorus teasingly sketches out ideas that later turned up in Moten Swing.

58 Teddy Wilson was a Texan by birth but left the state at age four. Recognized as a prodigy (his "artistic personality already expressed itself in a highly individual manner in his teen years"), Wilson studied piano and violin at Tuskegee Institute in and made jazz history as the first black musician hired by a white bandleader, joining Benny Goodman's touring trio in 1935. Schuller, The Swing Era, 504 (quotation); Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 1971), 395. In addition to performing in the Goodman orchestra, Wilson joined forces with Harry James and Herschel Evans on some of the classic recordings made with Billie Holiday. (Eddie Durham, Hot Lips Page, and Tyree Glenn were also present at some of Holiday's recording dates.) Of Wilson's part on the recording of Easy Living, one critic has remarked that his "solo work and his accompaniment of the other musicians are enough by themselves to put this on any ten-best list, and Billie never surpassed this vocal with its repose and warmth." Glenn Coulter, "Billie Holiday," in Martin T. Williams (ed.), The Art of Jazz: Essays on the Nature and Development of Jazz (New York: Grove Press, 1960), 165.

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59 Vic Bellerby, "Duke Ellington," in Williams (ed.), The Art of Jazz, writes: "[Tyree Glenn's] achievement in adapting his phrasing to Tricky's trombone style was very remarkable. At times, as in the extended Mood Indigo, the smoothness of his phrase gave his mute effects a ludicrous rather than satirical effect, but he was often to drive with tremendous power and achieve a delicate, individual shake effect. In the Liberian Suite [on which Glenn also plays vibraphone] he inspires the fierce tension of the closing passages with his controlled playing" (pp. 146–147). Of Glenn's work as an exponent of the blues, Bellerby points to the Texan's performance of Hy'a Sue, which he calls one of the Ellington band's "best blues": "Glenn's trombone conjures the image of a great blues singer; indeed, one can almost visualize throwing back his head as Glenn leads into each of his choruses" (p. 156).

60 Dance, The World of Count Basie, 65.

61 Ibid., 61.

62 Schuller, The Swing Era, 35.

63 Alan Govenar, Meeting the Blues (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1988), 35 (quotation). Stanley Dance, in The World of Count Basie, quotes Durham as saying that he used the resonator while with Bennie Moten (p. 63).

64 Govenar, Meeting the Blues, 36 (quotation). Ralph Ellison, "The Charlie Christian Story," in Ellison, Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), 233–240, discusses "how little we actually know of the origins of even the most recent of jazz styles" (p. 237); "a conflict between what the Negro American musician feels in the community around him and the given (classical) techniques of his instrument" (p. 239); and the idea that Charlie Christian's "career in the big cities, where jazz is more of a commercial entertainment than part of a total way of life, is stressed at the expense of his life in the South, the Southwest, and the Midwest, where most Negro musicians at least found their early development" (p. 238).

65 Barry Ulanov, A History of Jazz in America (New York: Viking Press, 1952), 245. Ulanov provides a technical three-point definition of bop: it involved, first, a modification of the riff and of the twelve-bar form through a greater emphasis on inventive improvisations; second, the use of upbeat and irregular accents and sounds; and third, the introduction of unusual intervals, passing notes and chords, and the flatted fifth, "that celebrated identifying note of the medium . . . with which almost every bop performance comes to a close. . ." (p. 274). Christian's hummed sounds and a number of sung or shouted phrases, such as Dizzy Gillespie's "Bu-re-bop" and "Salt Peanuts" or Budd Johnson's "Bu-dee-daht," attempted to reproduce the new rhythms, accents, and intervals of bop music (p. 270).

66 Schuller, The Swing Era, 358 n.

67 Ibid., 571.

68 Ibid., 573.

69 Ibid., 356 n., 564–565 n., 577 (quotation).

70 Ibid., 565.

71 Al Avakian and Bob Prince, "Charlie Christian," in Williams (ed.), The Art of Jazz, 184 (1st quotation), 184–185 (2nd quotation).

72 Schuller, The Swing Era, 218.

73 Ibid., 211.

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74 Willie Smith, the masterful lead alto in Lunceford's orchestra, held a degree in chemistry from Fisk, and Lunceford himself had studied with Wilberforce Whiteman, father of the famous white bandleader Paul Whiteman. As Trummy Young, who later took Durham's place on trombone, reported, ''When Lunceford engaged me, he warned me I was coming into a nice band. They were all educated, well-behaved fellows, he said; some even went to church and Sunday school regularly." Stanley Dance, liner notes for the album Jimmie Lunceford: For Dancers Only, Vol. 3 (1936–1937), Decca DL 79239. Durham recalled that he taught Willie Smith, who also created some fine arrangements (particularly of Duke Ellington's Mood Indigo and of Rose Room), "how to voice for the instrumentation we had, and he was even willing to pay me," which is testimony to the Lunceford musicians' avid interest in learning, even as proven professionals. Dance, The World of Count Basie, 66.

75 Dance, The World of Count Basie, 66–67.

76 Max Harrison, Charles Fox, and Eric Thacker, The Essential Jazz Records, Vol. 1, Ragtime to Swing (London: , 1984), 309. One O'Clock Jump is actually credited to Buster Smith, Hot Lips Page, and Eddie Durham. Chris Sheridan (comp.), Count Basie: A Bio-Discography (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986).

77 Ibid.

78 According to Durham, he wrote swinging numbers but Lunceford and his men would "go back and put novelty on top of them." Dance, The World of Count Basie, 67. Sy Oliver, without a doubt the Lunceford arranger most responsible for the orchestra's success, considered Durham the best jazz arranger in the organization, which indicates a distinction between the Texan's approach and Oliver's own popular, more commercial style. Hoefer, "Held Notes," 54.

79 Schuller; The Swing Era, 212–213.

80 Sheridan (comp.), Count Basie: A Bio-Discography, xxv (quotations). Sheridan comments that "Both in its parts and as a whole, Basie's 1930s orchestra personified South Western swing, and, initially at least, one looked in vain for the grand theme statement and development that typified the work of New York bands. Instead, performances grew organically from the simplest materials, something borrowed or something Blues being built, often quite spontaneously, in riffs to climax both solos and entire performances. This is the process that gave the band its immense drive and momentum" (xxiv–xxv).

81 Schuller, The Swing Era, 238.

82 Ibid.

83 Harrison, Fox, and Thacker, The Essential Jazz Records, 309.

84 Ibid., 308. The Lunceford performance of Pigeon Walk is included on For Dancers Only, Vol. 3 (1936–1937).

85 Schuller, The Swing Era, 216.

86 Russell, Jazz Style, 236. Ross Russell comments further that "compared to Coleman Hawkins, Herschel Evans is a dreamier and more imaginative saxophonist; his tone is warmer and softer and his phrasing somewhat more legato."

87 Williams, The Jazz Tradition, 128–129. Williams's reference to Sampson's Blue Lou may concern some structural similarity between this piece and Durham's Time Out, for the tunes are otherwise not at all the same.

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88 Count Basie studied with Fats Waller, who had studied with James P. Johnson, who broke "with the Missouri ragtime tradition, which was essentially more melodic, thematic in conception. With his strong, striding left hand, Johnson focused his attention on the rhythmicization of melodic ideas, often suppressing the latter element to the point of extinction. Many of his 'melodies' are essentially rhythmic figures that happen to have pitches attached to them. But rather than being merely destructive, this approach provided the necessary transition to jazz." Schuller, Early Jazz, 217–218. Chris Sheridan writes that Basie "rapidly distilled 'stride' to its fundamentals, then rebuilt those essentials as a kind of lattice, through which soloists and rhythm section components alike could weave and interweave." Sheridan, Count Basie: A Bio-Discography, xxiv.

89 Albert Murray, Stomping the Blues (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1976), 174.

90 Other important Basie tunes that Durham composed or arranged include Swinging the Blues, which several jazz critics consider the most appropriately named title in the entire Basie library; Sent For You Yesterday; Every Tub; and the Basie theme song, One O'Clock Jump, which Durham worked out with Basie and Buster Smith. Dance, The World of Count Basie, 67. Max Harrison in The Essential Jazz Records ranks Basie's February 16, 1938, recordings of Durham's Swinging the Blues and Sent For You Yesterday "among the classics of recorded jazz . . . perfectly integrating the band's chief innovations with one musical event growing out of another" (pp. 296, 298 [quotation]).

91 Eddie Durham commented on one occasion that another cause of the big band business going "wrong . . . was that the bands got too wild in their tempo." Dance, The World of Count Basie, 65.

92 Quoted by Milt Gabler in liner notes for Giants of the Tenor Sax: Lester ''Prez" Young & Friends (Commodore CCD 7002, 1988).

93 Ross Russell, in Jazz Style, discusses the importance of the Kansas City jam sessions, in the most famous of which Lester Young "cut" (outplayed) Coleman Hawkins. It was as a product of this Kansas City environment of ritualistic jam sessions that Charlie "Bird" Parker (1920–1955) emerged as the foremost exponent of bop and modern jazz (pp. 27–30). Parker's first recorded performance took place on November 30, 1940; present were two Texans who played prominent roles in the story of Kansas City jazz: Gene Ramey of Austin (1913–1984) and Gus Johnson of Tyler (b. 1913). Ramey, who studied bass with Walter Page and had his first job in 1930 with Herschel Evans, played from 1938 to 1944 with Jay McShann's orchestra, which Parker joined at age sixteen. Ramey and Buster Smith were father figures for Parker. Johnson, whom Leonard Feather calls "one of the most effective drummers ever heard with the Basie band" (Feather, New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz, 272), played with many Kansas City groups through the 1930s, with the last Earl Hines band, and replaced Jo Jones in the Basie band in 1948. He worked with the Count's big band and small ensemble until 1954. Another Texan, trumpeter of Fairfield (1924–1972), was with Parker's quintet from 1948 to 1950, replacing , and in 1954 was a founding member with of the Jazz Messengers, which during the early 1960s featured pianist Cedar Walton of Dallas (b. 1934). Following his work with Parker, Miles Davis organized his own small groups that extended the bop movement and the feeling. Speaking of Davis's most famous combo, which featured John Coltrane on , Ralph J. Gleason referred to another Texan, pianist Red Garland of Dallas (b. 1923), who played with Davis's "original Quintet." Gleason remarks that this unit "comprised the best musical minds of their generation: John Coltrane, Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers, Red Garland . . . . The interplay between these personalities made the group. . . . [I]n no group before or since have I ever heard the kind of rhythmic interaction that went on between Garland and Philly Joe." Liner notes for Davis (Prestige PR 24001).

94 Harrison, Fox, and Thacker, The Essential Jazz Records, 356.

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95 Schuller, The Swing Era, 233. Martin Williams, in The Jazz Tradition, observes that on the quintet's recording of Lady Be Good "every phrase of [Young's) beautiful solo has been imitated and fed back to us a hundred times in other contexts by Lester's followers" (p. 132), and Jo Jones declared that this performance "was the best solo Lester ever recorded." Stanley Dance, liner notes for The Essential Count Basie, Vol. I (1987) (CJ 40608).

96 Schuller, The Swing Era, 230.

97 Ibid., 230, 236 n. Schuller does not identify Smith as a Texan, but he obviously associates him with the Kansas City tradition and attempts, as he says, "to redress the prevailing uncritically handed-down opinions on some of the lesser lights in jazz" (p. 236). Most sources, including Feather's New Edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz, do not list Smith at all. Ross Russell does identify Smith and another Basie trumpeter, Joe Keyes, as Texans, but neither Russell nor Marshall W. Stearns in The Story of Jazz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956) provide dates for Keyes. Stearns gives Houston as the trumpeter's birthplace (p. 213), as does Pearson in Goin' to Kansas City. The latter also gives 1929 as the year Keyes joined Bennie Moten, according to Booker Washington because Eddie Durham wanted him in the band (pp. 69, 131). In Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff (eds.), Hear Me Talkin' to Ya (1955; reprint, New York: Dover, 1966), Basie drummer Jo Jones calls Keyes "one of the most wonderful musicians I have known . . . . He was also a guy who taught me how to think" (p. 290). For Smith, see Barry Kernfeld (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (London: Macmillan Co., 1988), 468.

98 On Kansas City Jazz (Decca 8044), Durham leads a 1940 group that includes fellow Texans Buster Smith and Joe Keyes on two tunes, Moten Swing and I Want a Little Girl. Keyes on trumpet and Durham on electric guitar contribute some especially fine unison work. Ross Russell notes that these two pieces contain the "most accessible" solos by Buster Smith, who was recorded only rarely at the "high tide of his creativity." Russell goes on to assert that Smith's "exalted and highly fluid line. . . . surpasses both Lester Young and Charlie Parker in this respect, for he is smoother. . . . On the evidence of what little he did record, he deserves a rating with the best alto saxophonists in jazz and is, after Charlie Parker, my favorite on the instrument." Russell, Jazz Style, 235. In a documentary entitled The Last of the Blue Devils (Rhapsody Films, 1979), Durham is seen participating in a reunion of members of that great territory band. Along with reminiscences and performances by Count Basie and a conversation between Buster Smith and Eddie Durham, the latter is heard in a notable solo on trombone that demonstrates even as late as the 1970s his technical skill on one of his two major instruments.

99 Schuller, The Swing Era, 675.

100 Dance, The World of Count Basie, 68 (quotation), 69.

101 See interview with Fuller in Dizzy Gillespie and Al Fraser, To Be or Not . . . to Bop: Memoirs (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979), 258.

102 John Flower, Moonlight Serenade: A Bio-discography of the Glenn Miller Civilian Band (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1972), 81 (quotation). (See also pp. 70, 72, 74–76, and 104 for Durham's contributions to the Miller band.) Gunther Schuller, in The Swing Era, guesses that "Eddie Durham did the actual transferring of [Joe] Garland's original arrangement [Garland being credited with the arrangement in the published score], as pruned by Miller, and that Durham is also responsible for the trombone pedals towards the end. He was a trombonist, of course, and had used similar effects for years with the Lunceford band" (p. 675).

103 See, for example, Count Basie's 1960 Kansas City Suite (Roulette R-52056), which the liner notes call a modern version of "the elements of Kansas City stomp jazz . . . tailored [by ] for the big brash sound of the Basie band of today" and featuring Henry Coker of Dallas (1919–1979) on trombone and tenor solos by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. Davis's solos are reminiscent of Texan Buddy Tate's powerful solo on Seventh Avenue Express, recorded with Basie on October 19, 1947; Jimmy Giuffre on the 1955 Martians Go Home (The Swinging Mr. Rogers, Atlantic 1212), which John S. Wilson calls "a splendid example of light, intimate, Basie- influenced jazz, a gem of cohesive, subtle and inventive small group playing" (liner notes for Martians Come Back, Atlantic 1232); and Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic 1317), in the liner notes for

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which Martin Williams quotes bassist Percy Heath of the Modern Jazz Quartet: "When I first heard Ornette and Don Cherry, I asked, 'What are they doing?', but almost immediately it hit me. It was like hearing Charlie Parker the first time: it's exciting and different, and then you realize it's a really new approach and it makes a really valid music." Also see John Litweiler, The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958 (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1984), in which he calls Coleman's "exultant, leaping phrases and the undercurrent of loneliness in his sound . . . a summary and summit of southwestern style" (p. 35).

104 Of Armstrong's first All-Stars, English poet and jazz critic Philip Larkin wrote that 'The appearance of Louis Armstrong in 1947 at the head of a small group was one of the most spectacular comebacks in jazz. If younger readers object that he had never been away, I can assure them that ten years previously his reputation had been virtually a minus quantity." All What Jazz: A Record Diary, 1961–1971 (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1985), 122.

105 Schuller, The Swing Era, 744. Suspensions, though a completely composed piece in the classical tradition (including written-out solos), utilizes American Indian rhythms in combination with swing elements, as does Giuffre's more standard jazz composition Indian Club. Giuffre shares with Jack Teagarden an affinity for American Indian music. See Modern Jazz Concert (Columbia WL127), Shorty Rogers and His Giants (RCA Victor LPM1195), and Russell's Jazz Style, in which he quotes Teagarden: ". . . those Indian chants, you know, that came natural to me, too. I could embellish on that and I could play an Indian thing . . . to where you couldn't tell the difference. . . . I don't know how that came so natural" (p. 122).

106 Gunther Schuller has declared that Coleman's 1960 Free Jazz "was undoubtedly the single most important influence on avant-garde jazz of the ensuing decade." Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 77. Schuller also traces the course of Third Stream music from the influence of Paul Whiteman's "instrumental sophistication and technical control" (p. 123) on black musicians in the 1920s, through the incorporation of classical music into jazz arrangements by Benny Goodman and other Swing Era and post•World War II band leaders, up to the efforts of such jazz composers as , Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell, and Schuller himself to produce a "fusion" of the "two forces" (p. 114) of jazz and classical music. See especially pp. 76–79 and 114–118.

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CLASSICAL TEXAS XXXIV. David Wendel Guion Written by James Dick

David Wendel Guion, composer and musician, son of John I. and Armour (Fentress) Guion, was born on December 15, 1892, in Ballinger, Texas. His mother was an accomplished singer and pianist, and his father was a prominent judge. Guion's parents discovered his musical ability when he was five years old; consequently he started his musical education early. He studied first in nearby San Angelo, then at the Whipple Academy in Jacksonville, Illinois, and further at Polytechnic College in Fort Worth. His parents sent him to to study with Leopold Godowsky at the Royal Conservatory of Music. After the outbreak of World War I, Guion returned to the states, where he began teaching and composing.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s he composed and performed music that reflected his Texas heritage. For a time he hosted a Western-oriented weekly radio show in Autographed publicity photo of David Guion by Apeda, New York, New York City, for which he wrote the scripts and music. ca. 1920s. Guion wrote more than 200 compositions, including But Guion, at one time himself an accomplished cowboy, orchestral suites, ballet music, piano works, and religious songs. Many of his compositions reflected his Texas cowboy heritage, and became most famous for his arrangement of the cowboy he is perhaps best-known for his arrangement of “Home on the song “Home on the Range,” which was performed for the Range.” Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission, first time in his New York production Prairie Echoes. Prints & Photographs #1953/39-1.

It became a favorite of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the nation. In 1936 Guion was commissioned to write Cavalcade of America for the Texas Centennial celebration, and in 1950 he received a commission from the Houston Symphony Orchestra, for which he completed the suite Texas in 1952. His compositions number over 200 published works and include orchestral suites, ballet music, piano pieces, and secular and religious songs. His music has been performed around the world. Guion was one of the first American composers to collect and transcribe folk tunes, including Negro spirituals, into concert music. He is well-known for his arrangements of “Turkey in the Straw” and “The Arkansas Traveler,” as well as “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” “The Lonesome Whistler,” “The Harmonica Player,” “Jazz Scherzo,” “Barcarolle,” “The Scissors Grinder,” “Valse Arabesque,” and the Mother Goose Suite.

He was a master at musically representing the history and heritage of early Texas with such works as “Ride, Cowboy, Ride,” “The Bold Vaquero,” “Lonesome Song of the Plains,” “Prairie Dusk,” and the “Texas Fox Trot.” A collection of his waltzes, “Southern Nights,” was used in the movie Grand Hotel.

Guion was a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, the Texas Composers Guild, and the Texas Teachers Association.

In 1955 the National Federation of Music Clubs announced that Guion was one of America's most significant folk-music composers.

Guion, a Presbyterian and a Democrat, had a teaching career spanning over sixty years.

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He influenced young musicians at numerous colleges and conservatories including Howard Payne University (which in 1950 awarded him an honorary doctorate in music), Fort Worth Polytechnic College, Fairmont Conservatory, Chicago Musical College, Daniel Baker College, and Southern Methodist University.

Guion died on October 17, 1981, in Dallas and was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Ballinger.

Upon his death, his large collection of furniture, glassware, music recordings, books, and memorabilia was donated to the International Festival-Institute at Round Top.

The Crouch Music Library at , the Dallas Public Library, and the Fine Arts Library at the University of Texas at Austin have portions of his archives.

David Guion was one of the first American composers to collect and transcribe folk tunes into concert music. He was commissioned to write Cavalcade of America for the Texas Centennial celebration in 1936 and the suite Texas for the Houston Symphony Orchestra in 1950. Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Prints & Photographs #1953/039-02.

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XXXV. Scott Joplin Written by Theodore Albrecht

Scott Joplin, composer and pianist, called the “King of Ragtime,” son of Jiles and Florence (Givins) Joplin, was born about 1867 possibly at Caves Spring, near Linden in Northeast Texas. His father, a laborer and former slave who possessed rudimentary musical ability, moved the family to Texarkana by about 1875. Encouraged by family music making, Scott, at age seven, was proficient in banjo and began to experiment on a piano owned by a neighbor, attorney W. G. Cook, for whom Mrs. Joplin did domestic work.

At about age eleven, young Joplin began free piano lessons from Julius Weiss (born in Saxony, ca. 1841), who also taught him the basics of sight reading, harmony, and appreciation, particularly of opera. Weiss lodged as family tutor for lumberman Col. R. W. Rodgers, and possibly introduced Scott to the same academic subjects he taught the Rodgers children. Indeed each of the Rodgers family learned a musical instrument, and young Rollin Rodgers became a lifelong opera enthusiast (the same subject that haunted Joplin in his later years) due to Weiss's encouragement.

The second-hand square piano that Jiles Joplin bought for Scott probably came from the Rodgers home when Scott Joplin, ca. 1912. The celebrated “King of Ragtime” became the family bought a new instrument during Weiss's America’s premier composer in that genre from the 1890s until residence there. After Colonel Rodgers died in April World War I. Ragtime influenced the development of jazz, rhythm 1884 and following the subsequent departure of and blues, and rock-and-roll. Larry Willoughby Collection. Weiss, Joplin may also have left Texarkana. September 1884 seems to be a seminal month in Joplin's life, signifying either his departure from the border town or the date when he became an assistant teacher in Texarkana's Negro school. Some authorities believe that he remained there until about 1888, performing in Texarkana and area towns.

