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| Texas Music: Its
Roots, Its Evolution |
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| By Jay Brakefield |
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| Among the glories of Texas is its music,
which is as diverse and vital as the state and its
people. Woven into the musical fabric are country,
blues, jazz, spirituals, gospel, rock 'n' roll, Tex-Mex,
Cajun and the music of Czechs, Germans and other
European immigrants. |
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These forms have not only coexisted, they have
evolved and cross-pollinated as Texas has changed,
becoming steadily more urban. Texas is the birthplace of
Western swing, which incorporates elements of country,
blues, pop, big-band jazz and Latin rhythms, and of
conjunto, which combines traditional Mexican music with
polkas and other European forms. Texas has nurtured
zydeco, the music of French-speaking blacks, which has
increasingly incorporated elements of rhythm and blues. |
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| In Texas, you can catch a
performance by
Steve Jordan, who has been called the
Jimi Hendrix of the button accordion. Or you can walk
into a honky-tonk where a country singer in a cowboy hat
is borrowing a verse from Mississippi Delta bluesman
Robert Johnson about a woman who "may be in Ethiopia
somewhere." |
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| To many people, Texas music means
country, so that seems an appropriate place to begin. |
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Country music |
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The white Americans who began to settle in Texas in the 1820s came
primarily from elsewhere in the South, bringing with them the religious
and secular music they had heard at home. Generally the music they
listened to for entertainment and dancing was played on guitars, banjos
and fiddles. Even here, the music was hardly a pure Anglo-Saxon strain.
The banjo is apparently of African origin, and the fiddle has long had
an identification with black as well as white musicians and was widely
known as the devil's instrument – apparently because when a fiddle was
playing, it was hard to keep still. |
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Distinctive regional characteristics developed in this transplanted
music. Texas fiddlers generally use a relatively slow tempo and long,
single-note bow strokes, permitting more variations on the melody. They
tend to complement the rhythmic background provided by a guitar and
possibly other instruments. Guitarists, too, developed their own style,
using swinging rhythms and a greater variety of chords than the
traditional I-IV-V progression that is standard in so much folk and
dance music, black and white. These instrumental styles laid the
groundwork for the Western swing and honky-tonk music of the 20th
century. |
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These early Texas white musicians played primarily for dancing, often
in people's homes. On a weekend night, furniture would be cleared out of
several rooms for dancing to the music of local players. These were
seldom professional musicians, but were usually fellow farmers who
played as a sideline for a modest sum. Many also participated in
fiddling contests, fierce competitions in which they honed their skills
and enhanced their reputations. Often dancers moved to the music of just
fiddle and guitar. |
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| But sometimes musicians played in
larger ensembles called string bands, which included
instruments such as mandolin and banjo. In addition,
particularly after the Civil War, Texans were exposed to
musical entertainment through traveling tent and
medicine shows, where they heard comedians (often in
blackface) and popular songs of the day. And they heard
the music of African-Americans, who sometimes performed
for their masters on the plantation and sang to pass the
time as they labored, both during and after slavery.
