Texas Music Source
Our guide to eighty years of Texas Music
(Page 5 of 6)
THE SOUNDS OF THE SIXTIES: 1960-1970
The sixties saw the greatest transformations in Texas music since the end of World War II. Of course, much went on as before, with George Jones carrying on the honky-tonk country style with a vengeance. At the same time, Gentleman Jim Reeves was pointing the way to an accommodation of Country and Pop, directing his music to a crossover audience. The relaxed sound of Trini Lopez expressed a benign new interest in folk music shaped into a palatable upbeat style with mass appeal. Bluesman Freddie King built on the deep traditions of black music in the blues even as a past master, Mance Lipscomb was teaching a new generation of young white people about that heritage. But Texas musicians were also there as singers, songwriters, and performers reshaping the country’s music in a variety of ways. Roy Orbison wrote and performed fateful ballads in a voice all his own that influenced a generation of rockers. And there were tragedies as well: Janis Joplin and singer-songwriter Roky Erickson helped shape the attitudes of the Hippie youth movem ent, and unfortunately became victims of the movement’s excesses.
Roy Orbison (1936-1988)
Birthplace: Vernon
Genre: Rock and Roll
Influenced: the Beatles, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen, many others
Roy Orbison’s life story is one of the strangest and most tragic in all of rock. His wide-ranging tenor voice and haunting ballads of lost love touched millions in the sixties and earned him the enduring respect of some of the greatest stars of rock, including the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen. But after horrifying accidental deaths in his family Orbison’s career went into a near eclipse in the seventies, only to be revived to even greater heights in the mid-eighties, shortly before his own early death.
Roy Kelton Orbison was born in Vernon, but grew up in the small West Texas oil town of Wink. By age six he was learning to play guitar from his father and soon showed a precocious talent, performing on the radio and for school friends. While still in high school he formed the Wink Westerners, but didn’t get serious about music until he left for North Texas State College. There he met fellow student Pat Boone and backed him on guitar in an early recording. Boone’s quick success with rhythm and blues covers in 1955 was an object lesson. Orbison left college after two years, transformed the Wink Westerners into the Teen Kings, and began to tour West Texas.
On the strength of a recording of “Ooby Dooby” done at Norman Petty’s studio, Orbison and the Teen Kings received a contract from Sun Records. There his only success was a rerecording of “Ooby Dooby,” which was a hit in 1956. Deciding to concentrate on his writing talents, Orbison dissolved the Teen Kings and started composing songs, among them “Claudette,” a paean to his wife that the Everly Brothers made into a 1958 hit, allowing Orbison to buy out his Sun contract. In 1959 the Monument Records label offered a recording contract, and by 1960 the company’s international hits began to flow, nearly all penned by Roy Orbison. Between 1960 and 1964 Orbison produced the classics “Only the Lonely,” “Blue Angel,” “Running Scared,” “Blue Bayou,” “It’s Over,” and “Oh, Pretty Woman.” In addition, Orbison won influential friends: While touring England in 1963 he met the Beatles, who were great admirers of his work.
A series of personal tragedies began in 1966 when his wife, Claudette, died in a motorcycle accident. Two years later, two of their three sons died in a fire that destroyed his home. Although Orbison remarried in 1969 and continued to tour in the seventies, the hit records would not come. Health problems complicated the end of the decade, and in 1979 he had to have heart surgery.
Orbison’s popularity was renewed by singers such as Linda Ronstadt and Van Halen, who recorded his sixties songs in the late seventies and eighties, a 1980 duet with Emmylou Harris (“That Lovin’ You Feelin’ Again”) that won a Grammy, and his 1987 induction into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. The next year promised a full renewal of his career, with the release of The Traveling Wilburys, Volume One, a collaboration with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Jeff Lynne. But within a month Orbison was dead of a heart attack. A posthumous collection contained the last great song of Orbison’s career, “You Got It.” by Chester Rosson (July 1997)
Janis Joplin (1943-1970)
Birthplace: Port Arthur
Genre: Rock and Roll
Influenced: One-of-a-kind
A major talent in the San Francisco rock scene of the late sixties, Janis Joplin captured the imagination of a generation with her hard-singing performances and hard-living lifestyle. In her short career Joplin produced anthem classics of the hippie era of free love and psychedelia from “Piece of My Heart” to “Me and Bobby McGee.” But the passion that drove her was snuffed out by alcohol and drug abuse that ultimatley killed with an over-dose of heroin in 1970.