After several years as an itinerant pianist in brothels and saloons, Joplin settled in St. Louis about 1890. A type of music known as “jig-piano” was popular there; its bouncing bass and syncopated melody lines were later referred to as “ragged time,” or simply “ragtime.” During 1893 Joplin played in sporting areas adjacent to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and the next year he moved to Sedalia, Missouri, from whence he toured with his eight-member Texas Medley Quartette as far east as Syracuse, New York, and, in 1896, into Texas, where he possibly witnessed the staged collision of two M.K.&T. railroad trains near Waco—the “Crash at Crush.” In 1897 he enrolled in Sedalia's George R. Smith College for Negroes, studying piano and theory. During this time he was an “entertainer” at the Maple Leaf Club and traveled to Kansas City, where in 1899 Carl Hoffman issued Joplin's first ragtime publications, including his best-known piece, Maple Leaf Rag.

The sheet music went on to sell over a million copies.

Thereafter Joplin entered into an on-and-off arrangement with John Stark, a publisher in Sedalia, and later in St. Louis and New York.

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In addition to his output of increasingly sophisticated individual rags, Joplin began to integrate ragtime idioms into works in the larger musical forms: a ballet, The Ragtime Dance (1899); and two operas, The Guest of Honor (1902–03) and Treemonisha (1906–10). Unfortunately the orchestration scores for both the operas were lost. A piano–vocal score for Treemonisha was later published.

When he moved back to St. Louis in 1901, Joplin renewed an acquaintance with Alfred Ernst (1867–1916), conductor of that city's Choral–Symphony Society, and possibly took theory lessons from him. The German Ernst noted, “He is an unusually intelligent young man and fairly well educated.” Joplin had a strong conviction that the key to success for was education, and this was a common theme in his works. After further periods of residence in Sedalia, Chicago, and St. Louis, with a possible visit home to Texarkana, he followed publisher Stark to New York in 1907, using the city as a base for his East Coast touring, until he settled down there permanently in 1911, to devote his serious energies to the production of Treemonisha, mounted unsuccessfully early in 1915.

Joplin had contracted syphilis some years earlier, and by

1916 his health had deteriorated considerably, as Sheet Music—“The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin (John Stark & Son, St. indicated by his inconsistent playing on the piano rolls he Louis). Ragtime experienced a revival in the early 1970s, and “The recorded. He was projecting a ragtime symphony when he Entertainer” was used as the soundtrack for the 1973 movie The entered the Manhattan State Hospital, where he died on . Larry Willoughby Collection, Courtesy of Huey Meaux. April 1, 1917. He was buried in St. Michael's Cemetery in New York City. Joplin married Belle Hayden in 1901, and they had a daughter who died in infancy. The marriage had ended by 1904, and in June 1904 he married Freddie Alexander, but she died in September of that year.

At some point in the 1910s, Joplin was with Lottie Stokes, his common-law wife, with whom he formed Scott Joplin Music Publishing Company in New York.

Joplin's works include his ballet and two operas; a manual, The School of Ragtime (1908); and many works for piano: rags, including Maple Leaf, The Entertainer, Elite Syncopations, and Peacherine; marches, including Great Crush Collision and March Majestic; and waltzes, including Harmony Club and Bethena. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century Scott Joplin's music won more critical recognition. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame by the National Academy of Popular Music in 1970. His collected works were published by the in 1971, and his music was featured in the 1973 motion picture The Sting, which won an Academy Award for its film score. In 1976 Joplin was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Treemonisha, the first grand opera by an African American. The biographical film Scott Joplin was released by in 1977, and in 1983 the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp of Joplin as part of its Black Heritage series. Joplin was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1987.

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XXXVI. Leonora Rives-Díaz Written by Ruth K. Sullivan

Leonora Rives-Díaz was a pianist and composer. Evidence suggests that she was American-born, possibly in the late 1860s or early 1870s, and perhaps in South Texas. Her early musical training showed “promise of a career as a piano virtuoso,” but “a serious accident to her eyes” frustrated that ambition. Nevertheless, “her talent found vent in compositions of merit in the Mexican idiom,” and in music publishing.

The Galveston and San Antonio music company, Thos. Goggan & Bro., published two important compositions by Leonora Rives during the 1880s. The better-known of these two, the “New Administration Grand March,” was dedicated to President Grover Cleveland and published in 1885. The composer had taken up residence in Mission Valley, Texas, near Victoria, by 1885. She was “commissioned to compose a piece to Sheet Music—“ Grand Waltz” by Leonora Rives commemorate the opening of the new capitol building (Thos. Goggan & Bro., Galveston, 1888). Leonora Rives was “commissioned to compose a piece to commemorate the opening of in Austin.” The formal dedication took place on “May the new capitol building in Austin.” 16, 1888, but the celebration started May 14 and continued through May 19 with major attractions each During the grand week of festivities in May 1888, copies of her waltz were available for sale as souvenirs at sixty cents each. The artwork, day.” Copies of her composition, “State Capitol Grand by architect Elijah E. Myers, features a line drawing of the south face Waltz,” were available for sale as souvenirs at sixty of the Capitol. cents each. Courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Prints & “The Austin Daily Statesman printed over 10,000 Photographs, Sheet Music #10. copies, which were all gone by 11 a.m.,” one publication commented. The “Grand Waltz,” dedicated to Governor Lawrence S. Ross, the first Texas governor to occupy the new Capitol, was performed on the evening of May 18 at the dedication ball, held in the Senate and House chambers. The governor and his wife led the grand march into the chambers with music playing from the second floor.

After moving to Mission Valley, Leonora Rives married another composer, Louis Felipe Díaz, both of whom had been publishing their works through the Hauschild Music Company in Victoria. The company was committed to publishing South Texas artists, male and female, from many ethnic backgrounds. Until 1922, Hauschild published compositions from German, French, Polish, English, Irish, and Mexican composers and arrangers. The numerous ethnic groups represented by Hauschild's music catalogues also attest to the variety of cultures in South Texas and the cross-pollination of musical styles that resulted.

Louis F. Díaz, who began his career as a sign painter, became one of “the most prolific composers of the nineties” in South Texas and “director of a small but excellent dance orchestra, consisting of himself and his sisters, Clara, Lucy, and Mary.”

Hauschild published at least fourteen compositions by Díaz, including “City of Roses” waltz (1899), “Margarita” polka and two-step (1899), and “The Paris Exposition” march (1889). In 1901 Leonora Rives–Díaz dedicated her work “Twentieth Century Waltz” to the honor of the marriage of her friends Laura and Henry John Hauschild, the eldest son of George Hermann and manager of the music company.

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Rives–Díaz published many other compositions, including “Without Thee I Cannot Live,” “Southwest Texas Waltz,” “Without Thee I Cannot Sing,” and “I Cannot Help But Think of Thee.”

No positive references have yet been found to her death date or burial location. The Hauschild Musical Chronicle states that Louis F. Díaz died in Galveston, but no year is recorded. The rich legacy of music from these two composers pays tribute to the enormous contributions of Hispanic culture to Texas music history.

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XXXVII. Van Cliburn International Piano Competition Written by Roy R. Barkley

The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is a world-class performance contest for young professional pianists held every four years in Fort Worth. The competition was originated by Irl Allison, Sr., who formed the Van Cliburn Foundation for that purpose. Allison had long supported excellence in piano playing - as a pianist, as a piano teacher, and especially as the founder of the National Guild of Piano Teachers. This organization sponsors the National Piano Playing Auditions, a program that brings professional musicians to cities and towns all over the country to judge the performance of students.

The occasion for the founding of the Cliburn Foundation was Van Cliburn's winning the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958; victory in this contest The forty-six competitors of the First Van Cliburn International Piano is one of the most coveted and prestigious Competition draw for performance times in 1962. Photograph by achievements to which a young pianist can aspire. Gene Gordon, Courtesy Van Cliburn Foundation. When Cliburn won, he was widely hailed as a major cultural ambassador whose influence would help to nullify the Cold War. Cliburn's fame was Allison's opportunity. At a dinner in Fort Worth, Allison and Mrs. Grace Ward Lankford brought together a group with interest in supporting young artists through an annual contest to be held in Fort Worth. They got the Chamber of Commerce and the local piano teachers involved. Allison announced the contest in 1958, and the first competition was held in 1962. The contest is in effect a final competition in which thirty or so of the world's best young pianists compete. Contestants cannot be older than twenty-nine. Before they come to Fort Worth, they have already won the right to do so in preliminary competitions in their own countries. In 2001, for example, after six preliminary screenings in the Netherlands, Hungary, Russia, New York, and Chicago, 137 musicians were invited to Fort Worth for a seventh and final screening. The 137 were trimmed down to thirty after each played a solo recital judged by a panel of professional musicians and music educators. These thirty competed in the Cliburn Competition per se. Twelve of them advanced to the semifinals, and from the semifinals six emerged as finalists. Usually three medals are awarded to the winners of the final contest, but on occasion ties have been rewarded with dual medals; in 2001 and 2009, for instance, the jury bestowed the gold medal on two performers. Over the years the performance required of contestants has varied. Originally, all were required to play the same commissioned work by an American composer, as well as chamber works performed with local professionals and concertos performed with the Fort Worth Chamber Orchestra and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. The Cliburn Competition has rightly been noted for supporting American composers, some of whom have been brought to prominence through the contest.

For several decades the opening performances of the contest took place at Ed Landreth Hall on the Texas Christian University campus, with the final rounds occurring at the Tarrant County Convention Center.

The contest was moved to the new Bass Concert Hall in downtown Fort Worth in 2001. By the 2000s the monetary award for the top three winners was $20,000—double the amount for the winner of the first competition in 1962. The other benefits of winning, however, amount to far more.

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These include publicity, a CD recording, and, most importantly, career-management services through which the winners acquire a busy schedule of international performances for three concert seasons.

Logistics for the contest are formidable. They include transportation of contestants and judges, the lodging of contestants with host families, the acquisition and distribution of music to orchestra and jury members (sometimes the selected works are not published yet, and in these cases manuscripts must be photocopied), and many other demands. A “pit crew” of piano tuners is essential. Perhaps the most famous of the Cliburn gold medalists is Radu Lupu (1966), originally from Romania; though others have been quite successful. The most famous “nonwinner” is said to be Barry The 2009 Co-Gold Medalist Nobuyuki Tsujii receives his gold medal Douglas of Northern Ireland, who finished third in the from Van Cliburn during the award ceremony of the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Photograph by Altre 1985 contest but later won the Leeds Competition in Media, Courtesy Van Cliburn Foundation. England and became a quite successful concert pianist. Two winners, Alexei Sultanov of Uzbekistan (1989) and Haochen Zhang of China (2009), were only nineteen years old.

Catastrophically for Sultanov, a mere eleven years later a series of strokes quelled his “fiery virtuosity” and canceled his career. Stanislav Ioudenitch, one of the gold medal winners in 2001 (the other was Olga Kern of Russia), had to drop out of the 1997 contest because he burned his hand with boiling water.

The 2001 contest also featured the first brother–sister contestants, Koreans Jong Hwa Park and his younger sister, Jong-Gyung Park. Russian Alexander Kobrin was awarded the gold medal in the 2005 competition. In 2009 Nobuyuki Tsujii of Japan and Haochen Zhang of China shared the gold medal honors. That year, the entire competition was webcast live on the Internet. Vadym Kholodenko of Ukraine was the gold medalist in 2013. A documentary film, Virtuosity, which followed the contestants of the 2013 competition, was aired nationally on PBS in 2015.

The year 2008 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Cliburn's remarkable victory at the Tchaikovsky competition and the formation of the Van Cliburn Foundation. The Cliburn Foundation has greatly enlarged its activities since 1958. It added a film festival to the 2001 competition. It facilitates educational programs for area public schools. Chief among the foundation's other activities is an International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs, which began in 1999. This contest is open to serious musicians who make their living at something besides music. Participants have included a massage therapist, a news producer, an astrologer, doctors, lawyers, housewives, and computer specialists. After 1999, competitions were held in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2007, and 2011, with another competition scheduled for 2016.

In June 2015 the first Cliburn International Junior Piano Competition and Festival took place. The event, for thirteen to seventeen-year-old pianists, occurred on the campus of Texas Christian University. Cliburn president and CEO Jacques Marquis explained, “This competition helped us establish relationships with the top international talent at an earlier age.” The competition’s namesake, Van Cliburn, died on February 27, 2013. The Cliburn naturally has its detractors. Some say that the structure itself, of chosen contestants performing in a high-stakes contest before an ad hoc panel of professional judges and the glaring eye of the media, leads to rewarding empty virtuosity. Others, however, say that real virtuosity is never empty, but is a product of heart as well as head and hand. Although an affair as big as the Cliburn could hardly be without flaws, the spectacular contest continues to bring together large audiences and first-rate talent, and to enrich both Fort Worth and the state of Texas.

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TEXAS BLUES XXXVIII. Blind Lemon Jefferson Written by Alan Govenar

Blind Lemon Jefferson, a seminal blues guitarist and songster, was born on a farm in Couchman, near Wortham, Freestone County, Texas, in the mid-1890s. Sources differ as to the exact birthdate. Census records indicate that he was born on September 24, 1893, while apparently Jefferson himself wrote the date of October 26, 1894, on his World War I draft registration. He was the son of Alec and Clarissy Banks Jefferson. His parents were sharecroppers. There are numerous contradictory accounts of where Lemon lived, performed, and died, complicated further by the lack of photographic documentation; to date, only two photographs of him have been identified, and even these are misleading. The cause of his blindness isn't known, nor whether he had some sight.

Little is known about Jefferson's early life. He must have heard songsters and bluesmen, like Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas and "Texas" Alexander.

Both Thomas and Alexander traveled around East Texas and performed a variety of blues and dance tunes. Clearly, Jefferson was an heir to the blues songster tradition, though the specifics of his musical training are vague. Legends of his prowess as a bluesman abound among the musicians who heard him, and sightings of Jefferson in different places around the country are plentiful.

By his teens, he began spending time in Dallas. About 1912 he started performing in the Deep Ellum and Central Track areas of Dallas, where he met Huddie Ledbetter, better known as , one of the Early blues guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson had a highly successful most legendary musical figures to travel and live in recording career with Paramount Records from 1926 until 1929 and had a profound influence on the development of the Texas blues Texas. In interviews he gave in the 1940s, Lead Belly tradition and the growth of American popular music. Courtesy Alan gave various dates for his initial meeting with Govenar, Documentary Arts, Dallas. Jefferson, sometimes placing it as early as 1904.

But he mentioned 1912 most consistently, and that seems plausible. Jefferson would then have been eighteen or nineteen years old. The two became musical partners in Dallas and the outlying areas of East Texas. Lead Belly learned much about the blues from Blind Lemon, and he had plenty to contribute as a musician and a showman.

Though Jefferson was known to perform almost daily at the corner of Elm Street and Central Avenue in Dallas, there is no evidence that he ever lived in the city. The 1920 census shows him living in Freestone County with

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an older half-brother, Nit C. Banks, and his family. Jefferson's occupation is listed as “musician” and his employer as “general public.” Sometime after 1920, Jefferson met Roberta Ransom, who was ten years his senior. They married in 1927, the year that Ransom's son by a previous marriage, Theaul Howard, died. Howard's son, also named Theaul, remained in the area and retired in nearby Ferris, Texas.

In 1925 Jefferson was discovered by a Paramount recording scout and taken to Chicago to make records. Though he was not the first folk (or “country”) blues singer–guitarist, or the first to make commercial recordings, Jefferson was the first to attain a national audience. His extremely successful recording career began in 1926 and continued until 1929. He recorded 110 sides (including all alternate takes), of which seven were not issued and six are not yet available in any format. In addition to blues, he recorded two spiritual songs, “I Want to be Like Jesus in My Heart” and “All I Want is That Pure Religion,” released under the Deacon L. J. Bates. Overall, Jefferson's recordings display an extraordinary virtuosity. His compositions are rooted in tradition, but are innovative in his guitar solos, his two-octave vocal range, and the complexity of his lyrics, which are at once ironic, humorous, sad, and poignant.

Jefferson's approach to creating his blues varied. Some of his songs use essentially the same melodic and guitar parts. Others contain virtually no repetition. Some are highly rhythmic and related to different dances, the names of which he called out at times between or in the middle of stanzas. He made extensive use of single- note runs, often apparently picked with his thumb, and he played in a variety of keys and tunings.

Jefferson is widely recognized as a profound influence upon the development of the Texas blues tradition and the growth of American popular music. His significance has been acknowledged by blues, jazz, and rock musicians, from Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, , and T-Bone Walker to Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Carl Perkins, , and the Beatles. In the 1970s, Jefferson was parodied as “Blind Mellow Jelly” by Redd Foxx in his popular Sanford and Son television series, and by the 1990s there was a popular alternative rock band called Blind Melon. A caricature of Blind Lemon appears on the inside of a Swedish blues magazine, called Jefferson. He appears in the same characteristic pose as his publicity photo, but instead of wearing a suit and tie, he is depicted in a Hawaiian-style shirt. In each issue, the editors put new words in the singer's mouth: “Can I change my shirt now? Is the world ready for me yet?” Alan Govenar and Akin Babatunde have composed a musical, Blind Lemon: Prince of Country Blues, staged at the Majestic Theatre, Dallas (1999), and the Addison WaterTower Theatre (2001), and have also developed a touring musical revue, entitled Blind Lemon Blues.

Jefferson died in Chicago on December 22, 1929, and was buried in the Wortham Negro Cemetery. His grave was unmarked until 1967, when a Texas Historical Marker was dedicated to him. Musicologist Alan Lomax and Mance Lipscomb were among those in attendance at the dedication ceremony. Jefferson was inducted in the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1980. In 1997 the town of Wortham began a blues festival named for the singer, and a new granite headstone was placed at his gravesite. The inscription included lyrics from one of the bluesman's songs: “Lord, it's one kind favor I'll ask of you. See that my grave is kept clean.” In 2007 the name of the cemetery was changed to Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery. Among Jefferson's most well-known songs are “Matchbox Blues,” “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” “That Black Snake Moan,” “Mosquito Blues,” “One Dime Blues,” “Tin Cup Blues,” “Hangman's Blues,” “'Lectric Chair Blues,” and “Black Horse Blues.” All of Blind Lemon Jefferson's recordings have been reissued by Document Records.

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XXXIX. Aaron Thibeaux Walker [T-Bone] Written by Helen Oakley Dance

T-Bone Walker also known as Oak Cliff T-Bone, the only son of Rance and Movelia (Jamison, Jimerson) Walker, was born Aaron Thibeaux Walker in Linden, Texas, on May 28, 1910. Looking for a better future for her son, his mother left her husband and moved to Dallas, where Aaron attended Northwest Hardee School through the seventh grade. His mother played guitar, and his stepfather, Marco Washington, played bass and several other instruments.

Family friendship with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Huddie Ledbetter familiarized him with the blues from infancy. T-Bone was recruited to lead Jefferson around the Central Avenue area, and he absorbed the legendary musician's style. While still in his teens, Walker met and married Vida Lee; they had three children. Walker was a gifted dancer who taught Blues legends Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (left) and “T-Bone” himself guitar. Around 1925 he joined Dr. Breeding's Walker. Walker made his first recording in Dallas in 1929, and in the Big B Tonic medicine show, then toured the South mid-1930s he became the first blues guitarist to play the electric with blues artist Ida Cox. In 1929 in Dallas he cut his guitar. He forged a successful career that influenced countless performers, and his “Stormy Monday” set the standard for blues first record, “Wichita Falls Blues,” under the name Oak songs and inspired such artists as B. B. King, , and Eric Cliff T-Bone, using the name of his Dallas Clapton. Larry Willoughby Collection, Courtesy of Huey Meaux. neighborhood.

Around 1930, after winning first prize in an amateur show promoted by Cab Calloway, Walker toured the South with Calloway's band and worked with the Raisin' Cain show and several other bands in Texas, including those of Count Biloski (Balaski) and . He also appeared with Ma Rainey, a great figure in blues history, in her 1934 Fort Worth performances.

In 1935 Walker moved to Los Angeles, where he quickly made a name for himself singing and playing banjo, and then guitar, for black audiences in two popular nightclubs, Little Harlem and Club Alabam. Crowds of fans were attracted to his acrobatic performances, which combined playing and tap dancing, and in 1935 he became the first blues guitarist to play the electric guitar. The Trocadero Club in Hollywood, where Walker had become sufficiently well known to appear as a star, welcomed integrated audiences after his 1936 performances.

From 1940 to 1945 he toured with Les Hite's Cotton Club orchestra as a featured vocalist; he recorded the classic “T-Bone Blues” with Hite in New York City in 1940. Walker used a fluid technique that combined the country blues tradition with more polished contemporary swing, his style influenced by Francis (Scrapper) Blackwell, Leroy Carr, and Lonnie Johnson. He was subsequently billed as “Daddy of the Blues.”

He also toured United States Army bases in the early 1940s and, recruited by boxing champion in 1942, went to Chicago, where he headlined a revue at the city's Rhumboogie Club so successfully that he returned year after year. In the mid-1940s he became a bandleader, signed a recording contract with the Black and White label, and turned out some of the best titles of his long recording career, including “Stormy Monday.”

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Many of his songs reached the Top 10 on the Hit Parade. In the 1950s he recorded under the Imperial label and worked for Atlantic Records. In 1955 he underwent an operation for chronic ulcers.

In the early 1960s T-Bone joined Count Basie's orchestra, appeared in Europe with a package called Rhythm and Blues, U.S.A., and played at the American Folk Blues Festival and Jazz at the Philharmonic. This began a new phase of his career as a blues legend, during which he appeared before largely white audiences. He was a regular attraction abroad, where his recordings made him a great favorite, and he was a participant on television shows and at jazz festivals in Monterey, California; Nice, France; and Montreux, Switzerland. In Europe he recorded a Polydor album entitled Good Feelin', which won the 1970 Grammy for ethnic-traditional recording. Among his other albums are Singing the Blues, Funky Town, and The Truth.