Though most worship was segregated, many whites also had
some exposure to African-American worship services, with
their joyous interaction of preacher and congregation. |
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Whites and blacks alike throughout the South also had
access to itinerant singing masters who taught a
shape-note system, which uses symbols rather than
standard musical notation, to indicate the pitch of the
notes. At least one version, called "sacred harp"
singing, is still heard in parts of rural Texas. And the
Lone Star State, with its ranches and its cattle drives,
had the tradition of cowboy music and dress, which
certainly influenced the image of Texas country music
and perhaps its sound as well. |
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Thus by the time the commercial music industry was
born in the 1920s, the British folk songs that had
formed the basis of early rural, white American music
had already been cross-fertilized with a wide variety of
music, black and white. |
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| First country-music recording |
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| Apparently, the first country musicians to
record were fiddlers
Alexander "Eck" Robertson of Amarillo and
Henry Gilliland of Altus, Okla. Gilliland and Robertson, a
legendary prize-winning performer, traveled to Virginia in June
1922 to play at a Civil War veterans' reunion. Then, probably on
impulse, they went to New York and presented themselves at the
Victor recording company – Robertson in a cowboy outfit,
Gilliland in a Confederate uniform. They were granted an
audition and allowed to record. The standout of the session was
Robertson's recording of the dance tune "Sallie Gooden." |
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Robertson did not record again until 1930, but in 1923, the
two men performed two songs on Fort Worth radio station WBAP:
"Sallie Gooden" and another song Robertson had recorded,
"Arkansas Traveler." In doing so, as
Bill Malone points out in
Country Music U.S.A.," Robertson "may have been the first
country performer to 'plug' his recordings on a radio
broadcast." With another 1923 broadcast, WBAP apparently began
the tradition of "barn dance" radio shows that helped to
popularize country music in cities throughout the country where
Southerners migrated in search of work. |
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According to Malone, the birth of the country music industry
can be traced to the June 1923 recording of another rural
musician,
Fiddlin' John Carson of north Georgia.
Polk Brockman,
manager of the phonograph section of an Atlanta department
store, persuaded
Ralph Peer of Okeh Records to record Carson.
When Peer was skeptical, Brockman offered to buy 500 copies of
the unpressed recording, which included "The Little Old Cabin in
the Lane" and "The Old Hen Cackled and the Rooster's Going to
Crow." |
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| To Peer's surprise, the 500 copies sold
quickly, though the record was, in Malone's words, "uncatalogued,
unadvertised, unlabeled and for circulation solely in the
Atlanta area." Okeh pressed more copies, added the record to the
catalog and promoted it. That November, the label brought Carson
to New York to record 12 more numbers and signed him to an
exclusive contract. |
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First country-music star |
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| The first true country music star was
Jimmie
Rodgers, "the singing brakeman." Rodgers was from Mississippi,
but lived the last several years of his life in Texas, first in
Kerrville, then in San Antonio. His eclectic style, which
included elements of jazz, blues and pop as well as his famous
"blue yodel," would have a profound influence on later country
musicians. |
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Bob Wills and
Western
Swing |
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Perhaps the most distinctive strain to emerge from Texas,
Western swing, fused the music of the house dances with a number
of other styles. Bob Wills, often called the father of Western
swing, began as a boy playing for dances in the Panhandle. His
father,
John Wills, was a fiddler who played for dances and in
contests. In fact, his chief rival was none other than "Eck"
Robertson. Bob Wills apparently got his famous "Ah-hah" holler
from his father, for a disgusted Robertson once remarked after
losing a contest to the older Wills, "He didn't outfiddle me.
That damned old man Wills outhollered me," according to
Charles
R. Townsend's biography of Wills, San Antonio Rose. |
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Bob Wills also loved black music and once rode a horse 50
miles to hear the legendary "Empress of the Blues,"
Bessie
Smith. In 1929, Wills moved to Fort Worth, where he performed in
blackface with a medicine show and teamed up with guitarist
Herman Arnspiger and singer
Milton Brown in a group first called
the Wills Fiddle Band, then the Aladdin Laddies and the
Light
Crust Doughboys. |
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The Doughboys were the creature of
W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, a
future Texas governor and U.S. senator who was then president
and general manager of Burrus Mill in Fort Worth. He used the
band to advertise his flour – and not, contrary to many reports,
as a vehicle for his political career. |
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| The Doughboys became very popular via their
daily radio show on KFJZ in Fort Worth. But after a dispute with
O'Daniel, Wills left to form his own band, the
Texas Playboys,
which, ironically, moved its base of operations to Tulsa, Okla. |
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Brown, too, left and formed his own band,
Milton Brown and
His Musical Brownies, which remained in Fort Worth and performed
regularly at the
Crystal Springs Dance Pavilion, a dance hall on
White Settlement Road. Brown died young after a 1936 car
accident on Fort Worth's Jacksboro Highway. Some scholars
believe his role in the formation of Western swing has been
slighted, and that the group he put together was really the
first Western swing band. It included steel guitarist
Bob Dunn,
who may have been the first to amplify the instrument and who
played in a jazzy style far removed from the "weeping steel" of
later tears-in-your-beer country music. Dunn, it is said, made
the steel guitar sound like a trombone. |
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Some of Wills' early recordings feature black-dialect humor
straight from his medicine-show days. But his music became
increasingly sophisticated, and in his pre-World War II heyday
in Tulsa, he fronted a large group that included both fiddles
and horns and that could play anything from country dance tunes
to big-band jazz. Wills never learned to play the "hot" fiddle
style he loved, but hired musicians who could. He was a terrific
performer, though, keeping up a constant line of patter
("There's a man after my own heart – with a razor") and
inspiring his musicians to innovative solos. |
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The long career of another Texan is illustrative of the
diversity of Texas music.
