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 exas music is
as diverse as its people. Nineteenth-century immigrants to Texas from the American South, from
Mexico, and Europe, shaped a variety of sounds unmatched anywhere else in the United States.
Southern blues and ragtime, Mexican orquesta, the waltzes and polkas of Central Europe, all
took root, thrived, and were transformed into the rich musical legacy of the state. In this
first segment of a new series on the legends of Texas music, the WWW Ranch, in cooperation
with the Texas Music Museum, profiles eight Lone Star musicians, all influential in creating the unique sounds of Texas music.
The series begins at the turn of the century, when the first Texans emerged as songwriters on the national stage, recorded on player pianos, and stood as performers in front of primitive recording horns. Texarkana's Scott Joplin helped create the ragtime style that ruled popular music in the early years of this century. In the twenties, a few Texans became best-selling, trend-setting recording artists. Vernon Dalhart and Eck Robertson were among the creators of country music, recording years before the more famous Carter family. Black blues singers Blind Lemon Jefferson and Sippie Wallace recorded some of the earliest "race" records and established an influential Texas blues tradition. In the twenties and thirties Narciso Martinez and Lydia Mendoza created a distinctively Tejano sound that lives on today. And finally, Bob Wills emerged as the king of Western swing. By the early thirties, nearly all of the dinstinctively Texas genres we know today, from Tejano conjunto to Western swing, were well established. |