As an artist and performer, Walker was accurately evaluated by blues authority Pete Welding as “one of the deep, enduring wellsprings of the modern blues to whom many others have turned, and continue to return for inspiration and renewal.”

Among those he influenced were B. B. King, Pee Wee Crayton, Eric Clapton, Albert Collins, and Johnny T-Bone Walker. Courtesy Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Winter. Many titles from Walker's more than four Houston Public Library decades of recording have been reissued. Walker died of a stroke in Los Angeles on March 16, 1975.

His funeral at the Inglewood Cemetery was attended by more than a thousand mourners.

In 1980 T-Bone Walker was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame, and in 1987 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence of the genre. He is also a member of the Houston Institute for Culture's Texas Music Hall of Fame. Walker's T-Bone Blues (1959, Atlantic) album was inducted as a Classic of Blues Recordings in the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 2009.

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XL. Victoria Regina Spivey Written by Donna P. Parker

Victoria Regina Spivey (known as Queen, Vicky, and Jane Lucas), blues singer and songwriter, daughter of Grant and Addie (Smith) Spivey, was born at Houston on October 15, 1906. Her mother was a nurse, and her father had his own family string band. Victoria learned piano as a child and during her teens played at local parties in the Houston area. In 1918 she played in Lazy Daddy's Fillmore Blues Band and L. C. Tolen's Band and Revue in Dallas; in the early 1920s she worked with Blind Lemon Jefferson and others in gambling houses, “gay houses,” and other clubs in Galveston and Houston.

Known for her “‘mean’ blues with a hard and nasal voice,” she made her first recording with her own composition “Black Snake Blues” on the OKeh label in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1926. Her sisters Addie (Sweet Peas), Elton Island (the Za Zu Girl), and Leona were also singers who toured with her into the 1930s, working in vaudeville houses, barrelhouses, and theaters through Missouri, Texas, and Michigan. Vicky's popularity increased because of her role in the 1929 King Vidor film Hallelujah. She wrote most of her songs and Blues singer and Houston native Victoria Spivey with Bob Dylan at a studio session for Spivey Records in 1961. A relatively unknown recorded them between 1926 and 1937. She recorded Dylan, in one of his earliest recording sessions, contributed or performed with Louis Armstrong, Henry Allen, Lee harmonica and backup vocals to two songs recorded by bluesman Collins, Lonnie Johnson, Memphis Minnie (Minnie on Spivey’s 1962 release of Three Kings and the Douglas Lawless), Bessie Smith, and (Hudson Queen. Larry Willoughby Collection, Courtesy of Huey Meaux. Whittaker). After her first marriage to trumpeter Reuben Floyd, she married William (Billy) Adams, a dancer, and performed with him. She was married two other times.

From 1952 to about 1960, she performed only Blues singer and Houston native Victoria Spivey with Bob Dylan at occasionally and largely dropped out of the music scene a studio session for Spivey Records in 1961. A relatively unknown and settled down at her home in Brooklyn, where she Dylan, in one of his earliest recording sessions, contributed worked as a church administrator and devoted time to harmonica and backup vocals to two songs recorded by bluesman her church choir. The 1960s, however, brought a Big Joe Williams on Spivey’s 1962 release of Three Kings and the Queen. Larry Willoughby Collection, Courtesy of Huey Meaux. folk and blues revival. With jazz author Len Kunstadt, Spivey started her own label, Spivey Records, in 1961 to produce her own recordings and those of other blues artists. One of her earliest releases was Three Kings and the Queen (1962), which included a young Bob Dylan on blues harmonica and backing vocals. From 1963 to 1966 she contributed articles to Record Research and Sounds and Fury. In 1970 BMI awarded her the Commendation of Excellence “for long and outstanding contribution to the many worlds of music.” Vicky Spivey died at New York on October 3, 1976, and was buried in Greenfield Cemetery, Hempstead, New York. She was survived by two daughters. She is honored in the Houston Institute for Culture’s Texas Music Hall of Fame. Spivey Records was relaunched in 2007 and offered remastered rare recordings from the label.

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XLI. Stevie Ray Vaughan Written by Robin Dutton

Stevie Ray Vaughan, blues musician and guitar legend, was born in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas on October 3, 1954, to Jim and Martha Vaughan. Stevie's exposure to music began in his childhood, as he watched his big brother, Jimmie, play guitar. Stevie's fascination with the blues drove him to teach himself to play the guitar before he was an adolescent.

By the time Vaughan was in high school, he was staying up all night, playing guitar in clubs in Deep Ellum in Dallas. In his sophomore year he enrolled in an experimental arts program at Southern Methodist University for artistically gifted high school students, but the program did not motivate him to stay in school, and he dropped out before graduation in order to play music full-time.

By 1972, at the age of seventeen, Stevie moved to Austin, in an attempt to become involved in the music scene. Over the next few years he slept on pool tables and couches in the back of clubs and collected bottles to earn money for new guitar strings. He joined the Nightcrawlers, a blues band formed by Doyle Bramhall with . Stevie Ray Vaughan performs at Steamboat Springs in Austin, ca. 1980. Doyle Bramhall (1949–2011), who went on to secure his own reputation as In the 1970s and 1980s a new a renowned drummer and singer–songwriter, had performed with Stevie’s generation of blues musicians came into prominence, including guitarist brother Jimmie in Dallas in their band the Chessmen, and the two later Stevie Ray Vaughan, who, as a youth, organized the band Texas Storm in Austin. In the Nightcrawlers, Stevie was inspired by the African-American Vaughan played guitar and, impressed by Bramhall’s gravelly soul vocals, bluesmen in the Dallas-area adopted that singing style as his own. Bramhall would write or co-write a entertainment district of Deep Ellum. Photograph courtesy of Dennie Tarner, number of songs that Vaughan would later record, including “Dirty Pool,” Austin. “Change It,” “The House is Rockin’,” and “Life by the Drop.”

By 1975 Vaughan was playing with another Austin group, Paul Ray and the Cobras. With the opening of Antone’s blues club later that year, he also found an ally in club owner Clifford Antone. Vaughan’s performance with guitarist onstage at Antone’s, for example, earned him the respect of the blues legend. Recognition outside of Austin, however, eluded him. Vaughan left the Cobras and by the late 1970s was in a group that included , W. C. Clark, and others and was known as Triple Threat. This group eventually evolved into Double Trouble, with Barton, bassist Jackie Newhouse, and drummer . Barton left the band, and Tommy Shannon replaced Newhouse. Keyboardist came on board in 1985.

By the early 1980s the group had built a solid following in Texas and was beginning to attract the attention of well-established musicians like Mick Jagger, who in 1982 invited Vaughan and the band to play at a private party in New York City. That same year Double Trouble received an invitation to play at the in Switzerland. They were the first band in the history of the festival to play without having a major record contract. The performance was seen by and , and Stevie gained even more acclaim as a talented and rising young musician.

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Browne invited Vaughan to his Los Angeles studio for a demo session, at which Stevie and Double Trouble recorded some tracks for what eventually became his 1983 debut album, . Bowie had Vaughan play lead guitar on his album Let's Dance.

Vaughan's fame immediately soared.

The band signed a record contract with CBS/ and came to the attention of veteran blues and rock producer John Hammond, Sr. Texas Flood received a North Radio Awards nomination for Favorite Debut Album, and Guitar Player Magazine Reader's Poll voted Stevie Best New Talent and Best Guitarist for 1983. A track off the album also received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental performance.

Vaughan's subsequent albums met with increased popularity and critical attention. Double Trouble followed Texas Flood with Couldn't Stand the Weather (1984), (1985), and Soul to Soul (1986). All of the albums went gold and captured various Grammy nominations in either the blues or Stevie Ray Vaughan performs at rock categories. Throughout the 1980s Vaughan and his band also became Antone’s in Austin, ca. 1982. In 1993 consistent nominees and winners of the Austin Chronicle's music awards the city of Austin erected a memorial and Guitar Player Magazine's reader's polls. In 1984, at the National Blues statue of the legendary guitarist on Foundation Awards, Vaughan became the first white man to win Entertainer the south shore of Town Lake (renamed ), near the of the Year and Blues Instrumentalist of the Year. At the Grammys that year site of his last Austin concert. Vaughan he shared in the Best Traditional Blues honors for his work on Blues was inducted into the Blues Explosion, a of various artists. Although he rapidly gained Foundation Hall of Fame in 2000. prestige and success in the music world, Stevie also lived the stereotypical Photograph courtesy of Dennie Tarner, Austin. life of a rock-and-roll star, full of alcohol and drug abuse. On his 1986 European tour he collapsed and eventually checked into a rehabilitation center in Georgia. He left the hospital sober and committed to the Twelve Step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Following his recovery, he released his fifth album, , in 1989. It won him a second Grammy, this time for Best Contemporary Blues Recording. In 1990 Vaughan collaborated with Jimmie Vaughan, his brother and founding member of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, on Family Style, which also included their friend and musical colleague Doyle Bramhall on drums.

The album was released after Stevie's death. This last album brought Stevie's career total of Grammys to four. After his death Epic records released two more albums of his work, The Sky is Crying (1991) and In the Beginning (1992). The Sky is Crying went on to win a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Stevie married Bailey in 1980, and they divorced in 1986, when he was at the low point of his struggle with drug and alcohol abuse. At the time of his death, he had a girlfriend, Janna Lapidus. Vaughan died on August 27, 1990, in a helicopter crash on the way to Chicago from a concert in Alpine Valley, East Troy, Wisconsin. The location of the concert was difficult to reach, so many performers stayed in Chicago and flew in before the show. Dense fog contributed to the pilot's flying the helicopter into the side of a man-made ski mountain. All on board were killed instantly. More than 1,500 people, including industry giants such as Jackson Browne, , and , attended Stevie's memorial service in Dallas. He is buried at Laurel Land Memorial Park in South Dallas.

Governor Ann Richards proclaimed October 3, 1991, as “Stevie Ray Vaughan Day.” The city of Austin erected a memorial statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan on November 21, 1993, by Town Lake (renamed Lady Bird Lake), near the site of his last Austin concert. On May 11, 1995, musicians, including B. B. King, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, , Jimmie Vaughan, and Double Trouble, filmed “Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan” for Austin City Limits. The PBS program also released a posthumous video titled Stevie Ray Vaughan: Live From Austin, Texas,

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which contained excerpts from Vaughan's two previous appearances on the show. From 1995 through 2007 issued several Vaughan and Double Trouble albums, including a box set, live performances, and previously unreleased material. In 2000 Vaughan was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. He is also in the Houston Institute for Culture's Texas Music Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Austin Music Memorial in 2010. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble were inaugural inductees into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame in 2014. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.

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ROCKIN’ THROUGH TEXAS – THE ROCK-AND-ROLL REVOLUTION XLII. Elvis in Texas Written by Joe W. Specht

The up-and-coming, but still largely unknown, Elvis Presley officially joined the Louisiana Hayride with guitarist and bassist on November 6, 1954.

The Hayride broadcast live from Shreveport’s Municipal Auditorium every Saturday night on KWKH, a 50,000-watt clear-channel station. KWKH not only blanketed the Arkansas- Louisiana-Texas area, but the AM frequency also bounced and skipped its way across much of North Central and West Texas, and listeners quickly tuned in to the youthful singing sensation.

Once Elvis became a member of the Hayride cast, opportunities for personal appearances soon followed, and the Lone Star State became a prime testing ground for what some reporters later described as Presley’s “atomic-powered” performances.

Elvis made his first stops west of the Sabine River in November and December 1954 in Gladewater and Houston, but 1955 was the year the Presley-Texas connection was really forged in earnest. That year he performed in fifteen states, primarily in the South, making approximately 225 Elvis wows the audience on Big D Jamboree at the appearances, excluding Louisiana Hayride shows. Sportatorium in Dallas. He made a series of appearances on the program in 1955. Courtesy of Dragon Street At least 100 of these appearances, or almost 40 percent, took Records, Inc. place in Texas: thirteen in Houston, eight in Lubbock, six in Dallas, four in Odessa, and three each in Abilene and Midland. He debuted on Big D Jamboree, broadcast on radio KRLD, at the Sportatorium in Dallas on April 16, 1955. And he also played engagements in high school auditoriums, rodeo arenas, and baseball fields in smaller towns such as Alpine, Breckenridge, Conroe, DeKalb, Gainesville, Gilmer, Gonzales, Hawkins, Joinerville, New Boston, Paris, Seymour, Stamford, and Sweetwater.

In Lubbock, Buddy Holly was in attendance for Presley’s initial stop there on January 6, 1955, at the Cotton Club. On February 13 at Fair Park Coliseum, Waylon Jennings met Elvis backstage, and Buddy and Bob (Holly and his then singing partner Bob Montgomery) were among the opening acts.

On June 3, thirteen-year-old Lubbock native Mac Davis witnessed Elvis shake the showroom of the local Pontiac dealership. Presley later recorded seven of Davis’s compositions, including the 1969 Top 10 hits “In the Ghetto” and “Don’t Cry Daddy.”

Presley’s manager, , often booked his young protégé (with Scotty and Bill) as a solo act. In addition, they toured with package shows put together by the Louisiana Hayride and the Grand Ole Opry, giving Elvis the chance to rub shoulders with the likes of Hank Snow, Faron Young, and Johnny Cash.

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Presley promptly caught the attention of several influential disc jockeys (all of whom would eventually be inducted into the Country Music DJ Hall of Fame): Tom Perryman in Gladewater, Biff Collie in Houston, Slim Willet in Abilene, Bill Mack in Wichita Falls, and Charlie Walker in San Antonio.

Alta Hayes of Big State Distributors in Dallas, which handled jukebox and record store distribution for independent record companies, also jumped on the Elvis bandwagon and helped promote his record releases on Sun Records.

During his tenure with Sun Records and before signing with RCA Victor, Presley made his only recordings in a studio setting outside Memphis in Lubbock. Elvis, Scotty, and Bill visited radio station KDAV on either January 6 or February 13, 1955, to promote their evening show, and the trio laid down a couple of tracks on acetate for the station to play Eager young fans surround Elvis Presley at Fair Park Coliseum in Lubbock on June 3, 1955. The crowd includes later over the air. The two selections were “Fool, Fool, Buddy Holly and Bob Montgomery (far upper right) who, Fool,” a 1951 R&B chart-topper for the Clovers, and “Shake, as Buddy and Bob, had a regular program on local radio Rattle and Roll,” first a hit for and then for station KDAV. Buddy and Bob opened a show headlined by Bill Haley. Presley at the coliseum on February 13, 1955. Presley’s performance had a profound impact on Holly, who “Shake, Rattle and Roll” became a regular feature of Elvis’s transformed from country artist to rock-and-roll pioneer and later credited the singer’s powerful influence. Courtesy concert playlist, and he waxed another version for RCA the Dragon Street Records, Inc. next year. Live recordings from the period have also surfaced, and these provide aural evidence of just what audiences were experiencing. It should come as no surprise that one of the earliest known Elvis tapings was a Texas gig at Eagles Hall in Houston on March 19, 1955. Presley’s breathing is reckless, almost slobbering into the microphone, with the audible squeals of girls in the background. Scotty and Bill are off microphone, but they are still a formidable presence with Moore’s cranked-up guitar breaks and Black’s steady thumping bass.

With Presley as “the avatar, the unforgettable boy-daddy of rockabilly,” as so anointed him, disciples from the Lone Star State quickly became part of the vanguard’s leading edge. Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison are the most famous, but there were others in this initial wave who were just as affected including Dean Beard, , Mac Curtis, Sonny Fisher, Sid King, Buddy Knox, Joe Poovey, and Alvis Wayne. In an often-quoted Elvis remembrance, budding East Texas rockabilly described what it was like to see Presley at a show in Kilgore on May 20, 1955: “He made chills run up my back. Man, like when your hair starts grabbing at your collar. That’s the last time I tried to sing like or .”

Presley’s uninhibited stage presence inspired more than mere screams from his female Texas followers. In Stamford, Valerie Harms started an Elvis fan club for her friends. Fifteen-year-old Kay Wheeler of Dallas, who would star in the cult film Rock, Baby, Rock It!, took things a step further and formed the first documented national Elvis Presley fan club. Much has been written about Presley’s 1956 network television appearances, but select viewers in the Lone Star State had already seen him on the small screen. It has been long rumored that on April 18, 1955, Jimmy Thomason hosted Elvis on The Home Folks Show, televised live on KCEN (Channel 6) in Waco. Later in the fall, he also was a guest on Roy Orbison and the Teen Kings Saturday afternoon show on KOSA-TV (Channel 7) in Odessa. On July 4, 1955, Presley performed in Stephenville, De Leon, and Brownwood. This would be the only occasion ever when he played a “triple header,” three towns in the same day. For the De Leon concert, with on the bill, Elvis sang only gospel music, much to the chagrin of the promoter and to the equal disappointment of the crowd, one more Texas first and something Presley never did again.

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After took over the managerial reins in August, he began to concentrate on placing Elvis in larger venues. Towns like Stephenville, De Leon, and Brownwood disappeared from the schedule.

In 1956 with Colonel Parker focusing on the Southeast and Midwest, Presley played only nineteen concerts in Texas.

For his January engagements, he was once again with the Hank Snow tour booked for shows in San Antonio, Galveston, Beaumont, Austin, Wichita Falls, and Fort Worth. This was the last time Elvis appeared onstage as a supporting act. By this point, too, the noise of the audiences had become so loud neither Elvis nor his musicians could hear the music. Scotty Moore remembered a defining moment occurring at a concert in Amarillo on April 13, 1956. He recalled, “We were the only band in history that was directed by an ass. It was like being in a sea of sound.” At the Cotton Bowl in Dallas on October 11, 1956, Presley entered the stadium in a Cadillac convertible, and a roaring throng of 26,500 greeted them to a reception of thousands of flashbulbs going off. Drummer D.J. Fontana, who had joined the group in August, described the scene: “It looked like a war out there. I thought what’s this guy done?”

Presley did not come back to Texas until 1958, and he wore G.I. fatigues instead of gold lamé. On March 28 after his induction into the United States Army, Private Presley proceeded by military transport bus to Fort Hood to join the Second Armored Division (General Patton’s “Hell on Wheels” outfit) for basic training. A restaurant lunch break in Hillsboro caused “a small riot” when teenage customers recognized him. While completing an additional ten weeks of advanced tank training, Elvis had to take emergency leave to fly to Memphis to be with his mother, Gladys Presley, who was hospitalized. She died two days later on August 14. Presley finished his training at Fort Hood and on September 19, 1958, boarded a troop train for New York City. Final destination: the Third Armored Division in Germany.

Receiving an honorable discharge on March 5, 1960, Presley prepared to resume his movie career the next month. Colonel Parker chartered two private railway cars to transport Elvis and his entourage from Memphis to Los Angeles to begin filming G.I. Blues (1960). Word quickly spread that Presley was traveling by rail, and well- wishers began gathering at stations along the way in hopes of catching a glimpse of their idol. There were no stops in East Texas, but west of Fort Worth, when the retinue did pause, Elvis stepped out back and signed autographs. In Midland, Jack Auldridge, a disc jockey on Odessa radio station KOSA, gained access to the private car and scored an exclusive interview. Reminiscing about the early days, Elvis volunteered, “You know I started out in this direction. I think I played every little West Texas town.” During the layover in El Paso on April 19, ever-eager fans attempted to mob the train.

Under Colonel Parker’s direction, Presley devoted the 1960s to making movies in Hollywood and recordings for RCA Victor. After 1961, aside from two extended dates in Las Vegas at the International Hotel, Elvis did not perform live again until 1970, and his first engagement took place in Texas at the Astrodome for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Booked for two shows a day (February 27–March 1), Presley played to more than 200,000 people with one of the evening events drawing a then-record crowd of 43,614. He proved without question that his grassroots popularity had not waned after a decade’s hibernation from the stage. The response in Houston convinced Colonel Parker to keep his breadwinner on the road permanently. From 1971 to 1977, Elvis performed twenty-six additional concerts in the Lone Star State.

When assessing Presley’s career, the Texas presence looms large, especially in the initial stages of his rise to the top. Elvis once told a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, “I sorta got my start here.” The bond remained strong, too. In the spring of 1977, he returned for the last time for engagements in Abilene on March 27 and Austin the following evening. By this point, the medicated mood swings and often bizarre behavior onstage were well-documented, but the Abilene Reporter-News and the Austin American-Statesman each reported the star to be in fine form (soundboard recordings from Abilene and Austin provide further confirmation). Paul Beutel, writing in the American-Statesman, concluded, “For many of the eternally young-at-heart in Monday night’s mob, time had lost all meaning as they were again boppin’ to the Jailhouse Rock. Long live the King.” Less than five months later, “the King” was dead.

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XLIII. Charles Hardin Holley [Buddy Holly] Written by Martin Donell Kohout

Buddy Holly, rock-and-roll pioneer, was born Charles Hardin Holley on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas. He was the youngest of four children of Lawrence and Ella () Holley. His father worked as a tailor and salesman in a Lubbock clothing store, and though Lawrence Holley did not play an instrument himself, he and his wife encouraged the musical talents of their children.

Buddy made his debut at the age of five, when he appeared with his brothers in a talent show in nearby County Line and won five dollars for his rendition of “Down the River of Memories.” At eleven he took piano lessons and proved to be an apt pupil, but quit after only nine months. After briefly studying the steel guitar, he picked up the acoustic guitar and taught himself to play.

At Hutchinson Junior High School he befriended Bob Montgomery; the two formed a duo that performed country and what eventually was called rock-and-roll music. Buddy Holly performing at the Alan Freed Big Beat Show, Waterloo In fall 1953 Holly, Montgomery, and bass player Larry Hippodrome, Waterloo, , 1958. Photograph by Dick Cole. Welborn earned a regular spot on Lubbock radio station KDAV's Sunday Party program. While attending , Holly studied printing and drafting and worked part-time at Panhandle Steel Products. He apparently never doubted, however, that he would become a professional musician. In 1954 and 1955 he, Montgomery, and Welborn made a few demonstration recordings in Wichita Falls and hoped to land a recording contract, but in 1956 Decca offered Holly a solo contract. Decca was well-known as a country-and- western label and tried unsuccessfully to fit Holly into the country mold. After releasing two unsuccessful singles the company terminated Holly's contract.

