The 100 Best Texas Songs
AHughes says: no Butthole Surfers? for shame... (July 24th, 2009 at 11:53am)
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With its 1939 debut, the Trinity group ushered in modern gospel-quartet vocalizing. Where religious singing had prized precise technique over emotion, this record rides on composer Rebert Harris’s thrilling, trilling leads and bluesy moans and slurs, as well as on his unprecedented "delayed time." The pure tonalities of the background singers fills out the a cappella sound, and the song itself has a contemporary lyric. All this elevated the quartet style from spiritual entertainment to sanctified "church-wrecking."
40
Barbara Lynn
"You’ll Lose a Good Thing"
The Creole singer-guitarist from Beaumont took this top ten at a time (1962) when girl-group music, almost exclusively a northern form, ruled. But if Lynn’s voice suggests just enough of that genre’s youthful innocence to sneak her into the mainstream, everything else—the lyrics, the band, her delivery—offers the angry defiance, wisdom, and resolve of the blues. Not coincidentally, this is the third Huey P. Meaux production (after the Sir Douglas Quintet and Sunny) to make our top forty.
The Best of the Rest
Asleep at the Wheel: "Miles and Miles of Texas" The Austin-based band’s 1976 track is sing-as-you-swing evidence that size does matter.
Gene Autry: "The Yellow Rose of Texas" The Singing Cowboy’s 1933 definitive upbeat version of the pre-Civil War classic glosses over the racial controversy. A huge hit, 22 years before Mitch Miller got his mitts on it.
Bells of Joy: "Let’s Talk About Jesus" Lead singer A. C. Littlefield’s creamy, countrified tenor made this Austin quartet’s 1951 debut that rarest of gospel beasts: the secular crossover.
The Big Bopper: "Chantilly Lace" Jape Richardson, a Beaumont-raised deejay, was also a songwriter ("White Lightnin’," "Runnin’ Bear") but is remembered for his hilarious 1958 "Chantilly Lace," which lasciviously declared to the world, "Oh, baby, that’s what I like."
Charles Brown: "Driftin’ Blues" With an urbane sophistication unmatched in the blues world, Brown’s near-perfect "Driftin’ Blues," from 1946, launched a long career for the Texas City pianist-vocalist and was a big influence on those to follow. Just ask Ray Charles.
Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies: "Beautiful Texas" Fort Worth’s Brown was the true father of western swing, and though he may have recorded better songs, his clear, supple voice and relaxed, straightforward delivery make this easily the best of the many readings of the unofficial state song.
Johnny Bush: "Whiskey River" Houston native Bush’s huge, throbbing tenor—they didn’t call him the Country Caruso for nothing—gave the master of dance hall heartbreak his biggest hit in 1972, even if it did later become better known as Willie Nelson’s theme.
Goree Carter: "Rock Awhile" The title describes the music on this obscure 1949 Houston blues tune; in fact, some critics consider it one of the first rock and roll records ever. No argument here.
Clifton Chenier: "I’m on the Wonder" The King of Zydeco, who spent most of his peak years in Houston, goes even farther out than usual on this 1974 slow blues track with a curious title phrase. It features his best band ever (John Hart on tenor sax, Buck Senegal on guitar, Cleveland Chenier on rubboard) augmented by a pair of white rockers; guest Elvin Bishop plays some slide guitar that’s at once lustrous and dirty behind Clifton’s backwoods vocals and accordion.
Harry Choates: "Jole Blon" The so-called Louisiana national anthem belongs here because the doomed Choates may have been born in the Bayou State, but he lived in Texas his entire career, and this is the agonized version that put the traditional song on the commercial map. His music is the fullest flowering of the unlikely Cajun-western swing hybrid sound that flourished around the state line.
Guy Clark: "Desperados Waiting for a Train" An elderly wildcatter became a mentor to, and was immortalized by, Clark in "Desperados." The tune was a standout among standouts from the Monahans songwriter’s acclaimed 1975 debut.
Conjunto Bernal: "Mi Unico Camino" With their expert arrangements of staccato, twin chromatic accordions, and upbeat bajo sexto, Kingsville’s Bernal brothers brought the conjunto sound into the modern world in the late fifties. But it was the stirring lyrics ("There is a sorrow cleft like a dagger into my thoughts") and haunting, innovative three-part harmonies that probably turned this desolate memory of rejection into their signature song.
