Birthplaces of the Blues
Want to see the Texas of Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Mance Lipscomb, and other pioneering musicians of the twentieth century? Your trip through time begins near Washington-on-the-Brazos.
May 2000 Issue
Features
Tomorrow People
Meet the senior class of what might be called Texas Music U. four up-and-coming acts that should graduate to the big time.
And You Will Know Them By the Trail of Debt
What they lack in cash they make up for in cachet: on the road with the Trail of Dead, Austin's coolest punk rockers of the moment, as they head east in search of fans, fame, and a free place to crash.
Y’all in the Family
How did Lloyd Maines get to be a revered guitarist and record producer? How did his daughter Natalie find fame as a Dixie Chick? Chalk it up to musicianship—and kinship.
Gotta Lubbock
Buddy Holly. Waylon Jennings. Carolyn Hester. The Hancocks. The Flatlanders. An oral history of the state's most storied music scene.
Wills Power
Sixty-five years after his first recording sessions with the Texas Playboys, 25 years after his death, Bob Wills is still the king of western swing.
A Great Day In Austin
Together for the first time: Two Tommys (Hancock and Shannon), two Montes (Montomery and Warden), two Hubbards (Blues Boys and Ray Wylie) and two Clarks (Carrie and W.C.), plus a Butthole Surfer, three Gourds, six Bells of Joy, a Tailgator, and 87 others who give their all, creatively speaking, to
Columns
Business
Bare Assets
How members of the heavy metal group Pantera turned their adult nightclub into a sound investment.
Profile
Sax and the Cities
Financial success may have eluded Dewey Redman, whose career as a jazz journeyman has taken him from his hometown of Fort Worth to San Francisco and on to New York, but happiness hasn't.
Crime
L.A. Confidential
In July 1966 El Paso rocker Bobby Fuller was found dead in Hollywood. Whodunit? We still don't know.
First Person
Waiting for My Man
As the girlfriend of a musician, I get to carry guitars at three in the morning and hear the particulars of our relationship come blaring out of the radio. Would I change it if I could? Not on your life.
Extras
Extra
A Great Day in Austin
106 musicians who give their all to the Live Music Capital of the World.
Extra
Essential Listening
We set up a store with all the CD's deemed "essential listening" in this issue.
Reporter
Music Review
The Complete Blind Willie Johnson
Thirty recordings and one photograph are all that is left of Blind Willie Johnson, the itinerant musician who hailed from the same expanse of East Texas farmland as blues giants Lightnin’ Hopkins and Blind Lemon Jefferson. But Johnson was no bluesman. He sang not of his destitute life — which
Music Review
Old No. 1 / Texas Cookin’
This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release of Guy Clark’s first — and best — album, Old No. 1. Clark was 34 when it came out, and by then he’d left Texas, eventually settling in Nashville, where it was recorded. Old No. 1 has aged well, more so
Music Review
San Antonio Rock: The Harlem Recording
Way back before Doug Sahm became Sir Douglas in the sixties, he was a teen sensation in San Antonio, fronting bands like the Dell Kings, the Mar-Kays, and the Pharaohs and honing his rhythm and blues and rock and roll chops for a string of local labels like Harlem, Satin,
Music Review
Waltz Across Texas
At the start of the sixties Ernest Tubb’s grip on the country Top Ten was slipping. To compensate, he put together a “hot” band that allowed him to play clubs and dance halls as well as concerts; that’s the group documented in this 1999 six-CD box set that covers the
Music Review
Escape From Monster Island
Jon Dee Graham may not be a household name or even pack ‘em in at his weekly gig at the Continental Club in Austin, but his 1997 release, Escape From Monster Island, has clearly made him one of the state’s singer-songwriters that other singer-songwriters envy the most. Originally, his peers
Book Review
Texan Jazz
Dave Oliphant claims the definitive (well, the only) treatise on the pervasive influence of Texas’ sons and daughters on the jazz world. His crisp, near-scholarly style wisely avoids simple-headed romanticism of his subject. And the interchange of jazz players from project to project seems downright . . . promiscuous.
Book Review
Last Cavalier: The Life and Times of John A. Lomax
Lomax receives reverential, if bloodless, treatment in Nolan Porterfield’s bio. It is a thorough — though at times stodgy — examination of the avowed Texian’s lifelong devotion to unearthing and preserving the people’s music.
Book Review
Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin
A mere eleven years after Holly’s fatal plane crash, another Texas rock icon went to the great beyond — but the cultural landscape had changed beyond recognition as evidenced by Alice Echols’ revisionist bio. Echols peels away Joplin’s tough-mama caricature to reveal a desperate brilliance. The posthumous psychoanalysis is buttressed
Book Review
Rave On: The Biography of Buddy Holly
The world cried out, “Who capped Holly’s teeth?” and noted biographer Philip Norman came to the rescue with this painstakingly researched book that glows with the warmth of a fan’s enthusiasm but betrays a singular intelligence.
Book Review
The Life and Legend of Leadbelly
Folk-song collector John A. Lomax discovered Leadbelly in Louisiana’s Angola prison and masterminded the singer-guitarist’s 1935 introduction to the world (via New York), and their names have been linked ever since. This biographical tour de force by Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell pulsates with the confident energy that characterized the
Book Review
Texas Music
How big is Texas’ contribution to the world of music? Big enough to overwhelm Dallasite Rick Koster’s attempt to contain the sprawl between two covers; his Texas Music (St. Martin’s, 1998) falls short of its ambition. Which raises the question: Can any one book possibly hope to encompass Lefty Frizzell,
Web
Recipe
Rosemary Pork Loin Tuscan White Beans
1 pound dried navy or other white beans 1 1/2 cups finely chopped onions 3/4 cup finely chopped carrots 3/4 cup finely chopped celery 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves 1/4 cup finely chopped garlic 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil 2 teaspoons salt (1 teaspoon if using salted chicken
Book Excerpt
Texan Jazz
Many types of nineteenth-century American music entered into the making of jazz, and a number of these originated in West Africa and from that region were brought by slaves to the New World. Among the African, antebellum traditions of southern blacks was the music of their everyday lives: work songs,
Book Excerpt
The Life and Legend of Leadbelly
© 1992. Used by permission of Harper Collins Publishing, Inc.Tom B. Blocker liked to think that Texans who had the misfortune to find themselves in New York City needed to stick together. This was never more true than in 1935, the sixth year of the Depression, when Texas dress and
Miscellany
State Fare
State Fare
Eat to the beat: Rosemary-marinated pork from Houston caterer and string bass player Joe Abuso.
Around the State
Around the State
The return of King George Jones, that is. Plus: Squeezing into the Tejano Conjunto Festival in San Antonio; commemorating Gruene's dance hall days; raising heavenly voices in Columbus; and swinging into action in La Grange.
The Inside Story
Cover Story
If a picture is worth only a thousand words, then a single cover image couldn’t begin to tell the story of Texas music. That’s why, for this month’s special issue celebrating all things musical in the state’s past, present, and future, we decided to publish four different covers for the
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