19 dec2020
funny texas songs
No wonder that though nearly everything else in this style now seems a period piece, “Wasted Days” still sounds both urgent and eternal. Though it wasn’t among his one-hundred-plus original compositions, the Gainesville crooner’s 1927 hit was so soothing that it sold about 12 million copies, making it America’s best-selling record until Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” fifteen years later; it helped him become one of the most popular night club entertainers of the Depression era. Subscribe or link your existing subscription. It features his best band ever (John Hart on tenor sax, Buck Senegal on guitar, Cleveland Chenier on rubboard) augmented by a pair of white rockers; guest Elvin Bishop plays some slide guitar that’s at once lustrous and dirty behind Clifton’s backwoods vocals and accordion. Offensive? “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” like the rest of the album, was as full of wide-open space as West Texas itself. “Texas Map Song”) from the ultimate Jimmie Rodgers throwback, a Depression-era native of North Texas’s blackland farms who moved to Austin mid-century to become the homespun father of the town’s folk and singer-songwriter scenes. Has there ever been a greater party record? Willie Nelson “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”. It perfectly captured Gatemouth’s fiery eclecticism. Steve Earle: “Billy Austin” Earle has rocked harder, but the Schertz-raised singer never made a more powerful record. For its intensity and stark sadness, his 1927 recording of the eighteenth-century crucifixion hymn stands like a beacon among the thirty recordings he left behind. ZZ Top: “La Grange” Before Burt Reynolds ever heard of it, the Chicken Ranch was immortalized in 1973 by Houston’s ZZ Top, who took (yes, took) a John Lee Hooker riff and set it to their sleaze-boogie motif. Waltz across Texas 3. Few countries can boast such an amazing and diverse legacy, and one reason is that Texans are passionate about music. Which make more sense, actually, if you know that the song was originally called “She’s a Body Mover,” an offhand comment Sahm had made about a girl dirty-dancing at one of his shows. Successful as a songwriter but stymied as an artist, Willie fled Music City for his native Texas in 1971, intent on making his own music on Red Headed Stranger, which was so out of step with prevailing sounds that his label first dismissed it as a bunch of demos it didn’t want to release. Archie Bell and the Drells “Tighten Up”. But it’s one of his most imaginative vocals, and since the Rolling Stones revived it in 1964, it’s become a standard, a self-fulfilling prophesy that has stood the test of time as well as anything he did. http://www.raystevens.comhttps://www.facebook.com/raystevensmusic1707Copyright 2013Clyde Records Inc./Ray Stevens Music When Waco’s Playboys recorded “San Antonio Rose” as an instrumental, in 1938, country fiddle and steel took the leads. To generate the list, we contacted twenty outside experts—writers, editors, and deejays with an array of tastes—and asked them to send their thirty favorites per our guidelines. If you fill out the first name, last name, or agree to terms fields, you will NOT be added to the newsletter list. That’s fine with us. His 1973 debut, which included this endearing biographical track, told the rest of the world. But Johnson brings it down to a near whisper for “Dark.” It’s as though he can’t bear to sing the words. Ella Mae Morse: “Cow Cow Boogie” Fronting the Freddie Slack Orchestra, this saucy seventeen-year-old stylist from Mansfield and Paris had a sense of rhythm that verged on shocking for someone working in the white mainstream in 1942. Here are 16 songs about Texas that will touch your soul. Though this was released in 1927, two years before he moved to Kerrville hoping that benign weather would cure his tuberculosis, Rodgers’s million-seller (10,000 qualified as a major hit at the time) suggests that he may not have been a native Texan, but he got here as soon as he could; besides, he’d spent much time in the state during his hoboing days. If you consider that everything from blues to conjunto to jazz to R&B to rock and roll has been made here, the meaning of that phrase can be as expansive as the state itself. Roky Erickson: “Starry Eyes” This