Jimmy Dee and the Offbeats: "Henrietta" Reportedly from San Antonio, Dee (real name: De Fore) released this unforgettable chugging swamp rocker in 1957, along with a couple of other singles, before vanishing into the obscurity from which he came.
Steve Earle: "Billy Austin" Earle has rocked harder, but the Schertz-raised singer never made a more powerful record. Unsentimental and moving, this stark 1990 death row portrait asks, "Who are you to say for sure?"
Joe Ely: "Honky Tonk Masquerade" There’d never been anything quite like that first Ely band out of Lubbock, the Flatlanders, which rendered obsolete such labels as country, rock, or country-rock. The knowing title song of his 1978 sophomore album confirms just how comfortable he was with one foot in the country bar, one in the rock roadhouse, and, er, one more in the coffeehouse.
Roky Erickson: "Starry Eyes" This shiny, tuneful, folk-rockish paean to unattainable young love was produced by Doug Sahm. That Erickson was fresh out of the Texas state mental hospital in 1975 when he wrote and recorded it only makes its dreamworld innocence that much more poignant.
Alejandro Escovedo: "Paradise" A condemned man awaits the gallows as the evocative first song from Austinite Escovedo’s 1992 solo debut opens. "Paradise" set the tone for Escovedo’s future work—vivid imagery wrapped in dramatic musical flourishes.
The Fabulous Thunderbirds: "She’s Tuff" Always a notch above the bevy of white blues revivalists, Austin’s T-Birds were a formidable live act, and this 1979 version of the Jerry McCain tune got all their strengths down on record too.
Butch Hancock: "If You Were a Bluebird" With so many sharp and incisive songs under his belt, the prolific Hancock sports an embarrassment of riches. The iconic Lubbock songwriter’s heartfelt and poetic 1981 love letter should be kept in a vault.
Roy Head: "Treat Her Right" Early (1965) proof that a white boy from Three Rivers and San Marcos could do the blue-eyed soul bit as well as the Righteous Brothers or any of those Muscle Shoals guys. Head even upped the ante by giving it garage-band trappings. Hey! Hey! Hey!
Buddy Holly and the Crickets: "Not Fade Away" Holly’s lighter, brighter adaptation of Bo Diddley’s marauding beat was released on a single only as a B-side (in 1957). But it’s one of his most imaginative vocals, and since the Rolling Stones revived it in 1964, it’s become a standard, a self-fulfilling prophesy that has stood the test of time as well as anything he did.
Lightnin’ Hopkins: "Short Haired Woman" One of Hopkins’s earliest, 1947’s "Short Haired Woman," with its refrain "I don’t want no woman/If her hair it ain’t no longer than mine," is hard country blues, with Hopkins’s trademark grit and sly sense of humor already on display.
Ray Wylie Hubbard: "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother" The Dallas-raised Hubbard could continue his eclectic work for a hundred more albums and he’d still be known for 1978’s "Redneck Mother" (first recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker in 1973). This dead-on parody lays waste to a certain subset (and their mamas—a master stroke, that).
Waylon Jennings: "Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line" Jennings’s early West-Tex-Mexifications of the Johnny Cash beat peaked with this rocking snarl from 1968, one of the most authoritative tracks ever by one of country’s most authoritative singers.
Santiago Jimenez Sr.: "Viva Seguin" The original Flaco ("Skinny One") had a softer, smoother style than his conjunto-pioneer peers, and this unhurried 1942 polka is one of the genre’s hardy perennials, recorded by everyone from solo accordionistas to orquestas.
Scott Joplin: "Maple Leaf Rag" Ragtime was the harmonic antecedent to jazz, and its greatest composer was Bowie City’s Joplin. His melodic wizardry is on display in all his pieces, but 1899’s "Maple Leaf Rag" was his, and ragtime’s, most enduring.
Esteban "Steve" Jordan: "Kranke" Jordan earned the title Jimi Hendrix of the Accordion for the way he, like Hendrix, redefined his instrument. An amazingly eclectic Valley artist who brought all kinds of new influences to conjunto, he’s also a party-hardy sort of guy, and this spirited, Afro-Cuban-flavored romp (which he cut in 1975 and again in 1979) is just the thing to keep the good times rolling.
Freddie King: "Hide Away" Nothing showcased the Texas-Chicago blues connection like Gilmer guitarist Freddie King’s 1961 "Hide Away," which liberally borrowed from other sources and, in so doing, created a new blues standard.
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