I had my first dancing lesson in Amarillo with Constance Ferguson. Constance had been out in California studying ballet with Theodore Kosloff, one of Pavlova’s partners, but she came back to Amarillo and wanted to open a dancing school. Up on the very top floor of a great old hotel
The conventional wisdom is that the independents are good and the national chains are evil—but don’t judge a bookstore by its cover.
Long mocked for making unrecognizable pieces of junk, Texas Modernists strike back in a superb exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Snow business comes to Houston.
His recent performances in Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty have been simply divine, but for his most heavenly role yet, John Travolta heads to Texas—his first time back since Urban Cowboy. In Michael, co-written and directed by Nora Ephron, Travolta plays a real live angel, while William Hurt and Andie
The Internet gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “getting wired for Mardi Gras”—there are several helpful sites covering New Orleans’ bacchanalian Carnival, which ends with Fat Tuesday on February 20. One of the most festive and informative is the city’s official page (http://www.neosoft.com/citylink/ mardigr/default.html), which offers traditional music
As befits the creators of a movie called Bottle Rocket, the careers of Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson have taken off with a bang. The twentysomething filmmakers, who met at the University of Texas, first produced a thirteen-minute black and white short of the same name about three bumbling wannabe
Feasting our eyes on a blind team roper.
Gauging Barney’s Universal appeal.
The best books and CDs from Texas.
Oilers owner Bud Adams is hightailing it to Nashville; Drayton McLane may move the Astros too—or sell. In Houston and across the country, rooting for the home team is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Willie Nelson may not be a radio staple anymore, but a new tribute album recorded by some of rock’s coolest stars shows that his music is still moving to them.
Abra Moore likes herself, a revelation that comes as she grooves to the music piping through an Austin cafe. It sounds good to her—the singer knowing and ethereal, the sound a jazzy, ruminative folk-pop with a fragile ache. But wait: It’s the sound of her own recent solo debut, Sing
I played a few sports at Snyder High School, but my big thing was football. I played quarterback and defensive back until my senior year, when I quit to start acting in plays. You know what a big deal high school football is: When I quit, some of the coaches
Two poets, well versed in the ways of Houston, reflect on the city’s effect on lives and letters.
My firsthand experience with the hard times that humbled my hero, former Dallas Cowboys star Golden Richards.
Leaving the popular sitcom Wings for his own show on the Fox network seemed like a risky move, but it’s paying off for native Texan Thomas Haden Church—so far.
After four decades of writing classic Texas novels, there’s no denying that San Angelo’s Elmer Kelton has earned his Spurs.
Computer-aided choreography, professional composers to score the music, mammoth budgets: At high schools and colleges across Texas these days, marking bands are playing for keeps.
The Tiny town of Mullin adopted its high school football heroes in more ways than one. These foster children and native sons had the time of their lives playing in the Super Bowl of six-man football.
From dancing frogs to towering cowboy boots, a look at how Bob Wade’s outlandish sculptures became Texas landmarks.
Two decades after he played the role of his life in ‘The Buddy Holly Story,’ Gary Busey’s hero worship has made him his own worst enemy.
He scored big for UT and four NFL teams; now Raul Allegre is back in the game with his weekly Spanish-language football show.
Freddy Fender has one of the most affecting voices in the music business. So why isn’t he a star?
The music man.
Universally appealing.
From hot sauce to hot art.
Macho fiction.
Give her regards to Broadway.
Back in the swing.
Hollywood’s busiest slacker.
Texan Jerry Hall is a successful model, the mother of three healthy kids, the wife of a rich, sexy, world-famous rock star. She’s also quite refined. Or is she? Eliza Doolittle, meet your match.
The late folk artist Willard Watson was a funky fixture of Dallas’ art scene. Better known as the Texas Kid, he was famous or his courly manners, cockammy yard art in his Love Field-area home, and eye-popping, Longhourn-crowned luxury cars. Watson often collaborated with other artists; in 1976, for example,
Just as congressional hearings are set to begin, an exclusive excerpt from a new book casts a different light on the government’s role in the fiery end to the siege at Mount Carmel.
In the market for high-quality handmade Hispanic crafts? You’ll find them—and more—at Santa Fe’s famous fair.
How glad-handing Hollywood and hidebound NASA joined forces to make Apollo 13, one of this summer’s hottest movies.
Once he raced cars; now he builds them. Even at 72, it seems, Carroll Shelby can’t slow down.
From “Lone State Doom” to “Land of Violent Men,” a look back at Texas’ classic pulp fiction.
Should Hollywood remake ‘Giant’? On the fortieth anniversary of the filming of the Texas epic, we imagine Brad Pitt playing Jett Rink’s grandson, Quentin Tarantino directing, and other scary scenarios.
They crack wise while bulls charge them, and fans eat it up. A look at rodeo’s real ring leaders.
A year after Robert James Waller left Iowa for the quieter climes of Big Bend, the best-selling author is discovering that it’s one thing to live like a Texan and quite another to be one.
After fourteen years, 2,500 performances, and innumerable one-liners, the theatrical careers of Joe Sears and Jaston Williams are going swimmingly.
In no other state were the turbulent thirties documented as exhaustively as in Texas, where Farm Secirity Administration photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Russell Lee took more than five thousand pictures of Depression and pre-war life . When the agency became the Office of War Information, some of its
As Houston Rockets head coach Rudy Tomjanovich is discovering, it's one thing to win the MBA title—and quite another to play like champions.
When country hunk Billy Ray Cyrus his megahit “Achy Breaky Heart” in 1992, country dancing—or at least a modern version of it—returned to vogue. Cyrus’ novelty song was released with a video that showed a line dance specifically created for the song, and—in a flashback to the Urban Cowboy craze of
For twenty seasons Austin City Limits has been the elite soundstage of American popular music. And it keeps getting better.
In heavyweight boxing—and in the glare of media lights—it helps to be larger than life. Ask George Foreman, 1994’s comeback kid.
The rookie Cowboys coach has turned out to be exactly what all the critics said he wasn’t: a winner.
As a curator and in his own work as a painter, Jerry Bywaters left a lasting legacy of Texas art.
An Austin arts group is exposing the roots of Texas music to a younger audience.