Buddy returned to Lubbock and was still determined to make it big in the music business. In February 1957 he, Welborn (who was soon replaced by Joe B. Mauldin), drummer , and guitarist went to independent producer 's studio in Clovis, New Mexico, and adopted the name . From this point Holly's career took off. signed the Crickets, while Holly signed a solo contract with Brunswick's Coral subsidiary. The records put out under the Crickets' name had backing vocals, while those put out under Holly's name, with the exception of “,” did not. The arrangement made no difference in their recording technique. All of the records included Holly's unmistakable vocal style, which incorporated hiccups, nonsense syllables, a wide range, and abrupt changes of pitch, and was described by one critic as playfully ironic and childlike. The first Crickets single, “That'll Be the Day,” backed with “I'm Looking for Someone to Love,” was released on Brunswick Records on May 27, 1957. The record eventually reached Number 3 on the pop charts and Number 2 on the rhythm-and-blues charts.

At first many listeners assumed that Holly and his band were black. In July 1957, when the Crickets flew east, they discovered that they had been booked on various package tours with black artists at such theaters as in New York and the Howard in Washington, D.C. Their reception at the Apollo was chilly, until they

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launched the third day's show with a wild version of “.” The next few months were busy ones for Holly and his band.

They appeared on television on American Bandstand, The Arthur Murray Dance Party, and The Ed Sullivan Show and on a number of package tours and concert bills with some of the most famous rock-and-rollers of the day. In late December, Holly's second solo single, “,” backed with “Everyday,” reached Number 3 on the pop and R&B charts. The Crickets' second single, “Oh Boy!,” backed with “Not Fade Away,” was released in October 1957 and sold close to a million copies. Niki Sullivan quit the band, and over the next few months the Crickets toured Australia, Florida, and Great Britain as a trio before Holly asked to join as lead guitarist of the group. Their third single, “Maybe Baby,” backed with “Tell Me How,” also cracked the Top 100.

In the summer of 1958 Holly met Maria Elena Santiago, a native of Puerto Rico who had gone to New York as a child to live with her aunt after the death of her mother. Maria was the receptionist at Peer–Southern Music when Holly and the Crickets stopped in for a business meeting. Holly asked her out that night and, over dinner at P. J. Clarke's, asked her to marry him. She accepted, and they were married on August 15 at Holly's home in Lubbock.

Things were not going well for Holly professionally in late 1958. His last few singles had failed to recapture the success of the early releases. In October, after another tour, he announced that he was moving to New York. Norman Petty, however, convinced Allison and Mauldin to stay in Clovis. Holly reluctantly agreed to the breakup of the Crickets and determined to carry on alone. In New York he took acting lessons and recorded several songs with strings and orchestral backing. In January 1959 he agreed to go on tour again as part of what was billed as the “Winter Dance Party.” He was accompanied on the tour by Allsup, bassist and future superstar Waylon Jennings, and drummer Charlie Bunch. The tour promoters rather unscrupulously billed this group as the Crickets.

Holly and his band, along with , J. P. (the Big Bopper) Richardson, and several others traveled by bus through the Midwestern winter. After a February 2 show in Clear Lake, Iowa, they were supposed to on the bus for a 430-mile trip to Moorhead, Minnesota, but Holly decided instead to charter a plane to fly him and his band to Fargo, North Dakota, just across the Red River of the North from Moorhead. When the other performers heard of his plans, they wanted to come, too, and Jennings and Allsup ended up giving up their seats to Richardson and Valens. The red Beechcraft Bonanza took off from Mason City, ten miles east of Clear Lake, at about 1:50 a.m. on the morning of February 3, 1959. The weather was cold, about eighteen degrees, with light snow, and the plane went down almost immediately; the wreckage was discovered later that morning eight miles from the Mason City airport. The pilot, Valens, Richardson, and Holly, who had been thrown twenty feet from the airplane, all died in the crash.

Shortly after Holly was buried in Lubbock, his widow suffered a miscarriage. (She later remarried and named the first of her three sons Carlos, after Holly.) Holly's last single, “It Doesn't Matter Anymore,” backed with “,” had been released on January 5 and entered the Top 100 on the day of his death.

Holly had an incalculable influence on rock-and-roll music. Performers who either recorded his songs or were influenced by his and his band's distinctive style, image, and instrumentation include the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the , Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, and . In 1971 the singer– songwriter Don McLean commemorated February 3, 1959, as “” in his Number 1 single, “American Pie.”

The city of Lubbock, however, was somewhat slower to recognize its most famous son. Not until the release of the movie in 1978 did the city begin to realize the tourism potential of Buddy Holly. In 1979 the city hosted a concert by Jennings and the Crickets to raise funds for a statue of Holly.

The 8½-foot-tall bronze by Grant Speed, mounted near the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center, was unveiled in 1980. In 1983 the city turned the area around the statue into a “Walk of Fame” honoring West Texas musicians.

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Three years later the city celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Buddy Holly's birth with a concert featuring Bo Diddley and .

Buddy Holly was one of the first inductees admitted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and in 1990 an auction of Holly memorabilia in New York raised more than $703,000.

Actor , who portrayed the singer in The Buddy Holly Story, paid $242,000 for his guitar, and the Hard Rock Cafe paid $45,100 for a pair of Holly's distinctive black-framed glasses. In the 1990s the city of Lubbock expanded its focus on its famous native son. The Buddy Holly Music Festival began in 1995 and was held each Labor Day weekend throughout the 1990s. In September 1999 the opened to honor Holly’s legacy as well as provide displays on other Texas musicians.

In 2001 the Center, in joint sponsorship with Texas Tech University and Texas Monthly Magazine, began an academic symposium on Holly and other early influential rock-and-roll musicians, titled Not Fade Away: The Life and Times of Buddy Holly. Lubbock had a ribbon-cutting ceremony on May 9, 2011, for the opening of the Buddy and Maria Elena Holly Plaza. Located near the Buddy Holly Center, the plaza is the new home of Holly's memorial statue and the West Texas Walk of Fame.

Holly was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on September 7, 2011, which would have been his seventy-fifth birthday.

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XLIV. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs Written by Teresa Palomo Acosta

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, the Tex-Mex, blues, and rock band led by Domingo “Sam” Samudio (born in Dallas in 1937), went from obscurity to worldwide fame when “Wooly Bully,” a work Samudio composed, ascended to the Number 2 spot on the Billboard charts in May 1965. The song remained on Billboard for fourteen weeks. Approximately three million copies of “Wooly Bully,” including one million in Europe, were ultimately sold. The song, “a thudding beat number with a tongue-twisting chorus and nonsense lyrics,” became the Number 11 hit in Britain, where it was a bestselling single for fifteen weeks. The recording also made the band the top U.S. rock group in Germany. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs had initially failed in their pursuit of success with their recording of “Haunted House” for Dingo Records in 1964. Their fortunes changed dramatically in 1965 when they signed a contract to record with MGM Records, where Roy Orbison, The Animals, and Herman’s Hermits produced their hit songs. The band again reached the Number 2 position in Billboard in July 1966 when the song “Li’l Red Riding Hood” was released and remained on the charts for eleven weeks. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs went on to record “Ju Ju Hand,” “Red Hot,” and other singles that reached Billboard’s Top 100.

Samudio, a veteran of the United States Navy who had also attended Arlington State College, initially organized a band in Dallas in 1961 and called it the Pharaohs. Members included Carl Medke, Russell Fowler, Omar “Big Man” López, Domingo (Sam) Samudio, and Vincent López. In 1962 the Pharaohs made one record, but Samudio dropped out of the group. Samudio also played with Andy and the Nightriders in Dallas. He remained in the city when some of the Nightriders moved to Louisiana to pursue more opportunities. When the Nightriders lost their organist, they invited Samudio, who had only recently purchased an organ and was a novice in playing the instrument, to join the group in Louisiana. In 1963 the Nightriders joined the stream of musicians headed to Memphis, Tennessee, to find success. However by the late summer, some of the Nightriders returned to their homes in Texas and Louisiana. Samudio organized a new band and named it Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.

The newly-constituted band was made up of Ray Stinnet, guitar; Dave Martin, bass; Jerry Patterson, drums; and Sam Samudio, organ and vocals. Saxophonist Butch Gibson soon joined the group. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs were unusual in several ways. To questions regarding the origins of the term “sham,” Samudio answered that it was “rhythm-and-blues jargon for shuffling, twisting or jiving around to music.” Before taking up the organ, Samudio “shammed” while he sang, so he found the term a fitting one for the band’s name. Also, being a novice on organ, he had to “sham” his way through playing. In addition, he and his fellow musicians were known for wearing Middle Eastern attire for their performances. Indeed, Samudio wore a “jewelled jacket and feathered turban.” He purchased a hearse that he called “Black Beauty” in which to haul his organ and his , and the band toured in that vehicle.

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs recorded several albums, including Wooly Bully (1965), Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs (1965), On Tour (1965), and Li’l Red Riding Hood (1966). The band appeared on popular television shows such as Hullabaloo and The Ed Sullivan Show and was also featured in the film When the Boys Meet the Girls (1965). “Wooly Bully” was chosen by Billboard as Record of the Year for 1965. Samudio had an acting role in The Fastest Guitar Alive (1966).

After enjoying a brief, illustrious career during the 1960s, the group disappeared from the music scene after 1967. They were best-known for their punchy novelty songs, but that label hindered them from with more rock-oriented numbers. In 1970 Domingo Samudio, the Pharaoh’s leader, undertook a solo career and was awarded a Grammy in 1971 for Best Album Liner Notes to his record Sam, Hard and Heavy. Samudio also wrote two Spanish-language songs for the 1982 film The Border. He later expanded his repertoire to include gospel and country. “Wooly Bully” was part of the soundtrack of Night and the City (1992). In 1994 a number of artists recorded Turban Renewal: A Tribute to Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs. The group’s first and fourth albums were reissued on CD in 2004.

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XLV. Sir Douglas Quintet Written by Chris Lehman

Emerging from San Antonio’s “West Side Sound,” the Sir Douglas Quintet blended rhythm-and- blues, country, rock-and-roll, pop, and conjunto to create a unique musical concoction that gained international popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. From 1964 to 1972 the band recorded five albums in California and Texas, and, although its founder Doug Sahm released two additional albums under the same group name in the 1980s and 1990s, the Quintet never enjoyed the same domestic success as it had during the late 1960s.

A big part of the Sir Douglas Quintet’s distinctive sound derived from the unique musical environment in which its members were raised in San Antonio. During the 1950s and 1960s, the “moderate racial climate” and ethnically diverse culture of San Antonio—caused in part by the several desegregated military bases and the large Mexican-American population there—allowed for an eclectic cross- pollination of musical styles that reached across racial and class lines.

As a result, Sahm and his musical friends helped create what came to be known as the “West Side Sir Douglas Quintet, 1965. Left to right: Augie Meyers, Frank Morin, Sound,” a dynamic blending of blues, rock, pop, Doug Sahm, Jack Barber, Johnny Perez. The “five lads” from San country, conjunto, polka, R&B, and other regional Antonio capitalized on the craze of the mid-1960s and ethnic musical styles into a truly unique musical with their hit “She’s About a Mover.” Courtesy of SugarHill Studios amalgamation. San Antonio-based artists, such as archives. Augie Meyers, Doug Sahm, Flaco Jiménez, and Sunny Ozuna, would help to propel this sound onto the international stage.

Born in 1941, Douglas Wayne Sahm grew up on the predominately-black east side of San Antonio. As a child, he became proficient on a number of musical instruments and even turned down a spot on the Grand Ole Opry (while still in junior high school) in order to finish his education. In 1953 Sahm met Augie Meyers, the son of a storeowner in nearby St. Hedwig. Meyers, like Sahm, was passionate about music and became an expert organ and guitar player. The two spent much of their free time attending concerts at the nearby Eastwood Country Club and other mixed-race venues, where they often listened to and jammed with country and rhythm-and-blues musicians.

During the mid-1960s, the so-called “British Invasion” brought a flood of English pop-rock groups, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, , and the Dave Clark Five, to the United States, where they dominated radio airwaves and record sales. The British Invasion revolutionized American , as hundreds of bands in Texas and elsewhere sought to imitate the new “mod” beat of these wildly successful English groups. In 1964 Sahm and Meyers were exposed directly to the impact of the British Invasion when their two bands, Meyers’s The Goldens and Sahm’s Markays opened for the Dave Clark Five.

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Houston-based Huey P. Meaux also wanted to capitalize on the new British sound. Reportedly, Meaux locked himself in a hotel room with a bottle of wine and “every Beatles record that he could find” to study the new mod style.

He concluded that the music’s beat was similar to a Cajun two-step. Meaux soon contacted Sahm, who had been seeking a record deal from the producer for several years, and told him to grow his hair long, “form a group, and write a song with a Cajun two-step beat.” Meaux suggested that they call the band the Sir Douglas Quintet, in hopes that the English-sounding name would help sell records. The quintet—which featured Sahm on vocals, Meyers on organ, bassist Jack Barber, drummer Johnny Perez, and saxophonist Frank Morin—quickly scored a Top 20 hit in 1965 with “She’s About a Mover.” The so-called “British lads” appeared on such national broadcasts as Hullaballoo and Shindig! The group's second single, "The Rains Came," made the Top 40. They released their first album, The Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet, in 1966.

After touring the United States and Europe, the band returned home to Texas in 1966. Upon arrival at the Corpus Christi airport, Sahm was arrested for possession of marijuana. Following the arrest, Sahm and Morin left the Lone Star State for San Francisco, the Mecca of the hippie counterculture movement. Once in San Francisco, Sahm and Morin reformed the Sir Douglas Quintet with several other local musicians and released Sir Douglas Quintet +2= Honkey Blues (1968) on Smash Records. Critics had commented that the record lacked the earlier signature organ sound, so Sahm convinced Augie Meyers, along with Johnny Perez, and bassist Harvey Kagan, to move to California. With most of the original Texas lineup back together, the Sir Douglas Quintet released Mendocino in 1969. This album proved very popular with rock, country, and Tex-Mex fans domestically and abroad, and it became the group’s biggest seller, in part because of its Top 40 title track.

Riding on the success of Mendocino, the Quintet released two more albums in 1970, Together after Five and 1+1+1=4. While contemporary music critics hailed Together, calling it “perhaps the best recorded version of the Augie Meyers ‘cheap organ’ sound,” they were left confused by the genre-crossing nature of 1+1+1=4. By 1971 the band members were beginning to drift apart, and a homesick Sahm went back to Texas to pursue new musical endeavors. One year after Sahm’s return to the Lone Star State, the Quintet disbanded. issued an album of unreleased tracks entitled Rough Edges in 1973, but this would be the last album from the Sir Douglas Quintet for almost a decade.

Reviving the Sir Douglas moniker, Sahm reunited with Meyers and Perez and brought in bassist Speedy Sparks and guitarist Alvin Crow to create Border Wave, released in 1981. Domestically the album was not as popular as earlier works, but it did significantly increase the band’s international following. With new member Louie Ortega, who took over as guitarist after Crow left, they toured and recorded in Europe during the early 1980s, but the Quintet disbanded by 1985. In 1994 Doug Sahm reformed the band with his sons Shawn and Shandon and released Day Dreaming at Midnight. Sahm died in 1999. Drummer Johnny Perez died in 2012.

In the span of its career, the Sir Douglas Quintet elevated the unique and eclectic regional style of San Antonio’s West Side Sound to international popularity. The Quintet also helped lay the groundwork for the phenomenal worldwide success of Sahm and Meyers’s subsequent Grammy-winning supergroup, the Texas Tornados. In the process, Sahm, Meyers, and their bandmates helped carry the distinctive musical influences found in Texas and the Southwest to audiences around the globe.

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XLVI. 13th Floor Elevators Written by Cortnie Jones

One of the first psychedelic rock bands to reach national prominence during the 1960s, the 13th Floor Elevators included founding members , electric jug player, 1965–69; Stacy Sutherland, lead guitarist, 1965– 69; Benny Thurman, bassist, 1965–66; John Ike Walton, drummer, 1965–67; and Roger Kynard “Roky” Erickson, lead singer and rhythm guitarist, 1965–69. Other personnel were bassists Ronnie Leatherman (1966–67) and Dan Galindo (1967–69) and drummer Danny Thomas (1967–69).

The Elevators originated in 1965 in Central Texas with Tommy Hall, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, who was studying philosophy, psychology, and chemical engineering. The band, which included members from the group, the Lingsmen, began with Stacy Sutherland on lead guitar, Benny Thurman on bass (who also had played violin in the Lingsmen), and John Ike Walton on drums. Although not originally a musician himself, Tommy Hall performed on an amplified jug. Seventeen-year-old Roger Kynard “Roky” Erickson, the lead singer and rhythm guitarist for an Austin band named the Spades, joined the group on vocals.

Hall’s wife, Clementine, reportedly suggested the name 13th Floor Elevators. Since most buildings do not have a thirteenth floor, the appellation seemed to imply that the band had the ability to travel to other dimensions and levels of consciousness. Others have suggested that the name refers to the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, “m,” which stood for marijuana. In November 1965 Hall declared that the band had a “psychedelic” sound after reading the word in a book written by Timothy Leary, noted advocate of hallucinogenic drugs. Hall believed the band’s mixture of rock–and-roll, folk, R&B, and drug-induced lyrics, coupled with Erickson’s screaming vocals, was best described as “psychedelic.” The Elevators claim to have drawn much of their musical inspiration from marijuana and LSD, both of which they used openly.

In late 1965 the Elevators began writing songs. They soon signed with Contact, a small record label, and performed their first live shows together in Austin. Hall’s electric jug, along with Erickson’s dynamic vocals and stage presence, quickly set the group apart from other local acts and earned the Elevators a devoted following. Erickson’s previous band, the Spades, had recorded the song “You’re Gonna Miss Me” with the Austin-based label, Zero Records. The Elevators re-recorded the song with a harder sound, patterned more after their idols, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones.

In 1966 the Elevators released their single featuring “You’re Gonna Miss Me” and “Tried to Hide” with Contact Records. Local media began to take notice of the band, and it began touring outside of the Austin area and appeared on regional television shows including Sump’n Else with host Ron Chapman in Dallas and The Larry Kane Show in Houston. Later that same year, the Elevators signed with a Houston-based label, International Artists, which subsequently hired Lelan Rogers, brother of pop/country singer , to promote and produce them. The label re-released the Elevators’ first single nationally in mid-1966. This single proved to be the group’s most successful recording, climbing to Number 56 on the Billboard charts. The label followed with the group’s debut album, Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, which has been praised by some critics as one of the greatest psychedelic albums ever released.

As the band’s popularity grew, it traveled to San Francisco to begin a West Coast tour. Thurman, the band’s bassist, chose to remain in Texas, so he was replaced by Ronnie Leatherman. The band was especially well- received in the San Francisco Bay area, where it played the and Fillmore Auditorium, as well as several smaller venues. The Elevators appeared with such popular bands as the Grateful Dead, Grape, and Big Brother and the Holding Company. (Reportedly, the Elevators had asked Janis Joplin to join them.

Although she declined the offer, Joplin acknowledged the band’s influence on her music.) Their growing popularity also earned them appearances on television programs, including American Bandstand and Where the Action Is.

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The Elevators’ reputation for endorsing and openly using illegal drugs drew the attention of law enforcement officials, including the . Once back in Texas in 1966, the Elevators were arrested for possession of marijuana. Due to a technicality, Walton and Erickson’s charges were dropped, and Sutherland and Hall received suspended sentences. All of the attention connected to illegal drug use convinced many Top 40 radio stations to ban the Elevators. However, as the group’s popularity grew, most stations relented to public pressure and lifted the bans. In the summer of 1967 Walton the drummer and bassist Leatherman left the group and were replaced with Danny Thomas and Dan Galindo, respectively.

In 1967 the band released its second album, , which many consider to be another masterpiece of . The Elevators cancelled several out-of-state tour dates, and touring was mainly limited to within Texas in 1967, due to personal problems and additional drug busts. International Artists released a “live” album in 1968, which was actually made from studio outtakes with a dubbed “audience.” The release was a commercial failure. The band began working on a new album, released in January 1969 as Bull of the Woods. It featured many of Sutherland’s songs but failed to attract critical acclaim or commercial success, in part, because it was recorded without the input of lead vocalist Roky Erickson.

The end of the Elevators coincided with Erickson’s arrest for marijuana possession in 1969. Since this was not his first offense, Erickson, an untreated schizophrenic, faced a substantial prison term. To avoid this, he opted for a three-year sentence to Rusk State Hospital for the criminally insane. After the group disbanded in 1969, Hall moved back to San Francisco, while most of the remaining members stayed in Texas. Following his release from Rusk State Hospital, Erickson spent years struggling with mental illness. In the early 1970s he tried to get the group back together with Sutherland, Walton, and Leatherman, but it never fully materialized. Erickson did complete some solo albums and two books of poetry. He also worked with several bands, including Bleib Alien, the Explosives, and the Resurrectionists. In 1978 lead guitarist Sutherland was fatally shot by his wife. In 1984 Erickson, Leatherman, and Walton played a reunion show in Houston.

The legacy of the Elevators has continued through the numerous bands they have influenced. In 1990 ZZ Top, R.E.M., the Butthole Surfers, Primal Scream, and several other popular groups, released a tribute album on Warner Brothers honoring the Elevators—Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson. Other prominent musicians who have acknowledged the group’s contributions to include lead singer Robert Plant, Sonic Youth, , and the White Stripes. The Elevators also had a major impact on the hippie counterculture scene in Texas during the late 1960s, as well as Austin’s scene during the 1970s and 1980s. In the early twenty-first century Roky Erickson, who had regained his health and was on medication for his schizophrenia, made a musical comeback and played his first full-length concert in two decades at the Austin City Limits Festival in 2005. He continued to perform some of the 13th Floor Elevators songs at his shows. The Elevators impacted a new generation of music fans and were the subject of a panel discussion at the SXSW conference in 2005. International Artists released a ten-CD box set of the Elevators, Sign of the 3 Eyed Men, in 2009. On May 10, 2015, at the Austin Psych Festival (also known as Levitation), band members—Roky Erickson, Tommy Hall, John Ike Walton, and Ronnie Leatherman—of the Elevators had a fiftieth-anniversary reunion performance.

