Texas Music

Neither country and western nor the blues originated in Texas, but both genres of roots music have been indelibly shaped by talented Texans. The state ranks alongside Tennessee or Louisiana for contributions to the Americana music scene, and the number of individual music greats that Texas has spawned is astonishing. They've come from the big cities like Houston, Austin, and Dallas, of course, but most remarkable is how many have rolled out of Lubbock. The barren lands of West Texas have proved incredibly fertile for the creation of homespun music. Texas has spawned so many musicians that a museum honoring their contributions to pop culture is in the works, most likely to be housed in Houston.

Most listeners think of country music when they think of Texas sounds, and the state was certainly instrumental in the form's early development, a product of cowboy songs and folk contributions from new immigrants. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, who emerged from Lubbock in the 1920s, introduced Western swing (or Texas swing), a combustible mix of hillbilly tunes, fiddle music, jazz, polka, cowboy ballads, and Mexican ranchero music. Texas artists like George Jones in the 1950s popularized honky-tonk, characterized by steel guitars, fiddles, and plaintive vocals. Jones, one of country's finest voices, later became a balladeer and top-10 hit maker. Like Kenny Rogers of Conroe, Texas, he was more closely identified with Nashville than with Texas.

With characteristic independence, Texas musicians developed their own kind of country. Progressive and outlaw country fused hard-core honky-tonk, folk, rock, and blues. With country music reaching a national audience in the 1970s with the blandly orchestrated Nashville Sound, a gang of Texas outlaws, led by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker (not a native Texan but closely identified with the scene), and Kris Kristofferson seized the stage with a gritty, maverick rejection of the slicker country being produced in Nashville, hence the early anti-"Nashcrap" movement was born. Waylon and Willie's "Luckenbach, Texas," a song about a town with two dozen people, became a state anthem. Nelson, the braided, bandanna-wearing icon of Texas country, evolved into one of Texas's most beloved contemporary figures. He began his career as a songwriter of hits for Patsy Cline ("Crazy") and others before positioning himself as a cult artist and finally a crossover country star, daring to dabble in all genres, from traditional country to ballads ("Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain") and potent country poetry.

Other great Texas singer-songwriters, such as Guy Clark & Townes Van Zandt, less prone to the outlaw lifestyle but still independent, mined a territory of lyrical country-folk music. These overlooked artists lay the foundation for the current generation of Texas songwriters, including Lyle Lovett, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Steve Earle, musicians as at home in country as they are in rock, gospel, and the blues. Western swing has undergone a couple of rounds of revival, in the 1970s and again in the early 1990s. Asleep at the Wheel, a multipiece band that has gone through innumerable lineup changes, has been present for both. Current stars among Texas singer-songwriters with a touch of twang include Nanci Griffith, Michelle Shocked, and Kelly Willis. Expanding the horizons of Texas music are Dallas-area rockabilly bar-burners Reverend Horton Heat and Texas polka aficionados Brave Combo, originally from Denton.

Texas blues began with legendary figures like Blind Lemmon Jefferson (whose "Black Snake Moan" struck quite a chord in the 1920s) and Blind Willie Johnson, both of whom played the area around Deep Ellum in Dallas. Robert Johnson may have been from Mississippi, but he made his only known recordings in Dallas and San Antonio in the 1930s. Sam "Lightning" Hawkins, of Houston, created a blistering blues guitar style that influenced generations of rockers. Other notable Houston blues musicians include B. B. King, Albert Collins, and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.

Port Arthur's Janis Joplin's raw vocals and blues-inflected rock (not to mention her heroin overdose and posthumous hit, "Me and Bobby McGee") made her an icon of the 1960s. Stevie Ray Vaughan, an incendiary guitar wizard from south Dallas, also became a blues-rock star before his light went out prematurely in a helicopter crash in 1990. Austin club regulars Angela Strehli and Lou Ann Barton continue the Texas blues tradition.

Texas has produced its share of rock 'n' roll pioneers, too. Lubbock's Buddy Holly, the bespectacled proto-rocker who with his band, the Crickets, influenced Elvis, the Beatles, and countless new-wavers with tunes like "Peggy Sue" and "That'll Be the Day," went down in a 1959 plane crash after just a couple of years at the top. Roy Orbison, from Vernon, Texas, began his career in rockabilly, but his high, haunting voice propelled a number of memorable mainstream hits in the 1960s, like "Only the Lonely" and "In Dreams." ZZ Top, from Houston, started out in swaggering blues-rock territory, singing about "Tush" and "LaGrange" before their belly-length beards and songs like "Legs" and "Tube Steak Boogie" made them MTV darlings. Current Texas faves on the alternative scene include Spoon (from Austin) and Slobberbone (Dallas).

With its Latino roots and large Hispanic population, Texas has given rise to yet another genre that reflects cross-cultural fertilization, Tex-Mex border sounds. Conjunto, norteña, and Tejano are all slightly different takes on this definitive Tex-Mex style, anchored by the accordion and 12-string Mexican guitar. The megastar Selena (yet another Texas music star to burn out early rather than fade away) brought Tejano to national Latino audiences before her death, and reached a wider audience through films and books about her life. Flaco Jiménez is the leading conjunto proponent today. Another cross-cultural musical phenomenon in Texas is zydeco, a creole stew that combines Afro-Caribbean, blues, and Cajun rhythms, and is especially popular in the Houston and Galveston areas (as well as Louisiana).

Texas Radio & Radio Stations

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