Adolph Hofner, who became a bandleader
in the 1930s, actively performed until the '90s. Growing up in
the South Texas Czech community of Praha, he spoke Czech before
he spoke English, and played a wide-ranging repertoire that
included Wills-style Western swing with Czech lyrics, Cajun
waltzes and such Tex-Mex staples as "El Rancho Grande." Hofner
died in June 2000. |
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After World War II, tastes changed, and Wills and other band
leaders could no longer afford to carry large orchestras. Wills
remained active until a 1973 stroke ended his career, but his
later music was more country, more fiddle-oriented, and he spent
much of his time performing in Las Vegas. |
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Honky-tonk and outlaw country music |
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Even before the war, a new wind was blowing through country
music, a rougher, amplified sound played by small combos for
dancing in urban honky-tonks. This sound was exemplified by the
1941 hit "Walking the Floor Over You" by
Ernest Tubb, who had
begun his career as a Jimmie Rodgers imitator. |
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Other Texas musicians had great success with this style, as
well, including Corsicana-born
Lefty Frizzell and
Ray Price, who
later changed his approach to the pop crooning favored by
singers such as Tennessee's
Eddy Arnold and fellow Texan
Jim
Reeves. |
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Honky-tonk, whose greatest star was Alabama-born
Hank
Williams, became virtually synonymous with country music through
the mid-1950s, when it was knocked from its perch by another
form of music that, ironically, it had helped to create: rock
'n' roll. The Nashville-based country music industry responded
in the 1960s with music that crossed over into the mainstream
and seemed to many like nothing more than country-flavored pop. |
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Texans
Willie Nelson and
Waylon Jennings were key players in
the 1970s "outlaw country" movement, a fusion of country and
rock that rebelled against Nashville's blandness. Nelson moved
from Nashville to
Austin and helped spawn that city's
"progressive country" sound. |
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Today, as fads come and go, fans continue to support
performers such as Nelson, Jennings and East Texan
George Jones,
whose way with a sad song has gained him a reputation as the
greatest country singer around. |
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In addition, there's a neo-honky-tonk movement that includes
such performers as Austin's
Junior Brown, inventor of the "guit-steel,"
a combination of standard and steel guitars. Groups such as
Asleep At The Wheel and
Alvin Crow and the Pleasant Valley Boys
keep traditional Western swing alive. Other bands fuse
honky-tonk with punk rock in big-city clubs, proving that
country can go anywhere. |
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Blues, Jazz and Gospel |
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Some of the Southerners who settled in Texas brought their
slaves with them. The singing of African-Americans as they
worked long, hot hours on farms and plantations became a part of
the larger culture. Black musicians sometimes played for whites,
who listened or danced. And the minstrel show, consisting of
musical and comedy numbers, became very popular after the Civil
War. Both white and black minstrel troupes performed in
blackface. |
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Roots of the blues |
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Black music in Texas, as elsewhere, retained some African
characteristics, such as the use of polyrhythms,
call-and-response patterns of singing and playing and the use of
bent or slurred tones known as "blue notes." The field hollers
and work songs of slavery were African also in that they were
often sung by people working together and reflected a collective
effort and consciousness. |
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But after Emancipation, a new individual consciousness was
reflected in the music called the blues, often played by a lone
man accompanying himself on a guitar. |
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No one really knows where or when the blues began, but it was
widespread through the South and much of Texas by the turn of
the 20th century. Generally a performer would sing a line,
repeat it, then close the stanza with a rhyming line that often
contained an ironic twist. Though this 12-bar form became the
most common, eight- and 16-bar blues also existed. |
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Recordings of older musicians from the 1920s provide evidence
of what early blues and other late-19th-century forms were like.
Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas, born in Gladewater about 1875,
recorded when he was in his 50s, singing and playing the guitar
and a wind instrument called the quills, or panpipes. One of his
songs, "Fishing Blues," has been recorded by, among others, the
1960s rock band the
Lovin' Spoonful. |
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Another such songster – one whose repertoire ranged from
blues to ballads, dance tunes and religious songs – was
Mance
Lipscomb. The son of a country fiddler, he was born near
Navasota in 1895. After working most of his life as a
sharecropper, he was discovered by the folk-music crowd in the
1960s and enjoyed considerable popularity in the last years of
his life. |
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Leadbelly
and
Blind Lemon |
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Also a significant figure was Huddie Ledbetter. "Leadbelly,"
as he was popularly known, was born in 1889 on the Louisiana
side of Caddo Lake, which lies on the border of northeast Texas
and northwest Louisiana. Leadbelly spent much of his life in
Texas, in and out of prison. |
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Through the efforts of Texas folklorists
John and
Alan Lomax, Leadbelly left a rich legacy of recordings that, like
Lipscomb's, cover a wide range of styles. He is best known for
popularizing "Good Night, Irene," which, with somewhat sanitized
lyrics, has become a pop standard. |
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After moving to the Dallas area around 1912, Leadbelly found
his primary instrument, the 12-string guitar, and learned much
about the blues from Blind Lemon Jefferson, who later became the
first country blues recording star. Born in the farm community
of Couchman 70 miles south of Dallas in 1893, the young
Jefferson walked the roads around his home, playing for money on
the streets and in the cafes and joints of the surrounding
towns. He spent time in Mexia, where the local strip of black
businesses was known as the Beat, playing both alone and in a
string band with other musicians. |
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Bob Wills, born in 1905, spent the first eight years of his
life in nearby Kosse, and it's possible that he heard the young
Jefferson and other musicians such as Marlin's
Blind Willie
Johnson, who played slide guitar and sang in a powerful,
gravelly voice in a style called "gospel blues" or "holy blues."
Figures such as Johnson demonstrate that church music and the
blues were more closely linked than the latter's designation as
"the devil's music" would indicate. |
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Lemon Jefferson married a Mexia woman in 1927, but he also
spent a lot of time in Dallas, playing up and down the Central
railroad track in the Deep Ellum section that was the heart of
that city's black community life. |
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Jefferson was certainly not the only such musician in the
area. Blind Willie Johnson was in Dallas about the same time and
made his first records there. And there were strolling string
bands that played a wide repertoire ranging from blues to pop
tunes. One such group, the
Dallas String Band, included bass
player
Marco Washington, stepfather of future bluesman
Aaron
"T-Bone" Walker. |
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Jefferson attracted the attention of a Paramount record
scout, thanks to the efforts of a local record-store and
shine-stand owner named R.T. Ashford. From 1926 until 1929,
Jefferson made regular trips to Chicago to record and achieved
considerably popularity in the "race" market – records marketed
exclusively to African-Americans. In addition to blues, he
recorded a few spirituals under the name Deacon L.J. Bates. |
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Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter). |
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Blind Lemon Jefferson died in Chicago in December 1929.