Janis Lyn Joplin grew up in a middle-class home in Port Arthur, the daughter of an engineer and a housewife, but showed early signs of an intense rebellion. In high school she began drinking heavily and partying with friends who liked to haunt the honky-tonks and roadhouses of southeast Texas and Louisiana. Unable to read music, and without any formal training, she began to learn her craft by imitating recordings of Odetta, Bessie Smith, and Willie Mae Thornton. After high school and a brief stint at Lamar State, Joplin left for Los Angeles to work, spending her spare time at Venice Beach hangouts. Joplin had a strong desire to create, however, and returned to Texas in 1962 to attend the University of Texas at Austin to study art.
But the urge to sing was more powerful than the will to work on a degree. The Student Union’s Chuck Wagon provided an amateur outlet, but at Ken Threadgill’s gas station-turned-bar and grill, Joplin found a place to perform and a lifelong friend in the owner.
San Francisco lured her in 1963, and Joplin stayed in the Bay area until 1965, singing at the North Beach Coffee Gallery. She returned to UT to study—and to recover from a serious weight loss brought about by use of amphetamines.
In 1966 an offer to audition as singer for a new band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, drew Joplin back to San Francisco and propelled her almost instantly to stardom. At the the Monterey Pop Festival of 1967 Joplin and Big Brother dazzled the audience and the critics with an unforgettable rendition of “Ball and Chain.” Their 1968 album Cheap Thrills led to international success for Joplin, if not for her band. A new manager urged her to find better musicians, but a constant flux in lineups of the bands, Joplin’s alcoholism, and a growing problem with hard drugs led to erratic public performances and a cooling of the critics’ initial infatuation with Joplin by 1969. I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again, Mama, featuring Joplin with a new group called the Kozmic Blues Band, received few raves. Recognizing she was having a problem coping, Joplin sought medical help for her dependencies.
By spring of 1970 Joplin had a new backup band that worked relatively well together. In the summer they toured with the Grateful Dead and began work on a new album that would be the crowning achievement of Joplin’s short career. Pearl contained the definitive performance of Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” and the song that might have served as Janis Joplin’s epitaph: “Get It While You Can.” Pearl was released posthumously in 1971 a few months after Joplin’s death by heroin overdose in October 1970. by Chester Rosson (July 1997)
Trini Lopez (1937-)
Birthplace: Dallas
Genre: Folk
Influenced: Talented in many styles, but not much imitated.
In the mid-sixties the sounds of Trini Lopez’s pleasant, eclectic folk style permeated the pop radio airwaves; he had 13 hits between 1963 and 1968. A fine guitarist, Lopez added a fresh latin twist to established favorites. His relaxed, upbeat delivery of Pete Seeger’s revolutionary “If I Had a Hammer” was typical of this approach, and it proved to have the widest possible appeal.
Born Trinidad Lopez III in Dallas, Trini Lopez had a long apprenticeship in Texas before he headed off in 1962 to a brief period of fame and fortune in California. Lopez formed his first band at the age of 15 in Wichita Falls. In the late fifties Lopez was playing with the Big Beats when he made the acquaintance of another Texas musician on the way up, Buddy Holly. Holly recommended Lopez to his producer, Norman Petty of Clovis, New Mexico. Lopez had in mind recording an instrumental, however, and the producer wasn’t interested. But the encounter led to recordings for Columbia, Volk, and King recording companies, none of which attracted much attention.
In 1962 Lopez moved to Los Angeles, where he became a regular performer at a nightclub called PJ’s. Frank Sinatra heard him there and promptly signed Lopez to his new label, Reprise Records. The resulting album, Trini Lopez at PJ’s, was an immediate success and endured on the pop album charts from the summer of 1963 well into 1965. In the next few years Lopez produced album after album, many in the live nightclub atmosphere that showed his performing style to its best advantage. He also recorded for the Spanish and German language markets.
Lopez’s last Top 20 hit charted in 1965 (“Lemon Tree”), but his recording career continued at a slow pace into the seventies, and he performed in Las Vegas into the eighties. by Chester Rosson (July 1997)
Jim Reeves (1923-1964)
Birthplace: Galloway
Genre: Country Crossover
Influenced: The first country crossover success story encouraged many other artists to try for a style with broader appeal.
One of the first country artists to break away from the stereotypical sequined cowboy image and cross over into the pop charts, Gentleman Jim Reeves had a carefully crafted image as a sophisticated country balladeer. Several of his songs (including “He’ll Have to Go” and “Four Walls” have proved to have a remarkably long life, surviving his death in 1964 by revivals for decades. His discography continues with many releases into the nineties.