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XLVII. Bloodrock Written by Lawrence J. Jasinski

The group Bloodrock was formed in 1969 in Fort Worth, Texas. The original members consisted of Jim Rutledge (vocals and drummer), Lee Pickens (lead guitar), Nick Taylor (rhythm guitar), Ed Grundy (bass), and Stevie Hill (keyboards). Drummer Rick Cobb III came on board beginning with the group's second album.

Before the band formed, Pickens had begun appearing on television and radio with groups in the Dallas/Fort Worth area as did Rutledge. The story is similar for the other members prior to Bloodrock. They were influenced by musical contemporaries such as Cream, , and Deep Purple, as well as blues players such as . The band signed with and worked with Grand Railroad's producer Terry Knight on their first three albums, Bloodrock, Bloodrock 2, and Bloodrock 3. Their first album, Bloodrock, was released in February 1970 and rose in the charts. In their early days, the band opened for Jimi Hendrix several times.

In fact, they performed for their largest audience, a Bloodrock, ca. 1972. Left to right: (front row) Rick Cobb, Stevie Hill, crowd of 350,000, at the second International Nick Taylor; (back row) Lee Pickens, Jim Rutledge, Ed Grundy. Bloodrock, based out of Fort Worth, earned a gold record for their Pop Festival headlined by Hendrix. Bloodrock also did album Bloodrock 2. Courtesy of Stevie Hill Archives. sessions at Electric Lady Studios in New York with producer (drummer for Jimi Hendrix) and engineer . They had some contact with the jazz world and played festivals that featured such jazz luminaries as Miles Davis and Roland Kirk.

Bloodrock played its own homogenization of primarily hard rock and some blues and also worked with songwriter John Nitzinger who wrote and/or contributed to such songs as “Jessica,” “Lucky in the Morning,” “You Gotta Roll,” and “Kool-Aid Kids.” One interesting note on songwriter contribution—on their 1971 release of Bloodrock USA, the song “It's a Sad World” was cowritten by Warren Ham, future member of the band.

Characterized sometimes as southern prog rock with a dark side, their music reflected the news headlines of the day. They achieved some success in the United States and reportedly were popular among troops in Vietnam. Their best-known song, “D.O.A.,” about an airplane crash victim finding himself in the emergency room dying, reached Number 36 on Billboard in early 1971. The song was included on the band's second album, Bloodrock 2, which eventually earned a Gold Record Award. Upon the release of Bloodrock 3, they toured with and played thirty-eight sellout performances over fifty-two days from March to May 1971. They recorded a live album, Bloodrock Live, at the Chicago Amphitheater in 1972.

Noted for their super-amplified, imposingly loud live performances, Bloodrock seemed on their way to achieving continual rock notoriety when in 1972, with the departure of Jim Rutledge and Lee Pickens, Warren Ham came to the group as the vocal replacement.

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Ham, a technically-proficient and creative saxophone and flute player, replaced biting lead guitar as the band's mainstay with saxophone and flute solos. While Stevie Hill's keyboard work remained a staple sound in the band, it too had taken a stylistic change.

In a sense, one band with one style was replaced with a different band and a different style. Bloodrock took a turn away from hard rock towards more , pop, and jazz. With the new lineup they released Passage in 1972 and Whirlwind Tongues (with new drummer Randy Reeder) in 1974.

The group's divergence from its original sound into the Warren Ham era produced a more poppy sound which drew comparisons to Jethro Tull and . This change alienated much of their original fan base, thereby cutting the group's career in two. As a result, the group disbanded by 1975. Compilation albums were released in 1975 and 1989, and in 2000 Triptych included Passage, Whirlwind Tongues, and Unspoken Words on two CDs.

On March 12, 2005, five of the six original members—Rutledge, Pickens, Grundy, Taylor, Hill, and Chris Taylor (drums in place of Cobb), held a reunion concert in Fort Worth. This was a for Hill, stricken with leukemia, to a sold-out audience. A film of the concert, along with personal interviews with the band members, was subsequently released on DVD. Rhythm guitarist and founding member Nick Taylor (born Doyle Taylor in Slayton, Texas, in 1946) died on March 10, 2010, after a car accident in Cleburne.

After Bloodrock, Taylor had continued various music endeavors and had most recently played in his own group, the Nick Taylor Band. Other individual members of Bloodrock, including Hill, Rutledge, and Ham, continued to play active roles in music. Stevie Hill passed away from leukemia on September 12, 2013.

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XLVIII. Pantera Written by Chris Lehman

Founded in 1981 in Arlington, Texas, as a glam-rock cover band, Pantera became one of the nation’s most popular heavy metal groups of the 1990s. The quartet, known for its “groove-metal” sound, released five major-label studio albums and was nominated for several Grammy awards before disbanding in 2003.

The band’s original lineup included drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott, his brother and guitarist Darrell Abbott (known as “Diamond” Darrell and ultimately as “Dimebag” Darrell), guitarist Terry Glaze, bassist Tommy Bradford, and vocalist Donnie Hart. Hart and Bradford left the band shortly after its formation, and Glaze took over on vocals. Bassist Rex Brown (known for a time as Rex Rocker) replaced Bradford and remained with Pantera thereafter. During its early years, the band produced three independent albums, recorded at Pantego Sound Studio, the recording facility of Jerry Abbott, father of Vinnie Paul and Darrell. Metal Magic (1983), Projects in the Jungle (1984), and I the Night (1985) were rooted in glam-rock but also evolved increasingly toward a heavy metal sound.

In 1986 Glaze left the group, and Pantera shifted decidedly away from glam-rock toward heavy metal, trying out a variety of vocalists until settling on New Orleans-native Philip Anselmo in 1987. With Anselmo as its new lead singer, the band released Power Metal in 1988, an album that introduced elements of thrash metal to their sound. Pantera signed with Atco Records the following year and began work on Cowboys From Hell (1990).

While recording Cowboys From Hell, Pantera developed its signature sound, often referred to as “power groove,” which was a blending of thrash metal and groove metal. This sound, which catapulted the band to international acclaim, featured rather hard-edged vocals by Anselmo, complex guitar riffs from “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, and high-energy drumming by Vinnie Paul Abbott. The album would eventually be their first release to go platinum. The group continued to perfect the “power groove” sound on 1992’s Vulgar Display of Power, an album that debuted at Number 44 on the American Billboard charts, and gave Pantera widespread radio airplay. The band’s success continued when Far Beyond Driven (1994) debuted in the top spot on both the American and Australian Billboard charts, giving Pantera its first Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance for the song “I’m Broken.” Some critics have credited the influence of Pantera, rather than the ascension of grunge, with causing the decline of glam metal. Despite such success, Anselmo, who was suffering from a heroin addiction, distanced himself from the rest of the band after they returned home from their international tour in 1995. This continued during the production of The Great Southern Trendkill (1996), for which Anselmo laid down his vocal tracks in New Orleans, while the rest of the band recorded in Texas. The album met with limited success, and Pantera opted for a four-year hiatus. They were a mainstay, however, at in 1997 and 1998, and Pantera composed the fight song for the NHL’s Dallas Stars during the team’s 1999 Stanley Cup run. The group returned to the studio in 2000 to record its final album, Reinventing the Steel, which debuted at Number 4 on the Billboard Top 200 and gave the band its fourth Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance for the song “Revolution is My Name.” The group toured internationally until late 2001, but a feud between the Abbott brothers and Anselmo caused Pantera to disband in 2003. Following Pantera’s breakup, the members went on to form other groups. Anselmo split his time between two bands, Super Joint Ritual and Down (accompanied by Rex Brown), while the Abbott brothers formed Damageplan in early 2004. Tragically, on December 8, 2004, “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott was killed onstage when a gunman shot him during a Damageplan concert in Columbus, Ohio. Despite the band’s troubled history, Pantera made a lasting impact regionally, nationally, and internationally and is often considered a major influence on late 1990s alternative-metal bands, such as Korn and Fear Factory.

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TEXAS MUSIC OVER THE AIRWAVES XLIX. Austin City Limits Written by Damon Arhos and Michael Toland

Austin City Limits, a television program of concert performances featuring distinctive styles of music from around the world, was founded in 1974 by PBS affiliate KLRN-TV (later KLRU-TV) in Austin and is carried by hundreds of stations nationwide. The program has showcased performers such as Ray Charles, , B. B. King, Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Bonnie Raitt, Merle Haggard, Elvis Costello, , Buena Vista Social Club, , and Pearl Jam. In the 1980s the show’s success was credited with contributing to the rise of several major country performers and coincided with the growing popularity of country music. By the 1990s and 2000s the program was a beacon for music fans looking for unadorned performances of both cutting edge acts and veteran performers in a variety of genres. The show also lent its name to the successful Austin City Limits Music Festival and the downtown Austin venue ACL Live at the Moody Theater.

Originally known for its “redneck rock” or “progressive country” music (a combination of traditional country music with folk and rock influences that flourished in Austin in the early 1970s), the show was developed in 1974 from the desire of Bill Arhos, then program director at KLRN, to develop locally produced Doug Sahm performs on Austin City Limits in November 1975 during programming that could attract national attention. the videotaping of the program’s first season. Bill Arhos / Austin City Limits Collection, Wittliff Collections, Texas State University. With producer Paul Bosner and director Bruce Scafe, Arhos approached PBS’s Station Program Cooperative (a program fostered by the network to help individual stations produce national programming) for funding for a pilot. Bosner and Scafe filmed a show featuring Willie Nelson. Then Arhos and Bosner sold the show to PBS by convincing station executives, accustomed to shows like Masterpiece Theatre and , that Austin City Limits was not too far outside the public broadcasting mainstream.

In 1975 Arhos persuaded Greg Harney, program acquisition head for PBS’s annual national membership drive, to show the pilot at the Station Independence Project meeting, a forum for planning the next year’s national pledge drive. Thirty-four stations aired the show; subsequently, PBS and Arhos agreed that if five stations would support it, the program could remain in the market for at least a year. With the help of KQED-TV in San Francisco, Arhos got the five stations only minutes before the network deadline. Videotaping began in September 1975 with Asleep at the Wheel and a reunion of Bob Wills’s Original Texas Playboys.

Aired in 1976 and drawing on a growing Austin music scene, the first season defined the show’s unique progressive country style, challenging the dominance of Nashville.

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Program highlights in the 1970s and 1980s include the premiere of the longtime ACL theme song (Gary P. Nunn’s “London Homesick Blues”) and Willie Nelson’s performance of the complete Red-Headed Stranger album, returning it to the Billboard charts for a forty-eight-week run (both in 1977); a rare TV showcase for Texan singer–songwriter Townes Van Zandt (1976); performances by Ray Charles and (1979); the adoption of the Austin skyline backdrop (1981); and the three-hour special “Down Home Country Music,” which won Best Network Music Program at the New York International Film and Television Festival (1982). Other high points from the period were the tenth-anniversary show featuring the Texas Playboys which was taped before an open-air crowd of more than 5,000 in front of the Texas Capitol (1984); the debut appearance by B. B. King (1982); the first (1983) and final (1989) appearances by the late Austin blues hero Stevie Ray Vaughan; an all-female “Songwriters Special” with Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, and others; a performance by and the first of many appearances by Lyle Lovett (1986); shows by Johnny Cash and Reba McEntire (1987); and a rare full-length television performance by legendary singer–songwriter Leonard Cohen (1988).

In the 1990s Austin City Limits faced a declining PBS budget and network demands that the series raise more than a quarter of its own funding, which it did through patronage by national sponsors like Chevrolet and AT&T. By its nineteenth season (1993), ACL was focusing less on mainstream country music and more on other kinds of music and featured an eclectic mix of rock, country, blues, and folk. Highlights included the first appearances by (1990) and (1996); a multi-artist tribute to Townes Van Zandt, featuring Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, and more (1997); and the debut shows by the Dixie Chicks (1998) and alternative rock pioneers Wilco (1999).

By the 2000s the series boasted the tagline “Great music–no limits,” incorporating not only rock, blues, folk and country, but jazz, hip-hop, Latin and . The show expanded its musical focus and fan base with well- received performances by Phish and (both 2000); Cuban supergroup Buena Vista Social Club and ex- leader (2001); Robert Plant, Bonnie Raitt, and jazz great Pat Metheny (2002); and (2003); and Elvis Costello (2004); and R&B icon (2005); , Ray Davies of the Kinks, ’s son Damian, and Latin superstar Juanes (2006); and (2007); R.E.M., Sarah McLachlan, and (2008); Pearl Jam, , hip-hop star Mos Def, Grammy-winning jazz artist , and a long-gestating collaboration between Willie Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel (2009); and , John Legend, and comedian-turned-bluegrass musician Steve Martin (2010). In the 2010s the program continued to offer a variety of artists and styles including Lyle Lovett, Bob Schneider, and The Decemberists (2011); (2012); and Guy Clark, Jr., and Phoenix (2013). In 2014 Austin City Limits began its fortieth season and was America’s longest-running concert music program, having featured hundreds of artists in multiple genres.

The inaugural Austin City Limits Music Festival took place in Austin’s in September 2002. Inspired by the show, the event featured an array of regional, national, and international acts from different genres, and has continued to draw large crowds each September or October. The festival celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2011.

In 2014 Austin City Limits established its own Hall of Fame with Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Darrell Royal, Lloyd Maines, and founder Bill Arhos as the inaugural inductees. Austin City Limits was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2003. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recognized the series as a Landmark Series in 2009; the hall received the archives of the series in 2012. Austin City Limits won a Peabody Award in 2011. The series has also been recognized by Time magazine as one of the ten most influential music shows of all time. The show moved production in 2011 from Studio 6A on the University of Texas campus to the state-of-the-art downtown Austin concert venue ACL Live at the 2,700-seat capacity Moody Theater. Terry Lickona still served as executive producer in 2015. Many episodes have been made available on the program’s website and for sale on DVD.

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L. Big D Jamboree Written by Cathy Brigham

Big D Jamboree was a Dallas-based barn dance and radio program. Building on the success of country music radio programs like WSM's Grand Ole Opry (Nashville) and WLS's National Barn Dance (Chicago), regional barn dances sprouted up across the country throughout the 1940s. By the end of that decade, more than 600 American radio stations tried this live country music format.

One of the biggest such shows was KRLD's Big D Jamboree. This revered radio show grew out of a weekly live-music program called the Texas State Barn Dance, which began in Dallas in 1946. This show was strictly a live-audience program and was not broadcast over the radio until early 1948. The program initially spent a few months on WFAA, where it was called the Lone Star Jamboree, but finally found its home on KRLD and was permanently renamed Big D Jamboree. The show first aired on KRLD on October 16, 1948. Its immediate popularity came partly because its debut coincided with the State Fair of Texas, held each fall in Dallas. Johnny Hicks was the primary host.

The Jamboree aired from a multi-purpose arena at the corner of Cadiz and Industrial boulevards, a center of country music nightclubs in Dallas. This building, the Sportatorium, also hosted other major events, most notably the professional wrestling matches produced by building owner and Jamboree co- Big D Jamboree, broadcast from the Sportatorium in Dallas on KRLD, brought a variety of budding country and later rockabilly and rock- producer Ed McLemore. and-roll artists to audiences every Saturday night. The program provided a good training ground for local performers and also The original building was noted for its octagonal showcased national stars. Courtesy of Dragon Street Records, Inc. design and also for its seating capacity of more than 6,000. The original Sportatorium burned down in a 1953 blaze rumored to have been set by a rival wrestling promoter. For a time, the Jamboree relocated to the Livestock Pavilion at Fair Park until a new Sportatorium was built four months later. On September 2, 1953, the Jamboree returned to the Sportatorium and was broadcast from this new venue for its remaining years. The Big D Jamboree was inspired by other radio programs of the time, including the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride.

Though the Big D Jamboree was never as prominent as either of these two shows, it was important in Texas and served as a springboard to fame.

The show also provided weekly entertainment for as many as 5,000 attending patrons and countless radio listeners within KRLD's 50,000-watt , which could reach listeners in forty states. During its peak the show aired four hours each Saturday night and featured between twenty and fifty performers a week.

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The Jamboree managed to bring in an amazing array of country performers, including Johnny Cash, , Lefty Frizzell, Merle Haggard, , , Ray Price, , , Charline Arthur, Carl Perkins, Webb Pierce, Elvis Presley, Hank Thompson, , Hank Snow, and Hank Williams. It vigorously promoted local talent as well, in no small part because it could not afford to fill its air-time with well-known artists. Presenting local talent was slightly against the grain of radio barn dances, which tended to promote national, more-recognizable acts. In this practice and others the Jamboree broke with an established formula in programming in order to create a strong marketing niche for itself.

When the show first started in 1948, the most popular form of country music in North Texas was western swing. But the Jamboree preferred artists who played other styles of country music, styles more geared towards pop and honky-tonk. The show thus served as an alternative venue for country music within the region and also prepared itself for reaching audiences outside of North Texas. In the mid-1950s, the Jamboree continued bucking proven formulas by playing a different type of country music than the other radio barn dances. The Jamboree catered to youth by featuring rockabilly artists. This kept the program successful throughout the burgeoning years of rockabilly.

Although the show never reached the heights of the Opry or the Hayride, the Jamboree was picked up by the CBS radio network and incorporated into the network's weekly Saturday Night Country Style program. This nationally broadcast radio show alternated various regional country music radio programs (including both the Opry and the Hayride) in its Saturday night spot. Saturday Night Country Style was also broadcast on the Armed Forces Radio Network.

By the end of the 1950s, Big D Jamboree's audience had dwindled and the format and medium had become increasingly outdated. Americans were more fascinated by television in their homes and by rock-and-roll music than by locally produced country music variety shows broadcast over the radio. The show struggled on during the early 1960s and for a time was emceed by Louisiana Hayride founder Horace Lee Logan until it ended for good in 1966.

In 2000 Dragon Street Records released The Big "D" Jamboree LIVE, Volumes 1 & 2, an anthology of many performances from the program. The label has since issued other compilations profiling the songs of various artists. The Sportatorium, longtime venue of the program, was demolished in 2003.

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LI. Border Radio Written by Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford

The term "border radio" refers to the American broadcasting industry that sprang up on Mexico's northern border in the early 1930s and flourished for half a century. High-powered radio on Mexican soil, beyond the reach of U.S. regulators, blanketed North America with unique programming.

Mexico accommodated these “outlaw” media operators, some of whom had been denied broadcasting licenses in the United States, because and the United States had divided the long- range radio frequencies between themselves, allotting none to Mexico.

Though the “borderblaster” transmitters were always Border blaster station XER, owned by showman extraordinaire Dr. John R. Brinkley, opened in Villa Acuña, Coahuila, across the Rio in Mexico, studios (especially in the early 1930s) were Grande from Del Rio, Texas, in 1931. Border radio transmitters sometimes in the United States, and the stations were commanded up to a staggering 500,000 watts of power and even often identified by the American town across the more, and the broadcasts reached across North America. Copyright border. For instance, in his classic poem, “Clem Lippe Studio, Courtesy of Texas Folklife. Maverick, the Life and Death of a Country Singer,” R. G. Vliet has Clem reminisce: “We was on the radio at Del Rio.” Early on, hillbilly music proved to be one of the most effective mediums for pulling mail and moving merchandise; in turn, the border stations played a significant role in popularizing country music during the genre's crucial growth years before and after World War II.

The stations also familiarized American listeners with Mexican and Mexican-American artists. Lydia Mendoza's future husband first heard the “Lark of the Border” from Piedras Negras station XEPN in 1937. “The highlight of the [XER] program, for me,” recalled a South Dakota listener in 1995, “was the beautiful voice of the 'Mexican Nightingale' [Rosa Domínguez], especially when she would sing 'Estrellita'—this farm boy thought that must be how the angels would sound in heaven.”

The first border station, XED, began broadcasting from Reynosa, Tamaulipas, in 1930. Owned for a time by Houston theater owner and philanthropist Will Horwitz, XED hosted occasional performances by Horwitz's friend Jimmie Rodgers. Horwitz, who dressed up as Santa Claus each year and distributed Christmas presents to Houston's underprivileged children, was sent to prison by the U.S. government for broadcasting the Tamaulipas state lottery over XED.

Dr. John R. Brinkley, originator of the “goat gland transplant” as a sexual rejuvenation treatment, opened XER (later called XERA) in Villa Acuña, Coahuila, in 1931. Brinkley later bought XED, changing the name to XEAW. In 1939 he sold XEAW to Carr Collins, Dallas insurance magnate and owner of Crazy Crystals, a laxative product derived from the fabled Crazy Water in Mineral Wells. According to Collins's son Jim, Texas governor (and later U.S. senator) W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel was part-owner of the station. The Mexican government confiscated XERA in 1941 and tried to confiscate XEAW shortly thereafter, but Collins moved his equipment north of the border.

Engineer Bill Branch and businessman C. M. Bres operated XEPN in Piedras Negras in the 1930s. Iowan Norman Baker, whose experimental cancer treatments made him a controversial figure, broadcast from his station XENT in Nuevo Laredo.

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Texas governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson once dispatched Texas Rangers to Laredo to arrest Baker on a charge of practicing medicine without a license, but the defiant broadcaster could not be lured across the Rio Grande.

Border station power generally ranged from 50,000 to 500,000 watts. Sometimes listeners claimed to hear broadcasts without a radio, receiving the powerful signal on dental work, bedsprings, and barbed wire. American network programs were often lost in the ether when a Mexican border station was broadcasting near an American station's frequency.