Apparently he froze to death, though the circumstances of his
death have never been fully explained. But his brief career
exerted considerable influence on many performers who followed.
One of his songs, "Matchbox Blues," was recorded years later by
both rockabilly star
Carl Perkins and the
Beatles. He was buried
in Wortham, and a marker erected years later pays tribute to him
and his influence. |
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Jefferson's success opened the door to a flood of country
blues recordings by a number of artists, including Texan
"Little
Hat" Jones,
Alger "Texas" Alexander and
J.T. "Funny Papa" Smith.
Blind Lemon's dexterous guitar style featured single-string runs
and unconventional phrasing – what one musician called
"suspended time." |
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This style was a major influence on T-Bone Walker and other
blues players who, starting in the mid-'30s, played the new
electric guitar. Amplification allowed the instrument, once
consigned to the rhythm section of a large band, to become a
solo instrument. Walker's style of playing lead guitar in a
call-and-response pattern with an orchestra came to define a
whole school of post-World War II blues, though he didn't really
achieve star status until he moved to the West Coast in the
1940s. |
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An earthier strain of blues was exemplified by
Sam "Lightnin'
" Hopkins of Centerville, who was a child when he met Jefferson
at a church picnic. Hopkins spent most of his life in Houston,
playing an amplified version of the down-home East Texas music
he had grown up with. |
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Piano bluesmen |
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Texas had a strong tradition of piano blues, too,
hard-hitting music with strong elements of ragtime, the music
popularized by composers such as Texarkana-born
Scott Joplin.
Texas piano blues developed in the rough lumber and turpentine
camps of East Texas and in the honky-tonks of Dallas'
Deep Ellum
and Houston's Third, Fourth and Fifth Wards, in places with
names like Mud Alley and The Vamp. |
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Robert Shaw, a member of the "Santa Fe" group of pianists
named for the railroad, survived into old age running a barbecue
business and grocery store in Austin, and, like Mance Lipscomb,
had a late second career playing for white fans. |
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Another link to the past was Dallas pianist and singer "Whistlin'
" Alex Moore, who continued to perform up to the time of his
death in 1989, at age 89. |
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Cajun and country influences |
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Louisiana-born musicians, such as
Clarence Garlow and
Clifton
Chenier, performed extensively in Texas and developed modern zydeco, a lively fusion of Cajun and rhythm and blues. Some
scholars trace this development to Frenchtown, a section of
Houston's black Fifth Ward. |
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An urban strain of blues and gospel was recorded beginning in
the '50s at nightclub owner
Don
Robey's Peacock studios in
Houston. Robey recorded such artists as
Clarence "Gatemouth"
Brown, who plays both guitar and fiddle and mixes blues with
country music; smooth-voiced Memphis blues balladeer
Bobby
"Blue" Bland; and Alabama-born
Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton,
whose recording of "Hound Dog" inspired
Elvis Presley. |
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Texas Jazz |
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In jazz, Texas exemplified the swinging, blues-based
Southwestern style, very different from the stately polyphony of
early New Orleans jazz bands. In the 1920s, black bands such as
the Clouds of Joy in Dallas and the
Troy Floyd Orchestra in San
Antonio performed in white hotels, sweetening their sound
somewhat for these audiences. |
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A rougher music was played for black audiences in places such
as Dallas' Tip Top dance hall, which San Antonio band leader Don
Albert called the rattiest place he'd ever seen. |
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It was apparently in the Tip Top in 1925 that Dallas
clarinetist and alto sax player
Henry "Buster" Smith was hired
by the Blue Devils, a top Oklahoma City-based "territory" band,
one that played a regular circuit through the South and Midwest.