Born near Carthage in East Texas to a farming couple, James Travis Reeves was raised by his mother after his father died during Jim’s first year of life. He grew up listening to Jimmie Rodgers records and imitating them on guitar. Reeves was also a fine athlete at Carthage High School and after graduation attended the University of Texas in Austin, where he played on the baseball team. He even tried minor league baseball briefly after college, but quit after a leg injury and became a radio announcer-disk jockey in Henderson in 1947.
Although he sang locally under a pseudonym (Sonny Day) and recorded a few songs on a small Houston label, his singing career didn’t really take off until 1952. By then he was at Shreveport’s KWKH and appearing occasionally on its Louisiana Hayride, when he was forced to stand in for Hank Williams. Abbott Records signed Reeves immediately and brought out two recordings that turned gold in 1953, “Mexican Joe” and “Bimbo.”
In 1955 Reeves joined the Grand Ole Opry and began recording for RCA. Under the tutelage of Chet Atkins, Reeves pitched his voice lower and turned to ballads. His greatest success followed in 1957 with the memorably echoing “Four Walls.” “He’ll Have to Go” is a classic from 1960 that was sung in a similar style, and it crossed over to number two in the pop charts. Among his innovations was the piano and strings backup employed on most of his later albums and occasional instrumentation that included such typically classical instruments as oboe and French horn. Pitching himself as “Gentleman Jim,” Reeves wore a black suit and tie.
Reeves’ success was international, with three tours to Europe. He was especially popular in Britain and South Africa, where he traveled to make a film titled Kimberley Jim, released in 1965. But Reeves career ended abruptly in 1964 when the light plane he was piloting went down near Nashville, killing him and his pianist-manager Dean Manuel. His body was buried in a two-acre plot on Highway 79 near Carthage. by Chester Rosson (July 1997)
Mance Lipscomb (1895-1976)
Birthplace: Navasota
Genre: Blues
Influenced: A wide-ranging singer and the last of the great Texas country bluesmen.
Discovered by the larger world after Chris Strachwitz recorded him in 1960, Mance Lipscomb was a one-of-a-kind singer who knew and performed the whole of the traditional rural black music of East Texas. Equally at home with a gospel hymn, the blues, or a children’s game song, his gentle manner and clear singing style brought him audience affection and a belated fame that he had never sought.
Born Bowdie Glen Lipscomb, the son of a former slave who was a professional fiddler, Mance Lipscomb changed his name in honor of an old friend named “Emancipation.” Mance first learned to play the violin before taking up the guitar at the age of 11 to accompany his father. Until his discovery at the age of 65, Lipscomb had farmed nearly all his life near his birthplace of Navasota, performing at Saturday dances and family gatherings. He had a wife, Elnora, one son named Mance, Jr., and three adopted children to support with his farming efforts.
Soon after his first recordings were released by Chris Strachwitz’s Arhoolie label, Mance Lipscomb was in much demand among folk revivalists as an authentic folk singer of the old school. He appeared at numerous festivals and on college campuses, sharing anecdotes of his life and his philosophical insights as well as his wealth of some 350 songs. At club appearances he often shared the stage with young musicians eager to learn from him. Arhoolie brought out many recordings during Lipscomb’s lifetime, and his music continues to be in demand two decades after his death in 1976. by Chester Rosson (July 1997)
George Jones (1931-)
Birthplace: Saratoga
Genre: Honky-tonk
Influenced: Pervasive in country music, including Clint Black, Mark Chesnutt, Garth Brooks, and Randy Travis.)
George Jones might be called the embodiment of the honky-tonk cowboy singing tradition. Clearly the longtime master of the genre, his life has often reflected the content of his songs, complete with stormy marriages, bouts with drinking alternating with contrite drying out periods, pot shots taken at friends, and some fairly bizarre behavior (his stage appearances with the voice of Donald Duck, for instance). But throughout the personal difficulties he has produced a huge body of country music hits, many of them absolute classics. Out of some 150 of his songs that charted as hits over a recording career of forty years more than a dozen have been at number one.
George Glenn Jones was born in the heart of the Big Thicket to a working family in the heart of the Great Depression. His musical education began with listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio and imitating Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe. After a brief first marriage at the age of 18 followed by a three-year tour with the Marines in California, Jones returned to Beaumont and took a job as a disc jockey. He had done some entertaining in California and met Starday Records founder Pappy Daily of Beaumont, with whom he began recording. He also began performing with the Houston Jamboree. In 1955 he had his first record success with “Why, Baby Why,” followed in 1956 by three more Top Ten hits before the 1958 hit “White Lightnin” by his friend the Big Bopper finally hit number one.
