Music of Texas
The U.S. state of Texas has long been a center for musical innovation and is the birthplace of many notable musicians. Texans have pioneered developments in Tejano and Conjunto music, Rock 'n Roll, Western swing, jazz, Piano, punk rock, country, hip-hop, electronic music, gothic industrial music, religious music, mariachi, psychedelic rock, zydeco and the blues.
Piano
who was raised in Kilgore, Texas was an American pianist celebrated for his extraordinary talent and numerous accomplishments. He gained international fame after winning the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, Soviet Union in 1958, becoming an emblem of Cold War cultural diplomacy and a symbol of American musical excellence. Cliburn's subsequent concert tours and recordings solidified his status, making him one of the first classical musicians to achieve pop star-like fame. He received numerous accolades throughout his career, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Cliburn also founded the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which continues to celebrate and promote young pianists worldwide, further cementing his legacy in the classical music community, and the musical legacy of Kilgore.Religious music
Sacred music has a long tradition in the state of Texas. The East Texas Musical Convention was organized in 1855, and is the oldest Sacred Harp convention in Texas, and the second oldest in the United States. The Southwest Texas Sacred Harp Convention was organized in 1900.Sacred Harp and other books in four shape notation were the forerunners of seven shape note gospel music. According to the Handbook of Texas, "The first Texas community singing using the seven shape note tradition reportedly occurred in the latter part of December 1879. Itinerant teachers representing the A. J. Showalter Company of Dalton, Georgia – including company founder A. J. Showalter – ventured west to Giddings in East Texas and conducted a rural music school that lasted for several weeks." Texas has been home to several gospel music convention publishers, including the National Music Company, Stamps-Baxter Music and Printing Company, and the Stamps Quartet Music Company. Convention gospel music and community singings still occur in a number of Texas towns, including Mineral Wells, Brownfield, Jacksonville, Seymour, and Stephenville.
Gospel singer, songwriter, and musician Washington Phillips was from Freestone County. Gospel singer and pianist Arizona Dranes, who introduced ragtime and barrelhouse to gospel music, was from Texas as well.
Ragtime and vaudeville
composer Scott Joplin was born in 1868 near Texarkana, and later became famous playing music halls in Missouri.Gene Austin was born in Gainesville in 1900. Austin popularized the song "My Blue Heaven", which sold more than 10 million copies. He is remembered as the original "crooner", and was commonly known as "The Voice of the Southland".
Country music
Texas has long been the birthplace of numerous country musicians and continues to host a vibrant country music culture. Texan honky-tonk musicians like Milton Brown and Bob Wills helped popularize Western swing, and modern artists like Asleep at the Wheel continue the genre's distinct style. Other genres of country also evolved in Texas. Marcia Ball, born in Orange, Texas, combined country with Cajun influences. Ernest Tubb and his country song "Walking the Floor Over You" set the stage for the rise of stars like Lefty Frizzell and Johnny Horton. Ponty Bone, Joe Ely, Lloyd Maines, Butch Hancock, Terry Allen, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Tommy Hancock, helped invent the 1960s Lubbock sound, based out of Lubbock, Texas. Mac Davis is a singer and songwriter from Lubbock who became one of the most successful country singers of the 1970s and 1980s.Outlaw country is another offshoot that has its roots in Texas, with Texans like Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker, Michael Martin Murphey, the Lost Gonzo Band, Gary P. Nunn, and Willie Nelson leading the movement, ably supported by writers like Billy Joe Shaver. It was this scene, largely based out of Austin, that inspired performers like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, whose poetic narratives owe much to the folk tradition and proved enormously influential on younger Texan artists such as Nanci Griffith and Steve Earle, who in turn inspired the alternative country scene. Tex Ritter and Jim Reeves both grew up in Panola County in East Texas. Bob Luman was born in Nacogdoches.
Kenny Rogers, from Houston, has a career spanning more than 50 years. His 1978 album The Gambler remains one of the most famous country albums ever released, having sold a reported 35 million copies worldwide. Also from the Houston area are Clint Black, Robert Earl Keen, and Lyle Lovett and more recently George Ducas.
Modern musicians like George Strait, from the San Antonio area, continue to carry on the tradition of country music in Texas. Strait "The King of Country" is a singer, actor, and music producer known for his unique style of western swing music, bar-room ballads, honky-tonk style, and traditional country music. He holds the world record for the most #1 hit singles by any artist in the history of music on any chart or in any genre, having recorded 60 #1 hit singles as of 2016.
Within country music, the distinct styles of singers such as The Randy Rogers Band, Robert Earl Keen, Kevin Fowler, Cory Morrow, Jack Ingram, George Ducas, Jerry Jeff Walker, Pat Green, Wade Bowen, Rich O’Toole & the Eli Young Band and others are often dubbed "Texas music".
The Texas Country Music Hall of Fame is located in Carthage, Texas.