Smith, though little known to the general public, went on to
become a significant figure. Along with other Texas musicians,
he became a part of the exciting Kansas City jazz scene of the
1930s. He helped to create
Count Basie's theme song, "One O'Clock Jump," and was a strong influence on
Charlie Parker,
generally regarded as the father of be-bop, the harmonically
advanced music that stood jazz on its ear in the 1940s and '50s. |
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Other major jazz figures from Texas included trombonist
Jack
Teagarden, born in Vernon, and a whole school of saxophonists –
called the "Texas Tenors" because of their full, distinctive
sound – that included
Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet and
Eddie "Cleanhead"
Vinson. The Houston-born Jacquet received the fifth annual Jazz
at Lincoln Center Award for Artistic Excellence on Nov. 13,
2000, joining past winners
Lionel Hampton,
Oscar Peterson,
Benny
Carter and John Lewis. |
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Texas-born musicians played a major role in the development
of the electric guitar. In addition to T-Bone Walker, these
innovators included
Eddie Durham, who played with Buster Smith
in the Blue Devils, and
Charlie Christian, of
Benny Goodman's
band. |
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Perhaps the most idiosyncratic and controversial jazz
musician to come out of Texas is alto sax player
Ornette
Coleman, who began in Fort Worth rhythm-and-blues bands and went
on to invent a radically new music called free jazz, with his
own theory of collective improvisation, called "harmolodics."
Such developments indicate the power and complexity beneath the
apparently simple music with roots in slavery. |
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Tex-Mex |
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Until the mid-19th century, Mexican Texans, or Tejanos, seem
to have danced primarily to music imported from Spain or Mexico,
played on violins and various wind instruments, with rhythm
provided by guitars and sometimes by a drum. Other European
forms gained popularity after being played at the court of
Maximilian, who ruled Mexico during the 1860s with the backing
of the French army. |
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The most significant innovation, however, was the
introduction of the diatonic button accordion by German and
Czech immigrants. Tejano musicians were reported playing this
instrument by the 1870s. |
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Tejanos also listened to the music of guitarreros, singing
guitarists who performed corridos, songs that told stories and
carried news, often in cantinas and at social gatherings. |
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Lydia Mendoza and family |
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Mexican-Americans in Texas were entertained, too, by
performers such as the Mendoza family of San Antonio, who toured
with variedades – variety shows staged in tents and theaters.
The family sang and performed comedy skits. |
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One of the Mendoza daughters, Lydia, became the first Tejano
recording star when she was recorded in 1934 in a San Antonio
hotel room playing her 12-string guitar and singing "Mal
Hombre," whose lyrics she had learned from a bubble-gum wrapper.
She became very popular not only in Texas, but throughout Latin
America, during her long career, singing folk-based songs that
often speak passionately of romantic longings. |
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Evolution of Tejano music |
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For dancing, two basic styles developed: conjunto (literally
"ensemble") music and the music of the orquestas, or orchestras,
outgrowths of the earlier string and wind groups. |
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Two major figures in the creation of conjunto,
Narciso
Martínez and
Pedro Ayala, were born in northern Mexico in 1911.
Many regard Martínez, a native of the border town of Reynosa, as
the father of this style and of the very similar norteño style
of northern Mexico. He is often credited with being first to
combine the instruments that came to define the sound: the
button accordion and the bajo sexto, a type of 12-string guitar. |
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Bruno "El Azote" Villareal is thought to have made the first conjunto records, in 1928. Narciso Martínez first recorded in
1935 or 1936, with bajo player
Santiago Almeida, for the Blue
Bird Label at San Antonio's Blue Bonnet Hotel. |
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Martínez, who lived near San Benito in the Lower Rio Grande
Valley, became known as "El Huracan de Valle" – the Hurricane of
the Valley. He was never able to support himself with his music.