Hank Thompson, who grew up in Waco in the 1930s, said the American-Mexican stations on the Rio Grande “were about the only ones where you could hear country and western music most all the time.” (Later, as a navy radio engineer during World War II, Thompson piped border-station programming through his ship on the high seas.) Thompson and other listeners heard Cowboy Slim Rinehart, Patsy Montana, the , the Pickard Family, the Shelton Brothers, the Callahan Brothers, the International Hot Timers, Pappy O'Daniel's Hillbilly Boys, Roy “Lonesome Cowboy” Faulkner, Shelly Lee Alley, and countless others. Performers broadcast live and via transcription disc, sometimes syndicating a show on several of the maverick stations. Border radio pitchman and ad executive Don Baxter, known as “Major Kord,” recorded many artists with this technology in San Antonio. Later, many of the transcription discs were used as roofing material for homes in Acuña and other border-station towns.

Important postwar stations included XEG in Monterrey and XERF in Ciudad Acuña. Webb Pierce, Jim Reeves, and other stars appeared live in the studio with XERF disc jockey Paul Kallinger, known from “coast to coast and border to border” as “Your Good Neighbor Along the Way.” In a colorful exaggeration that could hold a nugget of truth, Pierce said that country music “might not have survived if it hadn't been for border radio.”

The Good Neighbor turned down an appearance on his show by the future King of Rock, Elvis Presley. But in the early 1960s, a young platter-spinner from Brooklyn named Bob Smith metamorphosed into XERF's late- night saint of radio naughtiness, . From his border lair the Wolfman tantalized American listeners with rock-and-roll, rhythm-and-blues, and blues. Austin-based musician Joe Ely recalled listening to the Wolfman while drinking beer in Lubbock cottonfields: “It was the first time any of us heard , Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, all these guys.” Delbert McClinton remembered the border airwave as a mysterious force. “With border radio,” he explained, “you could hear race music and funky stuff, and it only existed through this secret channel you could pick up from across the border.”

Some border musicians played several roles, such as singing cowboy, evangelist, and pitchman. “Only three things will sell on the border,“ said Dallas “Nevada Slim” Turner, “health, sex, and religion.” Often, border radio programming combined all three. The stations also became known for incessant advertisements for Hillbilly Flour, Crazy Water Crystals, the cold remedy Peruna, the hair-dye Kolorbak, Hadacol, vinyl tablecloths depicting the Last Supper, razor blades, genuine simulated diamonds, ballpoint pens, horoscopes, rosebushes, baby chicks, records, and many other products. Some listeners even claim to have heard commercials for “autographed photos of Jesus Christ.” In 1986 the Mexican government seized XERF, and all border stations were dealt a crippling blow by an international broadcasting agreement between the United States and Mexico that allowed both Mexican and American broadcasters to use the other country's clear-channel frequencies for low-powered stations in the evening. That meant that the signals of the border stations would be drowned out in many communities by local broadcasts. The agreement effectively ended the era of high-powered, far- ranging radio. Such enthusiasts as Arturo González, however, spearheaded efforts at a revival. In the early years of the new millennium, Del Rio attorney González, a force at XERF since the 1940s, was, in his nineties, laying plans to regain control of the station and contacting engineering firms to shop for a new super-powerful transmitter. Arturo González died at the age of 104 on December 21, 2012.

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LII. Harry A. Lieberman [Larry Kane] Written by Laurie E. Jasinski

Larry Kane, host of The Larry Kane Show and entertainment lawyer, was born Harry A. Lieberman on February 26, 1935, in Houston, Texas.

He graduated as valedictorian of his class from San Jacinto High School in 1953. He later graduated cum laude from the . While still attending high school, he began a career in radio and worked at a succession of stations, including KUHP in El Campo, KRCT in Baytown, and KNUZ and KXYZ in Houston, where he was dubbed “Mr. Music.”

In 1958, while still a student at the University of Houston, he conceived the idea of a local music and dance show that he would host under his preferred Dancers on The Larry Kane Show grooved to the latest popular music moniker, Larry Kane. The Larry Kane tunes of the day every Saturday afternoon. Larry Kane and his Show premiered in January 1959 live on KTRK-TV television program were Houston’s answer to and Channel 13 in Houston. American Bandstand. Courtesy Mark Lieberman.

Kane served as producer with Perry Blankenship as director. With a suave and youthful Kane as emcee, the program proved to be influential and popular with young viewers.

The show featured local dancers swinging to recorded songs and studio performances.

Local dance studio owner Jerry Roe served as dance director, and regular dancers on the program had to meet specific qualifications that included mastery of at least four different dances (such as the waltz, swing, and cha-cha). Regular features on the program included the introduction of new dance steps and a teen panel that reviewed new popular song releases.

Kane selected all of the music for his show, which usually included twenty singles from the Top 50, eight new releases, and two LPs. Two or three recording Host Larry Kane (left) interviews singer Tiny Tim. Courtesy Mark Lieberman. artists appeared each week and participated in an interview with Kane.

The show, which lasted until April 22, 1972, and had a one-year run on KPRC-TV, Channel 2, featured an array of musical guests of both national and regional fame—the Lovin’ , , Hank Williams, Jr., , , , Paul Revere and the Raiders, , Jefferson Airplane, Bobby Sherman, David Cassidy, and Wayne Newton.

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Texas artists included , B. J. Thomas, Neal Ford & the Fanatics, The Clique, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, the 13th Floor Elevators, the Moving Sidewalks, Fever Tree, and Southwest F.O.B. which showcased a young Dan Seals and John Colley who later teamed up as England Dan and John Ford Coley.

Neal Ford later commented, “This show alone was probably the most important factor at that time in Houston and Texas music, giving all of us a stage to a very large market.”

Larry Kane and The Larry Kane Show were Houston’s answer to Dick Clark and American Bandstand. In fact, Kane’s Saturday afternoon dance program preempted American Bandstand, and Houston was one of the few television markets in the United States that did not carry Bandstand as Kane’s show filled the market need and even influenced Billboard magazine and radio airplay. By 1971 The Larry Kane Show was syndicated live to more than 100 markets, including the cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Nashville. The program became the first nationally-syndicated show that was produced and based out of Houston. Kane, himself, served as a substitute host in Clark’s absence on American Bandstand on a few occasions. He also launched two other television shows in Houston—Turn On and Club 13, which was an adult dance show in a Friday late-night time slot. He hosted a dance show on Thursday afternoons on KFDM-TV in Beaumont as well. Additionally, Kane had a daily radio show on KTHT and wrote a teen column, called “Mr. Music,” for the Houston Press.

While working on his program, Kane attended law school at the University of Houston and eventually practiced law as an entertainment attorney as a partner in the firm of Ogden, Lieberman, Gaughan & Stone. (He posted his given name for the firm but preferred to be called Larry Kane.) His clients included Kenny Rogers (who, according to Kane’s son Mark Lieberman, later credited Kane for giving him the idea to branch out on his own with Kenny Rogers and the First Edition), B. J. Thomas, and ZZ Top. In the 1990s Houston radio station KLOL and the Houston Press honored Kane with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Kane married his wife Patricia about 1956. They had three daughters and one son. He died at Memorial City Hospital in Houston on January 26, 1998. He was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2009.

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LIII. Sump’n Else Written by Donna Pardue

Sump'n Else, a television program aimed at a teenaged audience, aired from to . Hosted by local radio personality Ron Chapman, the show debuted on September 7, 1965, and was broadcast after school, from 4:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. on WFAA-TV Channel 8, an ABC affiliate, in the Dallas- Fort Worth area. The program dominated the ratings in its time slot. Dick Clark's American Bandstand didn't air in Dallas-Fort Worth, leaving an opening for a local version.

The teen dance show featured four high school girls as go-go dancers, and an open mic over the studio picked up the dancers’ energy and enthusiasm. The dancers, dubbed “the Little Group,” were Joanie Prather and Sump’n Else Dancers: Calleen Anderegg, Pat Osborne, Kathy Forney, Kathy Forney from Highland Park High School, Delpha and Joanie Prather. Host Ron Chapman in background (right). Photograph by Casey Cohlmia, WFAA-TV; Courtesy Ron Chapman. Teague from Thomas Jefferson High School, and Calleen Anderegg from Richardson High School. Joanie Prather went on to become Miss Teenage Dallas, Calleen Anderegg became Miss Dallas, and Delpha Teague became first runner-up for Miss Dallas. They performed on the platforms behind host and Top 40 deejay Ron Chapman. High school students were invited to attend the program which was broadcast from a remote studio in the new Northpark Shopping Center. A soundproof window into the mall allowed the shoppers and dancers to see each other.

As it was the only live show in the afternoon, Chapman was favored by visiting celebrities for interviews. Jerry Lewis, Dick Clark, Sonny & , Jefferson Airplane, , Peter & Gordon, Chad & Jeremy, Tom Jones, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and were some of those who regularly visited and gave live interviews. Ron Chapman called the Five Americans, a Dallas group whose hit song was “Western Union,” “almost a house band” because they played on the show so frequently. Texas psychedelic group 13th Floor Elevators appeared on the program. Local bands performed live regularly. Some who appeared with local bands and later became famous were Dan Seals and John Colley (who later gained fame as England Dan and John Ford Coley), and Don Henley who cofounded the Eagles. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention also visited the show. There is very little footage of the program in existence, because the expensive two-inch video tape was reused for other shows. Its last broadcast aired on January 26, 1968.

At WFAA-TV, Sump'n Else is still a source of pride in local programming. Ron Chapman calls the show the “town hall of youth.” For its twentieth anniversary, a two-hour primetime reunion show was staged for a packed house at the Galleria Mall and broadcast on Channel 8 on Saturday, September 7, 1985. All the original parties attended, including the go-go dancers. In 2004 Chapman was inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.

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LIV. The !!!! Beat Written by Laurie E. Jasinski

The !!!! Beat, a groundbreaking television program broadcast out of Dallas in 1966, was the brainchild of music impresario William “Hoss” Allen. Allen, a native of Gallatin, Tennessee, had made a name for himself on WLAC—an all-black music programming radio station in Nashville. Calling himself “The Hossman,” the white Allen built a formidable business network of music publishing interests, record production, artist management, and talent booking. He helped launch the careers of Otis Redding and James Brown. Allen went to work for in 1960 and promoted that label’s releases throughout the South. In 1963 he left Chess and returned to WLAC at Nashville. He also started a new label, Hermitage Records, and produced records for many other labels. He had the good fortune of being able to draw on an impressive talent pool of rhythm-and-blues artists in the Nashville area.

Inspired by the short-lived, first all-black show, The Night Train, that aired on WLAC-TV in Nashville in 1964, Allen adopted this concept and pitched it to Show Biz Productions, an independent television production company in Nashville. The company accepted Allen’s idea but insisted that the program be filmed in color. At that time, the WFAA television studio in Dallas was one of the very few independent television stations in the South that possessed color video capabilities. “Hoss” Allen chose Texas bluesman Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, an artist he had recently produced on his Hermitage label, to lead the house band, known on the show as The Beat Boys. He also recruited saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman, who had performed with Ray Charles and was a resident of Dallas at that time, to lead the horn section.

On January 31, 1966, shooting for The !!!! Beat began and continued through the spring. A total of twenty-six half-hour shows were shot, divided into two thirteen-episode seasons. Gatemouth Brown wrote a catchy theme song, and “The Hossman,” the only white star on the program, hosted the show. His premiere opening exuded a hip flair with his greeting, “Well, salutations out there swingaroonies. My name is Bill Allen. Everbody calls me Hoss….Welcome to The !!!! Beat, with a great segment of entertainment coming up right now.”

Allen booked all the acts for the show and recruited almost all of the musicians from four specific areas: Nashville, where he managed many of the acts; Chicago, where the artists were signed to Chess Records; New Orleans, the city where Allen owned part interest in a booking agency; and Texas, which offered a pool of local and available talent. Gatemouth Brown and the house band were the only musicians who received pay. The reward for all other performers rested in the television exposure and free promotion of their records.

The program went on the air in the summer of 1966. The Strickland Corporation (manufacturer of Royal Crown hair dressing) sponsored the show, and thirteen stations in major urban markets and smaller southern cities carried the program. The !!!! Beat usually aired on weekend afternoons or late-night slots.

The show consisted of a balance of live performances with the house band and lip-synched numbers. A group of black go-go girl dancers added youthful energy to the set and made for “a fascinating visual time capsule.” According to the program’s liner notes produced by (2005), “This was groundbreaking stuff, with a strong element of racial pride.”

The guest musicians on the show ran the gamut from famous black artists of the day to virtual unknowns. A wealth of Texas soul and rhythm-and-blues performers gained exposure to a wide audience. Freddie King, , and other artists of the Lone Star State appeared on The !!!! Beat. The show's star power included guest shots of , Etta James, Percy Sledge, The Ovations, Bobby Hebb, Sam & Dave, and Otis Redding.

Halfway through the first season, Johnny Jones of Nashville replaced Gatemouth Brown as bandleader, because Brown could not read music. Jones in turn brought in his own horn section. Brown later left the show.

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The program faced various challenges. Sometimes musicians arrived late or even failed to show at all, causing problems in the timing of the segments. Artists also showed up unannounced. Host “Hoss” Allen, who suffered bouts of alcoholism, was at times “noticeably inebriated” and his commentary “disjointed.” But, according to Bear Family Records, “…nobody cared. It was about the music and the music was great.”

For the most part, audiences regarded The !!!! Beat with indifference, though the show was a hit in Birmingham, Alabama. One racial backlash occurred in Alabama with a cross burning on the lawn of a TV station. Local advertisers pulled their sponsorship, and no additional episodes were filmed. Otis Redding hosted the final episode in place of Allen, who was too intoxicated to appear. After its initial run, no reruns were ever aired. Allen returned to Nashville and WLAC and eventually entered rehab in 1971 and stayed sober until his death in 1997.

The !!!! Beat remained relegated to the obscure annals of music history, with a few surviving bootleg tapes sought by soul music fans. Willie Nelson purchased the Show Biz Productions catalog. Eventually in 2005 Bear Family Records released the entire series on DVD.

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MUSICAL HAPPENINGS LV. Cowboys’ Christmas Ball Written by Juanita Daniel Zachry

The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball is an annual event in Anson, Texas, based on a nineteenth-century ballad. A frontier dance at Anson impressed William Lawrence Chittenden so much that he later wrote a poem about the event. He was staying overnight at the Star Hotel, where a Christmas dance was held annually in appreciation of the patronage of ranchers and cowboys. He watched the cowboys and their ladies dance the square, the schottische, the heel-and-toe polka, the waltz, and the Virginia reel. From his observations there, and perhaps at later dances, he wrote his poem “The Cowboys' Christmas Ball.”

Some uncertainty exists as to which year’s dance was the model for the poem; the years 1885 and 1887 are the most common dates given by writers. The poem was first published in the Anson Texas Western on June 19, 1890, after the Star Hotel had been destroyed by fire earlier in the year and information about the old hotel was being sought. In 1893 the poem appeared in the first volume of Ranch Verses, a collection of Chittenden's poems. John A. Lomax published it in his 1916 edition of Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. Gordon Graham, a cowboy folklorist from Colorado, set the poem to music and sang it at the Anson ball in 1946, and it became a common practice to have a soloist sing the ballad before the ball.

The music at the ball in 1885 was from a bass viol, a , and two fiddles. Both music and vocals have changed over the years, yet ball officials have remained firm that both music and song must conform to the tradition that became clearer over the years. Dances were held at Christmas in Anson at irregular intervals with little regard for the poem for several decades following its publication. In 1934 the event was revived under the title Cowboys' Christmas Ball by Leonora Barrett, Anson teacher and folklorist. This first reenactment was held in the high school gymnasium and continued on an annual basis thereafter. The Anson dancers attempted to retain the old dance customs, steps, and songs. The men bowed and the women curtsied. The music was slow enough to allow the dances to be done in an unhurried manner and with much grace.

Because the Anson group performed dances not done by any other group in the National Folk Festival, they were invited to the festival in Chicago in 1937. Gertrude Knox, Washington folklorist, invited them to the festival in 1938 in Washington; there they danced on the White House lawn. At later dates they performed their folk dances in St. Louis, St. Petersburg, Denver, and various cities in Texas. The Anson group was incorporated in 1937. A board of directors was named, and the event was copyrighted. In 1940, because of increased interest and attendance, Pioneer Hall was built as a permanent home for the ball, which had become a three-day event before Christmas each year.

In the late twentieth century the Cowboys’ Christmas Ball gained greater recognition through the promotional efforts of cowboy music singer Michael Martin Murphey.

He recorded the classic song, “The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball” in 1985 and continued to play at the annual ball through the 2010s. In 2010 the Christmas Ball and its venue Pioneer Hall were designated as a historical event and site by the Texas Historical Commission and honored with a Texas Historical Marker. The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball observed its eightieth consecutive year in December 2014. The dance has brought dignitaries, writers, and visitors from all over the nation to Anson. The dances are still presented in a frontier atmosphere, and the pioneer steps have been preserved, ratifying Anson’s claim to be the “Home of the Western Dance.”

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LVI. Kerrville Folk Festival Written by Rod Kennedy, rev. by Laurie E. Jasinski

The first Kerrville Folk Festival was held June 1 through 3, 1972, in the 1,200-seat Kerrville Municipal Auditorium; 2,800 fans from all over Texas and as far away as Colorado attended the thirteen-performer event. The festivals at Kerrville were a direct outgrowth of the Austin Zilker Park KHFI–FM Summer Music festivals (1964–68), the Chequered Flag folk-music club on Lavaca Street in Austin (1967–70), and the eight Longhorn Jazz festivals (1966–73), as well as the “live” and recorded programs of Austin folk artists produced on KHFI– AM–FM–TV during the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. Performers included Allen Damron, Willis Alan Ramsey, Jerry Jeff Walker, Michael (Martin) Murphey, Townes Van Zandt, Kenneth Threadgill, Carolyn Hester, Frummox (Steven Fromholz and Dan McCrimmen), Rusty Wier, Three Faces West (including Ray Wylie Hubbard), Bill and Bonnie Hearne, Mance Lipscomb, Bill Neely, and others. Many of them emerged as national recording artists identified with the “Austin Sound.”

The first Kerrville Folk Festival included many of the Austin artists as well as National Fiddling Champion Dick Barrett of Pottsboro and Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, and Mary). The 1973 festival expanded to five concerts in three nights, and 5,600 people jammed the auditorium. Among the new performers were Willie Nelson and B. W. Stevenson. The success of the event led to a search for larger quarters, preferably an outdoor location. In December 1973 a sixty-acre plot was acquired nine miles south of Kerrville on State Highway 16 and dubbed the Quiet Valley Ranch to keep from frightening the neighbors. Work began immediately dozing thousands of cedar stumps and debris from a previous runaway fire. Construction began on a stage, a seating area, a concession stand, underground water and wiring, and 6,000 feet of deer-proof seven-foot fencing.

The facilities (except for camping facilities) were completed, outhouses rented, and the first outdoor festival held on the new stage on May 23–26, 1974; the schedule had been expanded to four nights. Asleep at the Wheel, Flaco Jiménez, and were among the first-time performers, who drew a crowd of 6,000. Lucinda Williams was among the New Folk finalists. The gates were opened daily at 6 P.M., and the concerts started at 8. The nonprofit Kerrville Music Foundation, Incorporated, was established in 1975 to help beginning songwriters and, for many years, also promoted and worked to preserve such traditional art forms as country yodeling, harmonic and mandolin playing, and . While attendance was growing, a spirit also grew out of the warm ambience of the festival, which has been described as “spiritual optimism.” The campfire singing in the now-developed campgrounds became a worldwide trademark of the festival, which maintained its momentum in spite of seven years of heavy rains out of the first nineteen. In 1980 crowds reached 13,000, and the festival expanded to eleven days for its tenth anniversary in 1981. The present expanded and cantilevered stage was built in three weeks by volunteers that year. In 1986 the festival celebrated its fifteenth anniversary with an eleven-day festival, a special documentary album, and a musicians' fifteen-day tour of nine states on behalf of the Texas Sesquicentennial as official state ambassadors. The next year the festival expanded to its present format of eighteen days, which includes three weekends. By the 1990s attendance had grown to 25,000.

The program included an eighteen-day schedule of eleven six-hour evening concerts, New Folk Concerts with forty writers, Folk Mass celebrations, six two-hour children's concerts, and a four-day Festival of the Eagle honoring American Indians at a newly constructed and then expanded Threadgill Memorial Theater in the campgrounds.

The festival has become America's largest and longest-running celebration of original songwriters and draws performers and fans from around the world. It remains a family affair with the same intimate atmosphere of the early years. A companion event, the Kerrville Wine and Music Festival, held over the Labor Day weekend, began in 1992.

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By the twenty-second season of the folk festival in 1993 more than two dozen of its early “unknown” performers had earned national recording contracts, including Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, , David

Wilcox, John Gorka, Tish Hinojosa, Pierce Pettis, Cliff Eberhart, Darden Smith, Michael Tomlinson, Lucinda Williams, James McMurtry, David Massengill, Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, Jr., Jon Ims, and the Flatlanders (including Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, and ).

On October 1, 1999, ownership of the festival changed hands, as founder Rod Kennedy, now aged seventy, sold the event to Vaughn Hafner, of Dallas, and his investors. By the year 2000, festival attendance had grown to 30,000, and popular performers on the main stage included Jimmy La Fave, Trout Fishing in America, , Katy Moffat, Peter Rowan, Stacey Earle, Tom Prasada–Rao, Sara Hickman, the Chenille Sisters, Susan Werner, and the Limeliters, among hundreds of others. Educational workshops sponsored by the Texas Folk Music Foundation included a songwriters school, the Professional Development Program for Teachers, a harmonica workshop, and a Kerrville Music Camp for teenagers (held in July). In 2007 the Texas Folk Music Foundation (renamed the Kerrville Folk Festival Foundation in 2013) launched a capital campaign to purchase all related assets of the Kerrville Folk Festival, Inc., and secure non-profit legal status for the festival. It achieved this goal by late 2008. Founder Rod Kennedy died on April 14, 2014. In 2015 Dalis Allen served as producer of the festival. Rachel Brown was festival coordinator, and Chuck Miller was creative director. By 2015 more than 1,500 singer-songwriters had performed at the event during its history.

