Usually you’re surprised, one way or the other, when someone famous turns 50. You thought they were older or younger. It makes perfect sense, however, that Sylvester “Sly Stone” Stewart, hit the big 5-0 on Tuesday. Forty-nine would’ve been too young and 51 too old for the musical genius who, as leader of Sly and […]
Frankie Lee brought melody to the stomp, whipping himself into a rhythmic trance. “I put some rock and roll money on it,” is how he laid out his approach to the country blues. The dollars never came his way, though.
There’s just nobody like Poppa Hop, nobody that can make despair sound like a jet at takeoff.
I’ve been trying to confirm, for twenty years, where the historic Dallas sessions of 1927-1929 took place. These annual December recordings, by Columbia producer Frank B. Walker, include “Dark Was the Night,” “If I Had My Way,” “Motherless Children” and “Nobody’s Fault But Mine” by Blind Willie Johnson, as well as every track Washington Phillips […]
“Mainly what I learned from Buddy was an attitude,” Jennings said. “He taught me that music shouldn’t have any barriers to it.”
“I guess I’ve just been a haunted bastard my whole life,” Hand said. He said he first knew he was different in the first grade. “They made us put our heads down on a towel and take a nap,” he said. “Then they’d play a lullabye and I’d just start sobbing. Nobody could tell me why.”
An excerpt from “Ghost Notes: Pioneering Spirits of Texas Music” (TCU Press) by Michael Corcoran. Illustrated by Tim Kerr. Charles Brown and Amos Milburn became associates in 1946, when Charles was ridin’ high with “Drifting Blues” and Amos, just back from the war, was the new […]
From “All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music” (UNT Press) May 2002 When Billy Joe Shaver gives directions to his modest house on the outskirts of Waco, he says to disregard the handwritten sign on his front door. “Please do not disturb. I haven’t slept in two days,” it says. “That’s just so […]
This is a chapter from “All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music” by Michael Corcoran (UNT Press, 2017) At first Jimmie Vaughan seems a little overwhelmed by the question, as if he’s an Olympic swimmer who’s just been asked to describe the role of water in his sport. “How significant was T-Bone Walker […]
By Michael Corcoran In July 2001, I received this Amazing Gospel CD in the mail at my job at the Austin American Statesman. It’s an unauthorized British compilation of 1920s American gospel music that would would end up playing a big part in my slow transformation from cynical/ abrasive music critic to deep-digging historian. A […]