Zydeco
Zydeco, a musical genre that evolved in Southwest Louisiana by French Creole speakers, is popular in Southeast Texas cities in Houston, Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange. It was brought to the region by early pioneers of the music like Clifton Chenier who relocated in the late 1940s and early 1950s during the region's oil boom when many Creole and Cajun people moved seeking better employment opportunities.Texas blues
The blues originated in the Mississippi Delta and spread to Texas by the 20th century. The original audience was African-American workers at lumber camps and oilfields. When the Great Depression hit, many musicians moved to cities including Houston and Galveston, where they created a style known as Texas blues. Blind Lemon Jefferson was the first major artist of the field, and he was followed by others such as Henry Thomas, Blind Willie Johnson, Big Mama Thornton, Lightnin' Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, and T-Bone Walker, as well as Melvin Jackson, Alger "Texas" Alexander, Little Hat Jones, Buster Pickens, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and Goree Carter. Freddie King, born in Gilmer, was active from the 1950s to the mid-1970s.By the 1970s, Texas blues had lost much of its original popularity, but was eventually revived by the blues rock stylings of artists including John Nitzinger, Johnny Winter, Edgar Winter, ZZ Top, Bugs Henderson, and The Fabulous Thunderbirds, who set the stage for a 1980s blues revival led by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert Collins.
Boogie-woogie
is a music genre that became popular during the late 1920s, developed in the 1870s. It was eventually extended from piano, to piano duo and trio, guitar, big band, country and western music, and gospel. While the blues traditionally expresses a variety of emotions, boogie-woogie is mainly associated with dancing.Rock
's "Rock Awhile" has been cited by several writers as the first rock and roll record. It featured an over-driven electric guitar style similar to that of Chuck Berry years later. The song was recorded in Houston, where Carter was born and lived most of his life.One of the first major Texan musical stars was Buddy Holly, who was born in Lubbock in 1936, died in the 1959 plane crash, and is buried in Lubbock. Another rock and roll singer, Roy Orbison, from Wink, Texas, also became popular in the 1950s. He was followed by Buddy Knox, Bobby Fuller, and Dallas rockabilly stars Gene Summers, Johnny Carroll, and Ronnie Dawson. Southern soul singer Joe Tex was born in Rogers, Texas.
The 1960s witnessed many influential rock artists such as Janis Joplin, from Port Arthur; she is ranked #46 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Doug Sahm's Sir Douglas Quintet released several influential performances, as did psychedelic rock underground legends 13th Floor Elevators, led by Roky Erickson. Garage rock band The Heart Beats, formed in 1966, were based in Lubbock. The hard rock of ZZ Top was born out of the bands American Blues and Moving Sidewalks in Houston in 1969. In 1971, Bloodrock, from Fort Worth, released "D.O.A.", which became a major international hit. Don Henley of the Eagles grew up in Linden.
Psychedelic rock
The psychedelic rock movement of the 1960s and 1970s has deep roots in Texas. The Thirteenth Floor Elevators were an American rock band from Austin, Texas, formed by guitarist and vocalist Roky Erickson, electric jug player Tommy Hall, and guitarist Stacy Sutherland, which existed from 1965 to 1969. During their career, the band released four LPs and seven 45s for the International Artists record label. Bubble Puppy was formed in 1966 in San Antonio by Rod Prince and Roy Cox. The name "Bubble Puppy" was taken from "Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy", a fictitious children's game in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Bubble Puppy's live debut was as the opening act for The Who in San Antonio.The Sherwoods were a Corpus Christi quintet that was popular from 1968 to 1969 and made two 45s on Smash Records in 1969. They were a psychedelic pop group, patterned after the Moving Sidewalks and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Red Krayola and The Golden Dawn carried the genre into the 1970s, but as George Kinney of The Golden Dawn said, "when the whole Elevator/Golden Dawn mystique was gone forever, at least as an actual presence on the Austin music scene. It all disappeared like a mysterious dream of super substantial reality, like the shadows of a once and future dawn." The front man of Red Krayola, Mayo Thompson, made a respectable career as a producer of some of the underground's biggest names ― Pere Ubu, Primal Scream, The Fall, The Raincoats, and Scritti Politti to name a few. In the 1990s, the significant influence shown by notable rock pioneer Roky Erickson was honored in the 1990 Warner Brothers release of Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson, on which various rockers recorded his songs.
The Black Angels from Austin formed in May 2004; the band's name derives from the Velvet Underground song "The Black Angel's Death Song". In 2005, the Black Angels were featured on a dual-disc compilation album of psychedelic music called Psychedelica Vol.1 from Northern Star Records. were formed in Austin in 2007. Austin Psych Fest was founded in 2008 by members of the psychedelic music scene, The Reverberation Appreciation Society, to honor the legacy of Austin's musical history as the birthplace of psychedelic rock through the creation of a music and multimedia art festival.