shiny, tuneful, folk-rockish paean to unattainable young love was produced by Doug Sahm. Harry Choates: “Jole Blon” The so-called Louisiana national anthem belongs here because the doomed Choates may have been born in the Bayou State, but he lived in Texas his entire career, and this is the agonized version that put the traditional song on the commercial map. As the most famous of these, “Stormy Monday Blues” settles into a resigned helplessness that’s hard to let go of. Joe Ely: “Honky Tonk Masquerade” There’d never been anything quite like that first Ely band out of Lubbock, the Flatlanders, which rendered obsolete such labels as country, rock, or country-rock. Roy Head: “Treat Her Right” Early (1965) proof that a white boy from Three Rivers and San Marcos could do the blue-eyed soul bit as well as the Righteous Brothers or any of those Muscle Shoals guys. On it goes, never deviating from the same cheesy riff, for two minutes and thirty seconds of joyous abandon. Nor a more pleasing one, nor one easier to identify with. But don’t call it the blues. George Jones “He Stopped Loving Her Today”. All this elevated the quartet style from spiritual entertainment to sanctified “church-wrecking.”. Its appeal lies not only in the angular melodic lines but also in the marvel of its performance. Now Lefty wears his “skin like iron,” and Pancho . Sample Funny Lyrics He stuck that needle down deep in my gum And he started drillin' before I was numb Some beach But there was no denying the song Holly and his band, the Crickets, rolled out from Norman Petty’s Clovis, New Mexico, studio onto the national stage. “Money” was recorded in 1950 and launched a hit-making decade for the Corsicana singer. Watch it!” Sam warns, as if to caution the thousands of future bar bands who’d be amending their set lists to make room for the song—which, in case you were wondering, is about Samudio’s cat. Fender was one of the first in the Valley to pick up on rock and roll, and this 1960 plaint (he re-recorded it as a country song in the seventies) is easily the greatest Gulf Coast triplet to come out of Texas. Willie Nelson: “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” In lesser hands, his 1979 song might seem irredeemably hokey, but Nelson pulls off this slow-dance heartbreaker with his usual aplomb. For this month's issue of Texas Monthly, writers Jeff McCord and John Morthland took on an ambitious assignment: coming up with a list of the 100 best Texas songs. He mastered his stunning bottleneck guitar technique (he used a pocket knife) on the streets, and his voluminous croak rang over the din of the crowd. We report on vital issues from politics to education and are the indispensable authority on the Texas scene, covering everything from music to cultural events with insightful recommendations. Mance Lipscomb: “Tom Moore’s Farm” So notorious was employer Tom Moore that Navasota songster-sharecropper Lipscomb first issued his 1960 recording anonymously. 5. His personal vocal style is finally beginning to emerge on this 1957 track, while his uptown band is inventing the soul-blues sound. Newbury was born in Houston, Texas, on May 19, 1940, to Mamie Ellen (née Taylor) and Milton Newbury.As a teenager, Newbury sang tenor in a moderately successful vocal group called The Embers. Fronting various bands, Temple’s Little Joe Hernandez had been riding near the top of the Tex-Mex circuit for close to two decades when he cut Para la Gente (“For the People”) in 1972 , the album that best gave voice to the emerging Brown Pride movement. Get more stories delivered right to your email. We’re aware that these uncertain times are limiting many aspects of life. Latin Breed: “El Tejano Enamorado” With their sophisticated, sax-heavy arrangements and jubilant vocal style, this ten-piece San Antonio band’s polka-ranchera fusions helped usher in the modern tejano era in the early seventies. The hard-swinging 1954 recording of “Okie Dokie Stomp” takes off like a bullet and never slows down. Buddy Holly and the Crickets “That’ll Be the Day”. He even included the names of the real-life lawmen who had put him there. But this wild 1950 ride is perhaps the most dynamic and exciting of the up-tempo barrelhouse boogie and blues he’s best remembered for today. Recorded, home with the armadillo, in Luckenbach. Sorry, we’re unable to