Kerrville Folk Festival promoter Rod Kennedy, 1986. The purpose of the festival, which began in 1972, was to help beginning songwriters and to promote and preserve traditional music. Photograph by Niles J. Fuller. Niles J. Fuller Photograph Collection, BCAH: CN 11495.

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LVII. South by Southwest Written by Laurie E. Jasinski

South by Southwest (SXSW) is the short name for the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival, held annually in Austin. The festival began in 1987 and is produced by the Austin-based private company South by Southwest, Inc. The internationally-recognized event in March serves as a showcase for musicians and provides a forum for music-industry professionals.

Inspired by the successful New Music Seminar held in New York in the 1980s, Austinites Nick Barbaro, Louis Black, and Roland Swenson, all of the Austin Chronicle, and Louis Meyers, a band manager and musician, founded the event to promote the Austin music scene. At its inception the festival featured primarily local acts. In 1987, 700 registrants participated and approximately 200 bands performed at fifteen venues. In the 1990s the symposium continued to grow in participation and promotion. The four founders incorporated in 1991. By 1994 SXSW had officially added film and interactive media events to an expanded schedule, and that year the conference registered more than 4,000 participants and showcased 500 musical acts at twenty-eight venues. In 2001 SXSW staff had organized 900 showcases playing at forty-eight venues.

The five-day music portion of the festival includes meetings and panel discussions on such issues as independent record labels, technology and music, copyright laws, and artist promotion. Austin's night clubs, particularly along Sixth Street, host bands from all over the world. Many musicians hope to attract the attention of major record labels, while other players who have already brokered deals view the festival as a major vehicle for publicity.

The SXSW Film Conference and Festival hosts workshops and special screenings that feature documentary films, music videos, animation, and other media presentations. The SXSW Interactive Festival examines all aspects of the Internet, trends in web design, and new media technologies. Trade shows, held at the Austin Convention Center, profile the latest equipment, technology, and companies in film, music, and interactive media.

Organizers launched an annual SXSW Preview Guide in February 2004, and in November 2006 they issued the first edition of a new quarterly magazine, SXSWorld, “devoted to coverage of the people and companies who collectively make us SXSW.” The magazine is distributed free to thousands of people in entertainment industries. More than 12,600 music professionals participated in the twenty-second annual conference over a ten-day period in 2008. That year, some 1,800 acts performed at more than eighty venues. SXSW celebrated its twenty-fifth conference in 2011 and showcased approximately 2,000 musical acts at more than ninety venues.

In 2012 SXSW Interactive held its first hall of fame induction for “trendsetters whose career accomplishments have paved the future of the new media industry.” The following year, SXSW added another component— SXSW V2V—a four-day summer festival held in Las Vegas and the first SXSW-connected conference outside of Austin.

Notable keynote speakers for the music festival in recent years have included , Bob Geldof, Bruce Springsteen, , and Snoop Dogg. In 2015 SXSW had ballooned to 2,266 showcased artists at more than 100 venues as well as 233 panels, workshops, and sessions.

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LVIII. Texas International Pop Festival, 1969 Written by James Head

The Texas International Pop Festival was the first major in Texas. Held August 30 through September 1, 1969, at the Dallas International Motor in Lewisville, the event was produced in part by Angus Wynne III of Wynne Entertainment. The Texas festival was held only two weeks after the legendary Woodstock festival in Woodstock, New York. It was unusual in the wide variety of musical acts it attracted and in its atmosphere.

With a budget of only $120,000, the promoters booked twenty-six of the biggest names in blues, rock-and-roll, and psychedelic rock. Janis Joplin, Sam and Dave, , Santana, , the Grass Roots, B. B. King, Chicago Transit Authority, Tony Joe White, Spirit, Johnny Winter, Texas International Pop Festival poster. The event, which was held on the heels of Woodstock in 1969, was the first major rock festival Sweetwater, , Freddie King, and a in Texas. Larry Willoughby Collection. virtually unknown British band, Led Zeppelin, all performed during the three-day festival. The musical acts were not paid much to perform; Led Zeppelin and Janis Joplin were paid the most—$10,000 each.

Some major groups that wanted to perform could not get in to play. A band from Michigan, Grand Funk Railroad, was allowed to perform only after the members agreed to play free and pay their own expenses.

The festival was extensively advertised through radio and newspapers and was promoted at Woodstock. Consequently, music enthusiasts from all over the United States, and from numerous foreign countries, poured into Lewisville to pay the admission fee of $6.50 a day. Although the promoters anticipated a crowd of over 200,000, actual attendance for the three days was more like 120,000. The festival lost money, but was generally considered a success by those who attended. The promoters created a “carnival-like” atmosphere that featured booths catering to “flower-children.” Astrologers, painters, artists, craftsmen, and leather workers; sellers of incense, T-shirts, jewelry, and candles; and food vendors all peddled their wares. Most who attended the festival camped on the adjacent 10,000-acre lakefront. At night, many of the performers joined the campers and played without charge. Initially, police and local authorities were concerned about drug usage and traffic problems on nearby Interstate 35. Although there were a few drug overdoses and problems associated with the intense heat, in general the festival ran very smoothly. The primary complaint from local residents was that the festival participants swam naked in Lake Lewisville.

Interest in the Texas International Pop Festival remained years after the event. Various bootleg albums were released from live recordings of the performances, and decades later, bootlegs surfaced as sale items on the Internet. Got No Shoes, Got No Blues, a video of some of the musical acts at the festival, was also available, as well as reproductions of festival posters and programs. A Texas Historical Marker commemorating the event was erected near the site of the festival in 2010.

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LIX. Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic Written by Laurie E. Jasinski

Since the 1970s the Fourth of July and Texas music have been synonymous with Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnic. The country music extravaganza began in 1973 and was inspired by a country music festival that took place outdoors on a ranch near Dripping Springs, Hays County, in March 1972. Willie Nelson, one of the performers, and some of his business associates decided to organize a one-day event for July 4, 1973. Eddie Wilson, owner of Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, promoted the concert, which was held at the same ranch in Dripping Springs.

Musicians in addition to Nelson included Kris Kristofferson, , Charlie Rich, Waylon Jennings, and Tom T. Hall. Organizers soon realized that their plans were incomplete: the lack of sanitation, electricity, and parking space became obvious as an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 fans jammed two caliche backroads to the site.

As understaffed health-care volunteers treated cases of heat exhaustion, security personnel tried to keep the stage clear and contended with intoxicated fans.

In spite of the first picnic's shortfalls, Nelson and promoters made plans to stage a bigger and improved Independence Day concert for the next year. In 1974 the picnic was actually a three-day festival that took place outdoors at the Texas World Speedway in College Station. Waylon Jennings, Jimmy Buffett, Leon Russell, Michael Martin Murphey, and Jerry Jeff Walker were among the lineup of musicians that attended. From this time on, Willie's picnic established itself as an annual event.

In 1975, 90,000 people descended upon the hamlet of Liberty Hill in Williamson County to hear Nelson and the Band, Delbert McClinton, the Pointer Sisters, and Kris Kristofferson. The Texas Senate proclaimed July 4 “Willie Nelson Day.” Ironically, the overcrowding problems of the previous picnics had also prompted the Texas legislature to pass the Texas Mass Gathering Act, and Williamson County officials charged Nelson with violating that law. Throughout the 1970s however, the picnics continued at various sites— Gonzales, the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the Austin Opry House, and the Pedernales Country Club. Musicians included Doug Sahm, Emmylou Harris, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Ernest Tubb, and other semi-regulars such as Leon Russell and Kris Kristofferson.

After 1980 and a successful concert at which over 90,000 fans heard Merle Haggard, Asleep at the Wheel, Ray Price, , and others at Nelson's Pedernales Country Club, Nelson and his organizers announced the discontinuation of the event, though an event of sorts took place as a series of shows at Syracuse, New York, Giants Stadium in New Jersey, and Atlanta International Raceway in 1983. In 1984, however, the picnic began anew and in the succeeding years was held at various venues around Austin. The 1986 concert also doubled as , which Nelson orchestrated in the mid-1980s to raise money for America's farmers. , , Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Ely, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds were among the musical acts that played Nelson's picnics.

By the 1990s the on again–off again picnic had become more subdued. A modest crowd of 15,000 cheered on performers at Zilker Park, Austin, in 1990.

The Highwaymen, which featured Nelson, Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings, headlined the concert. Nelson's next festival—in 1993—was a scaled-down affair at the Backyard in Austin, with about 3,000 people in attendance.

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From 1995 to 1999 Willie's Fourth of July Picnic took place in the Hill Country town of Luckenbach. Logistical and county permit problems kept the concert from taking place there in the early twenty-first century. The 2000 event occurred at Southpark Meadows in Austin. Even though organizers cancelled the picnic, planned for Luckenbach, in 2001 and 2002, residents of that town sought to host future Fourth of July Picnics.

The picnic resumed in 2003 and was held at Two Rivers Canyon Amphitheater in Spicewood near Austin. In addition to old favorites like Neil Young and Merle Haggard, the event also featured newcomers Los Lonely Boys, Pat Green, and Cross Canadian Ragweed. Fort Worth hosted Willie's Picnic from 2004 through 2006, before he took the event out of Texas to the state of Washington in 2007. Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnic returned to the Lone Star State in 2008 and was held at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater near San Antonio. In 2009 he incorporated the celebration into his concert tour with Bob Dylan, and they performed in South Bend, Indiana, on July 4.

Nelson’s picnic returned to Austin in 2010 to the new Backyard venue and featured a full lineup of performers, including Asleep at the Wheel, , Leon Russell, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Bush, and the Randy Rogers Band. On July 4, 2011, the picnic was held at Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth for more than 6,000 attendees, and the playbill included Ray Price, , Jack Ingram, , Nelson’s son Lukas, and others. For 2012, Nelson planned to host the picnic on the celebrity cruise ship, Excesia, bound for Northern Europe, but instead the event returned to Billy Bob’s where a lineup that included his son Lukas, Johnny Bush, and Stoney LaRue, played to less than 4,000 people.

The year 2013 marked the fortieth anniversary of the picnic which took place again at Billy Bob’s and brought out more than 10,000 attendees. A crowd of 12,000 came out to Billy Bob’s for the Fourth of July celebration in 2014. Performers included Johnny Bush, Ray Wylie Hubbard, , and , however the death of Ray Price, a mainstay at some of the earlier picnics, led to subdued festivities. In 2015 Willie’s Picnic returned to Austin with Leon Russell, Billy Joe Shaver, David Allan Coe, Merle Haggard, , Asleep at the Wheel, and others. The show took place at the amphitheater at Circuit of the Americas.

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HIDDEN GEMS IN MUSIC LX. Margaret Cage Whitley Adams Written by Laurie E. Jasinski

Margaret Cage Whitley Adams, western swing pioneer and bandleader, was born on January 27, 1917, in Smithville, Texas. She was the daughter of Stephen B. and Maude (Hector) Cage. After the death of her father, she moved with her mother, sister, and three brothers to Pearsall. A talented musician and vocalist, Margaret planned to study voice at Juilliard in New York but instead married local western bandleader Olan Smiley Whitley. They had two daughters.

Together they played Texas swing in the San Antonio area. Smiley Whitley’s Texans were so popular, in fact, that in the late 1940s Margaret formed her own band, an all-girl group called the Texas Tomboys, to play at extra bookings. Margaret performed as the drummer. Her Texas Tomboys, along with her husband’s Texans, helped popularize western swing throughout the Southwest in the 1940s and 1950s.

Her group performed at area clubs, such as the Cabaret in Bandera, and played a regular syndicated program broadcast over the Mutual Radio Network on Saturday afternoons.

They also appeared on Louisiana Hayride and played the first annual San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo and subsequent rodeos. One of the most memorable shows for the Tomboys and the Texans was the glamorous opening of the Shamrock Hilton Hotel in Houston on March 17, 1949. The event attracted more than 2,000 attendees, including many Hollywood celebrities. The Whitleys’ eldest daughter, about ten years old at the time, performed as a featured singer.

The Whitleys made their life in music for twenty-six years. Margaret Cage Whitley Adams, a lifelong Methodist, died on January 10, 2008, in San Antonio. She was buried in Leakey-Floral Cemetery in Leakey, Texas.

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LXI. Charline Arthur Written by Tresi Weeks

Charline Arthur, honky-tonk musician, was born Charline Highsmith in a railroad boxcar in Henrietta, Texas, on September 2, 1929. She was the second of twelve children of Jefferson Benjamin and Edna Mae (Wortham) Highsmith. Her father was a harmonica-playing Pentecostal preacher, and her mother sang and played piano and guitar.

The family moved to Paris, Texas, when she was four years old, and Charline was already showing musical talent at a young age. She made her first guitar out of a wooden cigar box when she was five. She sold soda bottles collected from the roadside to buy her first real guitar for six dollars two years later. She and her sister Dottie wowed audiences with their big voices when they performed at church, barn dances, and rodeos. Charline wrote her first song, “I've Got the Boogie Blues,” at age twelve. She was inspired to start a musical career when she met Ernest Tubb, and she landed her first gig singing Charline Arthur (right) with Helen Hall at Big D Jamboree. for radio station KPLT in Paris by the age of fifteen. When Arthur, a headliner on Big D Jamboree, was a a traveling medicine show came to town, she left with it. groundbreaking and sometimes controversial performer Her act included slapstick comedy as well as country whose high-energy shows in the early and mid-1950s paved music. She married Jack Arthur on April 17, 1948, and he the way for rockabilly. Elvis Presley described her as “one of the finest entertainers on stage I’ve ever seen.” Courtesy of became her manager and bass player. Charline was not Dragon Street Records, Inc. only a talented country vocalist, she also played lead guitar, rhythm guitar, fiddle, steel guitar, mandolin, piano, five-string banjo, and harmonica.

She was performing in Texas clubs and honky-tonks in 1949 when she recorded two songs for Bullet Records, one of which was “I've Got the Boogie Blues.” She moved to Kermit, Texas, where she worked as a disc jockey and singer for KERB and made a record for Imperial Records. There she was “discovered” by the legendary Col. Tom Parker who later managed Elvis Presley. He signed her with RCA Victor in January 1953. She recorded twenty-eight songs with RCA.

Charline's dynamic stage performances during this time were groundbreaking and controversial. She moved to Dallas to headline the Big D Jamboree, an unusual honor for a woman at the time. She was the first female country singer to perform onstage wearing pants, and was the only one photographed with a cigarette. While other female country performers stood demurely to sing, Charline pranced across stage, climbed on top of amplifiers, or sang lying down. Her shows were rowdy and sometimes racy. “I was shakin' that thing on stage,” she said, “long before Elvis even thought about it.” Her reputation as a hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking performer with a hot temper contrasted with that of gingham-dress-clad . She also performed for the Louisiana Hayride, 's , and the Grand Ole Opry (which censored her music). She toured with artists such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis. In 1955 she was named runner-up (to Wells) as the year's best female singer in Country and Western Jamboree magazine's DJ's Choice poll. Presley paid her tribute as “one of the finest entertainers on stage I've ever seen.”

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In spite of her entertaining stage presence, however, Charline's records were only moderately successful, and her relationship with RCA was tempestuous. She and RCA producer Chet Atkins had very vocal disagreements about what songs Charline should record as well as about artistic style. She preferred bluesy, assertive, and

sometimes sexually suggestive songs. Atkins attempted to mold her to the “” of a subdued “prim and proper lady.” Although Atkins won out, when her RCA contract expired in 1956, it was not renewed.

Her music career never recovered. She recorded several songs in her trailer home in Dallas for the Coin label in 1957. She separated from her husband about that time, and continued to play in honky-tonks and clubs throughout the western United States and was later joined by her sisters Dottie, Bettie Sue, and Mary.

In 1960 she found herself broke in . Nightclub owner Ray Pellum helped her get a job at a club in Chubbuck, . For the next five years Charline performed there and recorded for Pellum's Eldorado Records.

From 1965 to 1968 she performed at Myrtle's Club in Pocatello, Idaho. She continued playing in various clubs across the West, including California, and recording for small labels through the 1960s, 1970s, and occasionally in the early 1980s. Disillusioned with the music industry, she battled problems with alcohol and drugs and suffered from severe arthritis. During her last years she lived on a $335 monthly disability pension in a trailer home in rural Idaho. She died of atherosclerosis on November 27, 1987, and was buried in Fort Worth.

Charline's bluesy, rocking country sound and her wild stage antics are considered to have influenced Patsy Cline and Elvis Presley. She is now considered a pioneer of rockabilly music. She was the first female country musician to attempt to express a unique, “unladylike” style that was not accepted in Nashville. Although she died in relative obscurity, recent CD releases have brought renewed interest in her music. Among them are Welcome to the Club (Bear Family Records, 1986), a compilation of her work, and The Gals of the Big 'D' Jamboree (Dragon Street Records, 2001), which features her music. She was also one of the subjects of the 2001 documentary Welcome to the Club: The Women of Rockabilly, directed by . Charline Arthur is an inductee of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

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LXII. James A. Beck [Jim] Written by Martin Donell Kohout

James A. (Jim) Beck, legendary recording engineer who almost singlehandedly allowed Dallas to rival Nashville as the center of the country music recording industry in the 1950s, was born in Marshall, Texas, on August 11, 1916, but moved with his family to Fort Worth before he was twelve.

Beck evinced an early interest in electronics, allegedly building a working radio station in his bedroom at the age of fourteen. He worked as a radio announcer in his late teens, and by the age of twenty-five had worked at stations in Weslaco and Paris, Texas.

During World War II he served as a radio engineer in the United States Army and gained in broadcasting and recording, even setting up a military radio network based in Wichita Falls, but he broke both legs in a truck accident in California and was discharged in 1945.

Beck returned to Texas and built his first recording studio on Main Street in Dallas. He did work for the military, recording public service spots for the army until that regional work was consolidated in San (left) and , ca. 1950s. Beck, a superb sound Antonio. Beck was forced to shut down his studio but engineer who built his own Dallas studio, teamed with Law who was continued to record out of his house. head of the country music division of . Together the engineer and producer made a formidable pair whose influence He worked as an announcer at Dallas radio enabled Dallas to rival Nashville as the center of country music until stations KRLD, home of the Big D Jamboree, and KEKY Beck’s premature death in 1956. Courtesy of Dragon Street Records, Inc. to supplement his income. It was while working at KRLD that Beck, whose own musical tastes ran more to classical and Broadway, began to develop an interest in country music. He borrowed money to build another studio on Ross Avenue and specialized in radio work, advertisements, and demo recordings. Legendary Texas sports announcer Gordon McLendon recorded his “live” broadcasts (actually staged reenactments, with Beck handling sound effects) of baseball games at Beck’s studio.

By 1950, however, the sound quality of the demo recordings made at Beck’s studio had begun to attract the attention of the major record labels. Columbia executive Don Law eventually brought artists from as far away as Shreveport, Nashville, and Los Angeles to record at Beck’s studio in Dallas. Country music historian Charles K. Wolfe wrote that Beck’s facility, while smaller than those in New York and Los Angeles, was “the studio that produced the most distinctive sound of all, the one that produced the most influential recordings, and the one that came within a hairbreadth of changing the whole direction of the music’s development.” Indeed, only Beck’s untimely death kept Columbia and Decca from moving their country recording operations to Dallas, a shift that might have resulted in “Big D,” not Nashville, becoming known as America’s “Music City.” Beck also did engineering for the Imperial, Bullet, and King labels.

Beck prided himself on his command of the technical aspects of recording technology and built his own sophisticated equipment to incorporate the latest advances.

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He took regular trips to New York to review the latest developments in sound recording technology and often improved upon them back in Dallas. He also assembled a crack band of studio musicians, including the fiddler Johnny Gimble, pianists Madge Suttee and Harold Cormack, and guitarists Jimmy Rollins and Joe Knight.

Beck’s reputation grew considerably thanks to his role in the early successes of country music legends Ray Price and Lefty Frizzell. In 1949 a songwriter friend convinced Price to record some demos at Beck’s studio; Beck liked the singer more than the songs and signed Price to a contract. Beck then sold the recordings to an independent label in Nashville, which released them as Price’s first single in 1950.

Beck also gave Frizzell his start, having heard the singer performing at the local Ace of Clubs. Frizzell went into Beck’s studio in April 1950 to record demos of two songs, “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time” and “I Love You a Thousand Ways.” Beck took the demos to Nashville and tried to interest the Columbia recording star Little Jimmy Dickens in the songs. Dickens turned them down, but Law heard them, liked Frizzell’s voice, and arranged a full session in July 1950 at Beck’s studio. “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time” was released in September and was an immediate hit.

In subsequent years, Beck worked with such country artists as Jim Reeves, Leon McAuliffe, Roy Orbison, the Light Crust Doughboys, , Billy Walker, Floyd Tillman, Carl Smith, and , and with artists from other genres, including Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, and even classical pianist Gregor Sandor. Norman Petty, later Holly’s engineer and producer, got his start as a part-time recording engineer at Beck’s studio. In 1953 Beck built a new studio on Forrest Avenue.

In the spring of 1956, however, Beck was hospitalized after forgetting to open a ventilator or window while cleaning the heads of his recording machine with the toxic chemical carbon tetrachloride. He died a few weeks later, on May 3, 1956, and was buried in Hillcrest Cemetery in North Dallas. He was survived by his wife Mary Elizabeth, their son and two daughters, and his mother Lorine Beck. After Beck’s death, his former assistant Rollins briefly took over the studio, but, as Mary Elizabeth Beck said, “he had built it all himself, and nobody knew how to run it.” Notable reissues of Beck’s work include early recordings of Marty Robbins (in a Time-Life three-volume set) and Lefty Frizzell (on the Bear Family label).

