This is a chapter in “Ghost Notes: Pioneering Spirits of Texas Music by Michael Corcoran Trumpet players blew so hard to produce the slightest spit of sound that they almost passed out. Drummers snapped their sticks with all the rhythmic sense of a pair of tennis shoes in the dryer. The honks of confusion rang […]
TONY VON: THE ORIGINAL T.V. ON THE RADIO “This is Tony Von, T.V. on the radio, in living color.” The mellow, mesmerizing voice rolled out of the 1260 slot on the AM dial at 4 p.m. every weekday and at 2 p.m. Saturdays from 1954 until tragedy was a sad silencer in 1979. His real […]
As a musician, Tim Kerr has been on the ground floor of punk-funk (Big Boys, Bad Mutha Goose), grunge (Poison 13) and neo-soul (Now Time Delegation), so it’s fitting that he paint an homage to Austin music pioneers at the corner of E. 9th and Red River Streets. Commissioned by Public City, we worked together […]
by Michael Corcoran Gilbert Askey left Austin for good at age 17 in 1942, but the former Motown arranger, who received an Oscar nomination for his work with Diana Ross on “Lady Sings the Blues” and had a part in “discovering” the Jackson 5, said Austin has never left him. I interviewed the trumpet man, […]