find an account with that username and password. Funny, rocking, and undeniable. The Perryville native turned Nashville upside down in 1956 when he introduced the Texas dance hall sound to conventional country, replacing the standard 2-4 beat, double-stop fiddle, and vocal choruses with a 4-4 featuring drums and heavy bass, single-string fiddle, and high harmony over his own swelling lead vocals, which verged on the croon he’d later adapt. The Thirteenth Floor Elevators “You’re Gonna Miss Me”. Did it stand the test of time? It wasn’t her choice of pronouns but her well-lived-in voice that transformed the song. Unsentimental and moving, this stark 1990 death row portrait asks, “Who are you to say for sure?”. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys “New San Antonio Rose”. The greatest voice in country (and maybe all of popular music) was all but written off by 1980, as the Saratoga-born singer’s tumultuous personal life had almost consumed his stellar two-decade career. The song, perfectly named "Sexy Lil Votes," has an interesting take on getting Americans to vote. The Fabulous Thunderbirds: “She’s Tuff” Always a notch above the bevy of white blues revivalists, Austin’s T-Birds were a formidable live act, and this 1979 version of the Jerry McCain tune got all their strengths down on record too. I’m Archie Bell and the Drells, of Houston, Texas.” (He did have a band.) Charles Brown: “Driftin’ Blues” With an urbane sophistication unmatched in the blues world, Brown’s near-perfect “Driftin’ Blues,” from 1946, launched a long career for the Texas City pianist-vocalist and was a big influence on those to follow. Wondering what "he's double-backboned" means? His 1972 yin-yang paean to Dallas is direct and honest. A product of the San Antonio and Houston scenes, Tillman cast aside country’s usual euphemisms to write and sing about extramarital love and sex with no apologies, no moralizing, no excuses. Well, no offense to them, but Selena cut her share of novelties too. An amazingly eclectic Valley artist who brought all kinds of new influences to conjunto, he’s also a party-hardy sort of guy, and this spirited, Afro-Cuban-flavored romp (which he cut in 1975 and again in 1979) is just the thing to keep the good times rolling. Finally, there’s Doug Sahm’s great, and always underappreciated, rock vocals—hard and fast, with a Little Richard-like intensity, but also still melodic—and his delightfully cockeyed lyrics and title. It was the title song of an album that won Jimenez a Grammy and solidified his standing as the lone conjunto accordionist known to the non-Tex-Mex audience. LOL) 5. In the end, he poured so much of himself into his songs that there was almost nothing left but a shell. A version of this ballad of broken hearts appears in the movie ‘Road House’ and the song has continued its popularity for Mr. Strait, being performed in each of his ‘The Cowboy Rides Away’ tour sets. Buck Owens: “Act Naturally” Owens suffered a lot of false starts before this self-effacing 1963 chart-topper launched his career. The Creole singer-guitarist from Beaumont took this top ten at a time (1962) when girl-group music, almost exclusively a northern form, ruled. “You say you’re gonna leave,” Holly taunts. The strings—and all of Sunny’s lead—are sugary and sentimental but also silky and sincere. Tillman’s characteristic jazzy electric-guitar chording and his slip-sliding, behind-the-beat vocals had already helped make him one of the fathers of honky-tonk country when this song came along in 1949 to seal the deal. But what’s most amazing is that a giddier and less-worldly rock audience back then actually bought manager-producer Huey P. Meaux’s hype that this racially mixed group (white and brown) was the newest sensation from England. Whittling down a list of the best Red Dirt Texas Country songs of the last 20 years make for an exhaustive task, one that inevitably sparks much debate. What other great songs about Texas did I miss? Texans don’t say “wiretapping”… they would call it “the eyes of Texas are upon you.” 13. His slyly humorous, down-home philosophizing (“Show me a man that’s got a good woman/I’ll show you a man that goes to work hummin’”) was tinged with the knowledge that to err is human, and celebrations like this snappy, rhythmically shifting 1967 affirmation of the do-right couple