Texas Music

In the former glory days of rock and roll music came on a vinyl LP record inside a cover with an attention grabbing picture on the front and a more subdued picture on the back with “liner notes” listing each song and some related information. That way you had something interesting to look at and a convenient list of the songs while you listened to the music.

So to celebrate our departure from Texas, I made a “virtual” old school style record album. (Actually, it is just a link to a Google Drive folder with two pictures for the front and back covers and some MP3 files.)

What the songs are not:

The songs and the artists are only a sample. It is not a list of my favorite or the best Texas artists or songs and the songs themselves are not the most popular or “signature” songs of the particular musicians, but I like them all.

Some additional comments that wouldn’t fit in the liner notes:

Janis Joplin:  We usually associate her with the hippie cultural of the 60s and 70s in San Francisco (Haight Asbury and all that), but she is a product of the blue-collar refinery town of Port Arthur, Texas. Listen carefully and you can still hear remnants of an East Texas drawl.

Stevie Ray Vaughn:  The greatest blues guitarist ever is not from Chicago’s south side or the Deep South, but from the Oak Cliffs neighborhood of south Dallas. That’s a fact.

ZZ Top: No mistaking where these guys are from.

Lyle Lovett: A Texas A&M boy who is very much from Texas

Old 97’s:  When I was kid back in the 1950-60’s western (not country) cowboy ballads were popular and in particular Marty Robbins’ El Paso. So I included the Old 97’s very “up tempo” cover of this Marty Robbins song along with the wholly appropriate A State of Texas.

Norah Jones: I get the weepy lounge music reaction, but I still like it – the melody sort of draws you in and Jones has a lovely, clean voice. Besides she’s a local DFW suburban girl from just down the road in Colleyville.

Willie Nelson: Probably Texas’ most famous musical ambassador. This song is from the 1979 movie Electric Horseman (Robert Redford/Jane Fonda/Las Vegas/Southern Utah). A nice song very much in Nelson’s style.  It is also a good movie and Willie is in it.

George Strait: No question that George and country music is a big part of Texas.

Bowling for Soup: This one is dedicated to the Ohio branch of the family.  It is a sad thought, but in a few days there won’t be anyone in Denton County (Flower Mound) waiting for you. (I like this song and really wanted to use it in Daniel’s wedding video, but just couldn’t make it fit and in the end guessed most others wouldn’t find it all that interesting).

Air Review: A relatively new Dallas band. I think this is a nice song.

Los Lonely Boys: Tex Mex from San Angelo. You’re probably more familiar with the English version of this song.

Chris Rea/Texas: This song from an English singer/song writer/guitarist requires an explanation. First, the song is probably the best possible spin you could put on an otherwise bleak drive across west Texas. Second, Texas is an iconic state. Whether one likes it or not (and many don’t), when you say Texas you may be making a broader cultural statement than just mentioning one of the 50 states of the union, although people may strongly disagree about what the statement is and whether it is positive or negative, good or bad.  The video for this song (which is available on YouTube) depicts a family leaving Eastern Europe for the West with some help from the US Army along the way.  For perspective, the song was first released in 1983, before the Berlin Wall fell in 1990, although the video I think was made afterwards.