In the 1970s, he worked at the
Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville,
feeding the animals. In 1983, he received the National Heritage
Award, the nation's highest honor for folk musicians. |
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The initial accordion-bajo lineup was complemented by the
addition of the tololoche, or upright bass. This development is
variously credited to Pedro Ayala and to San Antonio
accordionist, songwriter and singer
Santiago Jiménez Sr., known
as "El Flaco" – the skinny one. |
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In the 1940s, a new group of conjunto stars, including
Valerio Longoria and
Tony de la Rosa, further changed the music.
Drums were added, and electric bass replaced the upright
acoustic instrument. |
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Little Joe (Hernandez) y La Familia. |
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Vocals were added to a music that had been almost exclusively
instrumental. The lyrics, like those of country and blues, deal
with the heartaches and trials of everyday life and are often
imbued with lo ranchero – a longing for a simpler, rural life. |
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The foundation of conjunto is the polka, but bands play a
variety of styles, including the waltz, mazurka and huapango – a
fast, rhythmic dance named for the town near Veracruz where it
originated. |
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Further innovations were made in the 1950s by another seminal
group, El Conjunto Bernal, led by accordionist
Paulino Bernal
and his brother bajo sexto player
Eloy Bernal. The group
employed two- and three-part harmonies. Paulino Bernal used his
instrument's full range, playing chromatic models with four or
five rows of buttons. |
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The button accordion has a distinctive sound, quite different
from that of the more expensive piano accordion. Most models
have from one to three rows of buttons. Like the air holes of a
harmonica, each button plays two notes, one pushed, one pulled.
In addition, two reeds sound each note, about a quarter-tone
apart, providing a slight dissonance and the instrument's
characteristically sweet sound. And playing two adjacent buttons
together almost always produces what guitarist
Ry Cooder calls
"a pleasant third interval." The first such accordions were
relatively primitive models with one row of buttons, but these
evolved into a more versatile three-row model. |
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Conjunto became the music of the working people, those who
labored on farms or migrated to the cities, where they often had
to support themselves with low-paying jobs. The dance music of
the more affluent Mexican-Texans was played by the orquestas.
These often played the same songs as the conjuntos, but in more
complex arrangements for a full band that included wind
instruments seldom employed in conjunto. In The Texas-Mexican
Conjunto: History of a Working-Class Music," Manuel Peña writes,
"In the hands of such noted leaders as
Beto Villa and
Balde
González, orquesta came of age among tejanos beginning in the
1940s. Furthermore, aspiring to be more 'sophisticated,' it
turned to both the instrumentation and the repertory of American
dance bands of the
Glenn Miller-Tommy Dorsey type ..." |
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In the 1950s, the conjunto and orquesta forms began a
convergence that would result in a new music known as Tejano.
The very popular orquesta leader Beto Villa added accordion on
some recordings and took Narciso Martínez along on short tours. |
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A younger bandleader, Isidro López of Bishop, Texas, made the
breakthrough. As writer Ramiro Burr says, "He had recorded with
conjuntos, and a mariachi, creating what he called 'Texachi.'
Then he incorporated two accordions into his orchestra, which
was unheard of at that time. In later recordings, like 'Mala
Cara' and 'Macho Rock 'n' Roll,' López fused the rhythms of
early rock into his Tex-Mex blend." |
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That fusion of urban and rural forms didn't come to be known
as Tejano until the early 1980s. Before that, it went under a
variety of names, including Mexican music, música de orquesta,
música alegre, la Onda Chicana, Tex-Mex funk and brown soul. |
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Popular performers in the 1960s included Alfonso Ramos, Roy
Montelongo, Freddie Martínez and Little Joe (Hernández) and the
Latinaires. The Sunglows of San Antonio had a string of
English-language hits such as "Talk to Me" and "Rags to Riches,"
and lead singer Sunny Ozuna appeared on American Bandstand. The
group then had a series of Spanish-language hits. |
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A new wave of performers emerged in the 1980s: La Sombra,
Mazz, Pio Treviño & Magic, Patsy Torres and La Mafia. These
groups employed rock-show theatrics such as flashy costumes and
sophisticated light and sound systems. Electronic synthesizers
were added to the horn-driven hot dance mix. |
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The economic downturn of the mid-1980s may have delayed the
Tejano boom, but it exploded full force in the early 1990s.