Many more have followed over the years, including “Tender Years, “You Comb Her Hair.” “The Race is On,” “Love Bug,” and the all-time great “She Thinks I Still Care.” His disastrous marriage to Tammy Wynette in 1969 produced memorable duet albums (which have been a staple of his career generally, with the likes of Melba Montgomery, Gene Pitney, Johnny Paycheck, and even James Taylor). His 1980 song “He Stopped Loving Her Today” won him a Grammy as Country Song of the Year.
In 1992 he was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame and continues to produce great country music. by Chester Rosson (July 1997)
Freddie King (1934-1976)
Birthplace: Gilmer
Genre: Rhythm and Blues
Influenced: Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, and many others.
One of the great Kings of the Blues, along with Albert and B.B, Freddie King had a guitar style much admired and imitated by other bluesmen and rock stars of the sixties and seventies. Although he left Texas at the age of sixteen and built his career in the blues center of Chicago, King returned to Texas to live in Dallas in 1963, and in 1971 he made the first major live album recorded in Austin at the Armadillo World Headquarters.
Encouraged by his mother and uncle Leon King, Freddie learned to play guitar when he was six years old. He learned from the recordings of Lightnin’ Hopkins and T-Bone Walker as well. By the age of 16 he was ready for the nightclubs of Chicago.
There he learned from some of the masters of the Chicago Blues, including Playboy Taylor and Robert Lockwood. He began to make a living by his music in 1958, playing with the Sonny Cooper Band and Earlee Payton’s Blues Cat, and Smokey Smothers. In 1960 he formed his own band and went on tour in the U.S. and Europe. During the sixties he recorded on the King/Federal and Cotillion labels such classics as “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” and “I’m Tore Down.”
In 1970 he signed on with Shelter Records, a label associated with rock and blues songwriter-performer Leon Russell. Getting Ready for Shelter was one of his best album efforts, and it made his work known as a Texas master of the blues guitar. He opened the new Armadillo World Headquarters in 1971 and came back frequently for fundraisers to keep the doors open on that classic venue.
Freddie King died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1976 at the age of 43, shortly after an appearance in Dallas. He is buried at Hillcrest Memorial Cemetery in Dallas. by Chester Rosson (July 1997)
Roky Erickson (1947-)
Birthplace: Dallas
Genre: Rock and Roll
Influenced: Sixties acid rock bands from Austin to San Francisco
As one of the founders of Austin’s first internationally known band, the 13th Floor Elevators, Roky Erickson helped to invent the sixties music known as Acid Rock. Singer and songwriter Erikson displayed an intensity and poetic, almost religious vision that inspired many musicians and imitators. But his early successes were cut short by drug and mental health problems.
Born Roger Kynard Erickson into the family of an architect, Roky joined the 13th Floor Elevators in 1965. The Elevators, reputedly named after the thirteenth letter of the alphabet, M for marijuana, openly advocated a path of enlightenment through drugs. Driven by a unique sound created by fuzzed out guitars, various percussion, and an amplified electric jug, the Elevators were truly awe-inspiring in their appearances around Austin. The groups’ first album on the International Artists label out of Houston was titled The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, and it quickly became a cult classic on college campuses at the beginning of the Hippie Era. Many of the groups best songs, including the electrifying “You’re Gonna Miss Me,” were written by the teen-aged Roky Erickson.
A second album, Easter Everywhere, was followed with a more restrained and universal message advocating enlightenment, but the political and philosophical message was lost on the authorities. The band became the focus of drug busts, and in 1968 disbanded. Erickson was arrested on drug charges in 1968 and opted for a stay in a mental institution. Unfortunately, he was sent to Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and returned to the outside world in 1971, after various treatments including electroshock therapy, a changed man.
During the seventies Erickson continued to play solo and formed a band called Bleib Alien, but most of the spark was gone. His 1980 album for CBS generated little interest. In 1990, after an arrest involving a misunderstanding with the U.S. mail, friends organized an impressive tribute album titled Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, which featured some 19 groups, including Z.Z. Top, R.E.M, and the Butthole Surfers performing Erickson’s best songs, simultaneously demonstrating just how good those songs could be. Erickson himself emerged in 1995 from his eccentric reclusive lifestyle long enough to produce an impressive album titled All That May Do My Rhyme, which held out some hope for his continuing life as an artist. by Chester Rosson (July 1997)
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