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LXIII. John Washington Dollar, Jr. [Johnny Dollar] Written by Laurie E. Jasinski

Johnny Dollar, rockabilly artist and producer, was born John Washington Dollar, Jr., in Kilgore, Texas, on March 8, 1933. He was the son of Nellie Mai “Millie” (Morgan) Dollar and John Dollar and one of six children. His parents, Creek Indians, had relocated from Oklahoma to East Texas with the onslaught of that region’s oil boom. Apparently, the family moved often, as Johnny attended schools in Kilgore, Fredericksburg, Crab Apple Creek, and Junction. About 1948 he lived with an older brother in Sheridan, Texas, and attended Schreiner’s Military Academy. At odds with his father, at age seventeen Johnny Dollar joined the Marines and left home permanently. After the service, he worked in the oilfields of West Texas and as a truck driver and lumberyard hand while performing occasional singing jobs.

At his own expense, Dollar recorded a single (“Walking Away”) for D Records in 1952. Then he worked as a deejay in Louisiana and New Mexico. He started a band called the Texas Sons and for awhile performed regularly on Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport. He also recorded another single (“Lumberjack”), this time on Slim Willett’s Winston label.

By the late 1950s he was in Dallas and had embraced the popular style of rockabilly. With a ready-made stage name, Johnny Dollar got in touch with Ed Rockabilly artist Johnny Dollar. Courtesy of Dragon Street Records, McLemore, owner and promoter of Big D Jamboree, Inc. and Dollar became a regular member of the cast. The singer, with his dark sideburns, rock-and-roll voice, and attitude that carried a bit of swagger and rebellion, seemed a natural for the stage and studio. He collaborated with songwriter on a series of what would be rockabilly standards such as “Green- Eyed ,” “Action Packed,” and “Rockin’ Bones,” which was later made famous by Ronnie Dawson. Initially Rhodes and Dollar worked in a small recording studio in a room at Rhodes’s motel in Mineola, Texas. Later the two, with the support of McLemore’s Big “D” Publishing Company, recorded at Sellers Studios in Dallas. With producer Johnny Hicks and backed by a group of homegrown rockers (two would go on to perform with ), Dollar recorded a series of tracks that represented the epitome of rockabilly bravado. For some reason, they were never released.

By the end of the 1950s, as enthusiasm for rockabilly had waned, Dollar left music and sold financial investments in Oklahoma. At that time, he met Ray Price, who rekindled Dollar’s musical prospects and had him signed with Columbia Records. Now known as Johnny $ Dollar and “Mr. Personality,” Dollar released a series of modest country hits, including “Tear-Talk” and “Stop the Start (of Tears in My Heart).” He was nominated as Billboard’s Best New Artist in 1966 and as Best New Artist for Record World in 1967.

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That year he signed with and later Date Records and had some success with “The Wheels Fell Off the Wagon Again” and “Everybody’s Got to be Somewhere.”

With Chart Records from 1968 to the early 1970s he scored several respectable hits with a series of truck- driving songs. These issues were effectively the last of his career as a performing artist.

During the 1970s Dollar became a producer in Nashville. His clients included Jim Cartwright, “Little” Jimmy Dickens, and Teddy Nelson, whose record sales went platinum and gold in Europe. In the early 1980s Dollar was diagnosed with throat cancer, and his surgical treatment seriously damaged his voice. By the mid-1980s he had divorced four times and suffered from alcoholism and depression. When his cancer reappeared, Dollar sank further into depression and committed suicide on April 13, 1986.

In 1997 the reels of audio tape—Johnny Dollar’s unreleased rockabilly recordings from the late 1950s— resurfaced in a north Dallas home. Subsequently, David Dennard of Dragon Street Records released them on CD in 1998 as Johnny Dollar: Mr. Action Packed. The collection also included two live performances from Big D Jamboree in 1958. Thus Johnny Dollar’s talent reached new rockabilly fans after forty years. He was also recognized for his early contributions in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

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LXIV. Evelyn Joyce Johnson Written by Roger Wood

Evelyn Johnson, recording company business manager and booking agent, daughter of Sophronia “Sophie” Davis and an unidentified Creole father, was born in Thibodaux, Louisiana, on September 28, 1920. From the late 1940s through 1973, as the primary business manager assisting the Houston-based entrepreneur Don Robey, Johnson worked behind the scenes to create, develop, and operate one of the most commercially successful African-American- owned-and-operated music enterprises of the mid- twentieth century, a conglomeration that ultimately encompassed at least five record labels, a powerful booking agency, a music publishing company, and other concerns. As such, she was directly involved in recording, managing, or promoting a large number of influential artists in blues, rhythm-and-blues, gospel, and pop during the era in which they first established themselves as major stars.

In 1926, at the age of six, Johnson moved with her mother to Houston, first settling in the Fourth

Ward before moving to the Fifth Ward (home of the Evelyn Johnson. As business manager of Don Robey’s Duke-Peacock “Frenchtown” district, populated mainly by black recording empire as well as president of Buffalo Booking Agency, Creole immigrants from Louisiana). There Johnson Johnson played a formidable role in shaping Houston’s recording graduated from Phillis Wheatley High School, after industry and beyond from the 1940s into the 1970s. Photograph by James Fraher. which she worked as an x-ray technician at a local hospital and studied at Houston College for Negroes (the institution that later became Texas Southern University).

Johnson’s career path changed in 1946 when she affiliated professionally with Don Robey and initially served as the office manager of his Fifth Ward-based nightclub, the Bronze Peacock, one of the largest and most prestigious African-American-owned performance venues in the Southwest. It was there in 1947 that the previously relatively unknown guitarist and blues singer Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown created a sensation when he replaced the esteemed T-Bone Walker onstage and delivered a fiery performance, a phenomenon that prompted Robey and Johnson to sign Brown to a management contract and launch his professional career. Following a directive from Robey in 1949, Johnson researched the mechanics of the nascent independent recording industry and prepared the documents and a business plan for a new company, Peacock Records, which sought to capitalize on Brown’s talents. In 1950 the American Federation of Musicians granted Johnson a license (#652) to book and manage union artists, and she founded the Buffalo Booking Agency, installing herself as president and becoming one of the few African Americans to compete against white-owned booking agencies at the time. These two companies, both of which were bankrolled by Robey and managed by Johnson, found quick success with Brown, so they soon signed new talent and expanded their roster of shared artists to include various gospel groups, such as the Original Five Blind Boys and the Dixie Hummingbirds, and numerous blues or R&B singers, such as Floyd Dixon, Clarence Green, Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, Elmore Nixon, Marie Adams, and others.

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In 1952 Robey acquired the fledgling Memphis-based Duke Records label and artist roster, merging its operations with those of his already established Peacock imprint in Houston.

This acquisition infused new blues talent from the Mississippi Delta region into Robey and Johnson’s realm of business interests in recording and touring, including eventual Duke stars such as Johnny Ace, , Junior Parker, Rosco Gordon, and Earl Forest, as well as B. B. King, who did not record for Robey but toured for Buffalo Booking Agency for nine years and credited Johnson with much of his early success. Johnson continued to oversee the business affairs of Robey’s Duke-Peacock recording empire as it expanded in 1957 to add the subsidiary label Back Beat and again in 1963 when it added another two labels called Song Bird and Sure-Shot. She remained in charge of Robey’s office through 1973, at which time Robey sold all of his music-related assets to the ABC/Dunhill corporation and retired.

In subsequent years, Johnson remained in Houston, working in real estate and banking prior to her own retirement. In November 2003 the nonprofit organization Project Row Houses celebrated Johnson’s achievement in the music business by staging a Duke-Peacock Reunion concert in her honor at the historic Houston venue called the Eldorado Ballroom.

Johnson remained an active member of St. James United Methodist Church of Houston until shortly before her death and served on the finance committee and as the church historian. Despite a close personal relationship with Robey during the 1950s, Johnson never married and had no children. She died on November 1, 2005, and was buried at Paradise North Cemetery in Houston.

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LXV. Carl Eric Lewis Written by Laurie E. Jasinski

Carl Eric Lewis, attorney, judge, and musician, was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, on January 29, 1952. He attended Moody High School and achieved distinction for his athletic accomplishments, including All-District honors and credit for scoring the first touchdown for the school’s football team. Upon graduation, he attended Yale University, where he also played football and earned All-Ivy League honors. He received a B.A. in English and eventually attended the University of Texas School of Law and graduated in 1979. In Corpus Christi, Lewis worked in public service as an assistant city attorney and an assistant county attorney. He also worked in the firm of Tinker, Tor & Lewis as a criminal defense lawyer. In 1992 Lewis was elected Nueces County attorney. He was subsequently appointed and then eventually elected as judge of the County Court at Law No. 5 in Nueces County in 1999. During his professional career, Lewis was known as a strong advocate for children’s rights. As a judge, he presided over numerous juvenile cases that dealt with child abuse and neglect, gang violence, and custody issues. At some point, he married and had two children. In 1994 Lewis was asked to help out with a talent show fundraiser for the Women’s Shelter of South Texas. The musically-inclined Lewis put together a group largely made up of fellow lawyer musicians to perform at the event. Thus began the band Carl Lewis and the Deadbeats. Lewis, the frontman, sang vocals and played harmonica. Founding members included David Bright (guitar), Tyner Little (guitar), and Mike Gilmore (drums). Other performers included Jim Lago and Rey Martinez (saxophone), Doug Adams (bass), Mike Ser (keyboards), and David Marroquín (drums). Lewis’s son Ben and Bright’s son Austin also later played with the band. What started as a one-time performance, evolved into almost fifteen years of community service through musical gigs. After their initial show, the founding band members agreed to meet for weekly rehearsals and jam sessions. Soon, they were asked to play for another charity event. Eventually, Carl Lewis and the Deadbeats performed approximately twenty to twenty-five shows a year. The gigs were all played free of charge to help raise money for charitable organizations. The group performed primarily blues, which included covers of Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Howlin’ Wolf, and , but Lewis also wrote several numbers of his own, with guitarist Tyner Little. The group performed at charity functions throughout the Coastal Bend area and South Texas and gained the reputation as blues-loving lawyers who used their talents to help out numerous nonprofit organizations. According to guitarist/attorney David Bright: “The vision was Carl’s to form a blues group that followed their hearts and don’t give two hoots about selling records and tee shirts or making nice with corporate sponsors. Instead, the band would play what we wanted, the music we loved and focus on playing fundraisers for worthy causes.” Their shows included functions for Incarnate Word Academy, the NAACP, Coastal Bend Brothers and Sisters, YMCA, March of Dimes, and a Court Appointed Special Advocates event. In 2004 Carl Lewis and the Deadbeats opened for country singer and former Corpus Christi resident Don Williams at a scholarship fundraiser for Del Mar College. In 2006 Lewis was honored with the Cecil E. Burney Humanitarian Award given by the Corpus Christi Bar Association for his “community service performed outside his…professional life.” Lewis was also quite active in other civic affairs. He served on the boards of YMCA, Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Coastal Bend, and the Molina-Greenwood Nursery School. He was also instrumental in introducing Adoption Day in Nueces County in 2004—an event designed to celebrate the adoptions of foster parents and children. Carl Lewis died suddenly on October 25, 2008, of complications from respiratory distress. More than 1,000 people attended his funeral at Corpus Christi Cathedral. He was survived by his mother, June Lewis, son Benjamin, and daughter Hayden Summer.

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Initially the music group, having lost their frontman, decided to disband. Shortly afterward, they reconsidered and chose to continue performing as the Deadbeats. They added Kristine Stevenson as lead vocalist. In February 2009 the Deadbeats performed at a benefit concert at Del Mar College. The event, titled “A Musical Tribute to Carl Lewis,” earned proceeds for a new Carl Lewis Memorial Scholarship for the college’s music department. Carl Lewis and the Deadbeats were inducted into the South Texas Music Walk of Fame in 2009.

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LXVI. Carl T. Morene Written by Laurie E. Jasinski

Carl T. Morene, the “Music Man of Schulenburg,” was born on November 13, 1887, in Muldoon, a small community located in southwestern Fayette County, Texas. He was the son of A. F. Morene, and his parents were Swedish immigrants. The family moved often because of his father’s occupation as a railroad worker, and in 1896 they lived at Lyon’s Station in Burleson County. Morene’s mother died that year, and his father’s death in Gonzales County four years later left Morene an orphan. At the end of his eighth grade year, he left school to find work. He enlisted in the United States Navy in 1909 and served for four years and subsequently joined the United States Army and served in the Motor Transport Corps during World War I.

He most likely learned the electrical trade during his military service and began employment in the electric utility business at Nixon in Gonzales County after the war. He worked in Hallettsville for the Central Power and Light Company in 1924 and moved to Schulenburg to head company operations there in 1928. He eventually became city manager over the town’s municipal utility program.

Morene, known as an able and productive manager, opened a new chapter in his life due to the economic consequences of the Great Depression. In 1933 a financial shortfall prompted the local school board to discontinue the paid directorship position for the Schulenburg High School Orchestra even though the program had earned regional accolades. Orchestral programs were rare in public schools in Texas at that time. In order to save the program, Carl Morene offered to serve as the unpaid director of the Schulenburg High School Orchestra. Intrigued by the creative plan to continue the orchestra and with little left to lose, the school board approved Morene’s directorship.

After working his regular job during the day, Morene enthusiastically volunteered his time for the orchestra in the evening. He possessed the fundamental skills for reading and playing music and proved to be a resourceful and inspiring teacher. He accepted the economic challenges posed by the depression and persevered to build and maintain a high-quality orchestra. He personally recruited participants and offered personal lessons free of charge. Morene invested his own money to purchase musical instruments, sheet music, and other supplies for the orchestra. He furnished transportation, using his own car, to help students attend rehearsals, which occurred in the school auditorium every Monday and Wednesday night.

In September 1934 an appreciative school board secured a special Texas teaching certificate for Morene. He stated, “I had never expected to have a teacher’s certificate because of the lack of school education I have had. I never graduated from high school.”

Under Morene’s leadership the orchestra gained recognition for its repertoire of classical works, marches, and patriotic songs. The Schulenburg High School Orchestra achieved high honors at interscholastic events and impressed audiences at public concerts, local community events, and on the radio. The group also embarked on regional concert tours to destinations such as Shiner, Gonzales, Waelder, and Yoakum. Morene composed the words and music for Schulenburg High School’s official school song, “Shorthorns Forever,” which his orchestra debuted at a school assembly in February 1938.

During World War II, Morene continued his dedication and volunteer service to lead the orchestra. With the coming of gasoline rationing, he used his own ration stamps to assist with student transportation. He continued his work as manager of the city’s utility program and in that capacity also mentored mechanically-inclined students. He maintained memberships in the Masons, Lion’s Club, and American Legion.

After the war he initiated a marching drum and bugle corps program at Schulenburg High.

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In 1947 the corps had evolved into a full-fledged marching band. In early 1948 Morene was stricken with pneumonia which was probably the result of a severe cold he had caught from exposure to rain and cold when he led the band in support of the Shorthorns football team’s final playoff game the previous December. He died in a hospital in Hallettsville on January 17, 1948, at the age of sixty. Shocked students and citizens attended his funeral in the high school gymnasium. He was buried in Schulenburg City Cemetery. Morene had never married.

In 2002 high school alumni attending a multiclass reunion formed a committee to commemorate Morene’s life and accomplishments. They commissioned Texas sculptor Lawrence W. Ludtke to design a memorial plaque for city hall and a medallion for his new headstone. In November 2005 the Texas Historical Commission erected a marker honoring Carl Morene, the “Music Man of Schulenburg.”

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LXVII. Sarg Records Written by Gary S. Hickinbotham

Sarg (pronounced “sarge”) Records in Luling, Texas, was an independent record label owned by Charles Wesley “Charlie” Fitch. Born in Hallettsville in 1918, Fitch was a World War II Air Force veteran and former POW in Germany. Fitch had owned a jukebox business in Yoakum before he enlisted and started another one after the war while based at in San Antonio. His string of jukeboxes was between San Antonio and Luling.

After his honorable discharge at the rank of technical sergeant in 1950, Fitch moved to Luling and opened the Luling Phonograph & Record Shop. Located at 311 East Davis Street, the record shop was in a former grocery storefront. Fitch and his family lived in quarters

at the back of the store. He maintained his string of Sarg Records out of Luling, Texas, holds the distinction of releasing jukeboxes, and his wife Bennie ran the store. Fitch Willie Nelson’s first known solo recording, a demo Nelson cut at the opened the store because selling records featured in station of KBOP in Pleasanton while he was a deejay there. This rare his jukeboxes provided extra income. 45 rpm features Nelson’s “When I Sang My Last Hillbillie Song” and is labeled “Audition ’55.” Charlie Fitch, owner of Sarg Records, did For an additional source of income, in 1951 Fitch not sign the young singer–songwriter. Photograph by Gary S. began booking national acts for local shows. His first Hickinbotham. booking was , for a show at the Gonzales Warm Springs Rehabilitation Hospital. He later brought country stars such as Johnnie & Jack, Kitty Wells, Faron Young, Webb Pierce, and others to local clubs and events. Fitch started the Sarg Records label in late 1953 to further augment his jukebox operation. He reasoned that if he could make extra money by selling records played in his jukeboxes, he could earn even more money by making them. Friends called Fitch “Sarg,” so he selected that name for his record label. The label’s logo was a technical sergeant’s insignia—three stripes up and two down.

The first record on the Sarg label was “Korean Love Song” by Neal Merritt. Fitch had sent a demo acetate recording made by Merritt at the KBOP radio station in Pleasanton along with a demo tape of a very young Doug Sahm to Mercury Records, who declined to sign either act. He then tried to get a Capitol Records A&R scout to listen to Merritt’s song. The Capitol representative told Fitch he would come to the store to listen, but he never showed. Fitch then decided to go into the record business and release the record himself. On December 28, 1953, Merritt recorded four songs at the KBOP studio, including “Korean Love Song.” Fitch had “Korean Love Song” (Sarg 101) pressed at TNT Records in San Antonio but was unhappy with the sound quality, so he returned the records to TNT and kept one copy as a souvenir. Fitch decided to release the second pair of songs and had this record pressed at a plant in New York, thinking that the sound quality would be better. However, this release (Sarg 102) sounded just as bad, because the KBOP radio studio was not really a recording studio, and additionally, the plant printed the logo incorrectly.

This record was not a huge seller, but it gave Fitch the idea that he should make records for his jukeboxes. Of the more than 150 records released by Sarg, all were singles for his jukeboxes. Sarg Records never recorded or released an album.

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Undeterred by the problems with Sarg’s first records, Fitch signed a regionally popular band, Herby Shozel and the Longhorn Playboys, as the next act on his label.

To improve the sound quality, Fitch recorded this band at Bill Holford’s ACA Studios in Houston, at the time the most professional studio facility in South Texas, and had the record pressed at the Monarch plant in Los Angeles. Shozel’s band was the house band at a club owned by a disc jockey, so through this combination of factors, Sarg 103 was a much more successful release than the previous two.

For a time Fitch continued recording only regional San Antonio country and western swing bands, adding Dave Isbell and the Mission City Playboys (with Willie Nelson on guitar), Larry Nolen and the Bandits, Little Doug Sahm, and Eddy Dugosh and the Ah-Ha Playboys to his label. Sarg Records was not making a profit however, so Fitch branched out to include ethnic recordings. He created a subsidiary label called Sargento to release Hispanic recordings. These were not profitable for him either, but he finally found some success with the polka music made by descendants of the Czech, German, and Polish immigrants who populated much of South Texas.

From the late 1950s through the mid-1960s Sarg reached its peak, releasing mostly polka, country and western, and rockabilly records by artists such as Adolph Hofner, Al Urban, Cecil Moore, Glenn Bland and the Rhythm Kings, and the Downbeats. Many artists sought to be on the label, including Willie Nelson, who was a deejay at KBOP in Pleasanton. He sent an audition tape to Fitch, who did not sign Nelson to the label. He kept the tape and later released what is Nelson’s first known recording. In 1964 Cecil Moore recorded “Diamondback,” a guitar instrumental which became very popular across Texas. Fitch realized his dream of having one of his records distributed nationally when Atlantic Records subsidiary Atco picked up “Diamondback” based on its success in Texas. However, the record failed to achieve national success. During this period Sarg had released a few rock-and-roll and rhythm-and-blues recordings but did not further pursue either genre.

By the late 1960s the “Texas” country and western sound was out of favor, swamped by the “Nashville Sound,” so Sarg’s releases from this time on were largely of the ethnic polka and waltz styles. In the 1970s the decline of the 45-rpm record format, the rise of Top 40 formatted radio, and the death of Charlie’s wife Bennie put further stress on the label. Sarg Records produced very few recordings after the 1970s. But the 1970s also saw collector interest in the label grow to the point where Fitch had sold out of all the original copies of Sarg recordings and had to press more.

This historic collector interest has continued to grow. Compilation albums of Sarg recordings appeared internationally, including a four-CD box set and book released by Bear Family Records in 1999. The rise of the CD format brought about the end of Fitch’s 45-rpm jukebox operation in the 1990s, but he continued to operate the record store, opening by appointment until shortly before his death at age eighty-seven on May 7, 2006. Documentary filmmakers Damon Cook and Dan Pringle produced a video documentary—Sgt. Fitch: A Legacy of Sarg Records—which was broadcast on PBS in 2009.

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Handbook of Texas Music Online Table of Contents

o Overviews

o General

 Blues

 Business, Promotion, Broadcasts, and Technology

 Conjunto, Tejano, and Border

 Education

 Events and Festivals

 Folk

 Groups

 Museums/Halls of Fame

 Organizations

 Songs

 Venues

o Biographies

 Blues

 Business, Promotion, Broadcasting, and Technology

 Classical

 Conjunto, Tejano, and Border

 Country

 Educators

 Ethnic

 Folk

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 Gospel

 Jazz

 Miscellaneous

 Patrons and Philanthropists

 Rap and Hip-Hop

 Rock and Roll, Rhythm and Blues, and Rockabilly

 Stage and Film

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