Tejano FM stations from Texas to California enjoyed high
ratings. The music was played in huge urban nightclubs, arenas
and even stadiums. Album sales by artists such as Selena, La
Mafia, Mazz and Emilio soared past 300,000 units. |
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According to Ramiro Burr, the boom had inevitably peaked by
March 1995, when the hugely popular singer Selena was gunned
down at a Corpus Christi motel by the former manager of her fan
club. Her death shortly before her 24th birthday sparked a wave
of even larger popularity that, for a time, masked the
flattening of the Tejano market. |
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Though the 1990s boom couldn't be sustained, Tejano music
remains popular and can be seen as part of the national and
worldwide surge in interest in all things Latin. |
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Today, old and new forms coexist in Mexican-American music in
Texas. Mariachi bands are popular, though this appears to be a
style imported to Texas rather than true Tex-Mex music. Little
Joe Hernández and Sunny Ozuna are still musically active.
Santiago Jiménez's sons carry on his work. Santiago Jr. plays
much in his father's style. His better-known brother, Leonardo "Flaco"
Jiménez, has played with Ry Cooder and other rockers and for
several years teamed up with the late
Doug Sahm,
Augie Meyers
and
Freddy Fender in the Texas Tornados, whose repertoire
spanned virtually the music of all Texans – black, white and
brown. |
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Rock 'n' roll and beyond |
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To some extent, rock 'n' roll is a synthesis of all that went
before in popular music, and Texas has played a strong role in
its development.
Buddy Holly's 1958 appearances in England
inspired, among others, the young
John Lennon,
Paul McCartney
and
Eric Clapton. |
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One English rock group, The Hollies, even took the name of
the Lubbock musician, who called one of his early groups the
Western Bop Band. |
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Southeast Texans
Janis Joplin and
Johnny Winter and the
Vaughan brothers of Dallas – Jimmie and the late Stevie Ray –
grew up steeped in the blues. Among Doug Sahm's major influences
growing up in San Antonio were Bob Wills, T-Bone Walker and the
Tex-Mex music that was all around him. |
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Texas seems to have spawned the first psychedelic band,
Austin's Thirteenth Floor Elevators, as well as
Roy Orbison and
Joe Ely,
Butch Hancock,
Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the popular
Dixie Chicks. One of the Chicks,
Natalie Maines, is the daughter
of
Lloyd Maines, a record producer and pedal steel player who
has often played and recorded with Ely. |
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Today, all these forms of music continue to exist and
interact, as new immigrant groups add influences. And
discoveries are still being made in older forms. In 1994, Dallas
folklorist
Alan Govenar, through his Documentary Arts
organization, recorded not only
Alfred "Snuff" Johnson of Austin
playing spirituals and black cowboy blues, but also 95-year-old
black songster
John T. Samples of Kilgore. Govenar has also
recorded Vietnamese musicians playing traditional music and
found younger Vietnamese Texans playing rock 'n' roll. |
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Texas Monthly magazine's May 2000 Texas music issue included
a profile of Mexican-American rapper
Carlos Coy, "a product of
his environment,
Houston's South Side, the same neighborhood
that turned out underground mixer
DJ Screw, rapper Lil' Keke and
Scarface." |
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As Texas evolves, so does its music, and the possibilities
seem endless. |
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— written for the Texas Almanac 1996–1997. It has been
expanded and updated for the Texas Almanac website. Jay
Brakefield is co-author with Alan Govenar of Deep Ellum and
Central Track: Where the Black and White Worlds of Dallas
Converged (University of North Texas Press, 1998), a study of
the Dallas neighborhood known for its contributions to blues and
jazz. |
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