gave soul a whole new dimension. Conjunto Bernal: “Mi Unico Camino” With their expert arrangements of staccato, twin chromatic accordions, and upbeat bajo sexto, Kingsville’s Bernal brothers brought the conjunto sound into the modern world in the late fifties. Compared with that, love songs are easy. Swing bandleaders routinely “appropriated” tunes from their sidemen. No matter what style or genre of music you enjoy, though, these songs about Texas are sure to strike a chord in your heart when you hear them! Few if any artists were more important to their instrument than Dallas’s Christian was to the electric guitar. Just as it’s difficult to overstate Walker’s importance, it’s impossible to conceive of the modern blues without his unforgettable couplet: “They call it stormy Monday/But Tuesday’s just as bad.”. Plenty of exceptional musicians hail from the great state of Texas, from the classic country artists like Willie Nelson to the modern country singers such as George Strait. He sings of all of his ex-girlfriends and why they're his exes. well, “the dust that Pancho bit down south/Ended up in Lefty’s mouth.” Such literate tragedy could only come from a haunted heart, and Fort Worth’s Van Zandt was an outrageously talented songwriter with a body of work gripped by melancholy. You could say that it couldn’t possibly have come from nowhar else but Texas, but even that’s a little vague; “She’s About a Mover” couldn’t possibly have come from nowhar else but San Antone. Doubtless to some, but also, like a good low-budget action flick, “Mind Playin Tricks on Me” is so over the top that it quickly turns surreal. The Texanist: How Can Whataburger Say That It’s Still “Family Owned and Operated”? Asleep at the Wheel: “Miles and Miles of Texas” The Austin-based band’s 1976 track is sing-as-you-swing evidence that size does matter. These aren’t jokes, and they’re as funny as Texas is awesome. And dancers knew exactly what this meant, because nobody made feeling bad feel better than these guys. 1) “Texas, Our Texas” by William J. Marsh, 2) “Deep In The Heart Of Texas” by Perry Como with Ted Weems and His Orchestra, 3) “Luckenbach, Texas” by Waylon Jennings, 4) “The Yellow Rose of Texas” by Various Artists including Elvis Presley and Mitch Miller, 9) “San Antonio Rose” by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, 10) “Deep Elem Blues” by The Shelton Brothers, 11) “Miles and Miles of Texas” by Asleep at the Wheel. nothin’, that’s all that Bobby left me” all the more powerful and authentic. Bassist Charlie Haden, trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Billy Higgins, and Coleman find a weightless rhythm and float through the mournful tune without ever bumping into one another. But this 1982 rodeo ballad puts you right there in the pickup truck, next to the broken-down cowboy pushing on to the next county fair competition. Jimmie Rodgers “Blue Yodel #1 (T for Texas)”. Hoying shared the viral Tik Tok on his Instagram page. To this day, Texas bands don’t go to the dance hall without it. With a snake of a bass line, syncopated guitar, and Bell’s immortal intro, this 1968 gem begins. 7 thoughts on “ 22 Jokes About Texas That Are Actually Funny ” Walter says: July 14, 2016 at 9:11 pm . Yellow Rose of Texas 2. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys: “Faded Love” Originally a fiddle instrumental, “Faded Love” hit it big when Wills added sadly wistful lyrics for this 1950 recording, ending a year-long drought and establishing yet another country signpost. Gilmore and his band of Lubbock unknowns, the Flatlanders (Joe Ely and Butch Hancock), played spare acoustic backing, including a musical saw, that emphasized his Texas warble. 2021 Bum Steer of the Year: The Texas Democratic Party, With Salons Closed, an 89-Year-Old Houston Woman Washes Her Own Hair for the First Time in Decades. God, what a scream. Of all the meme songs to bust out during karaoke, this might be the least expected and the most fun. They are among the hundreds who have recorded the 1947 anthem of the world’s most influential electric blues guitarist, Linden’s T-Bone Walker. Clifford Scott: “Honky Tonk” Though released under bandleader Bill Doggett’s name, this is San Antonio composer-tenor saxman Scott’s record all the way. Couchman’s Blind Lemon Jefferson was an originator of country blues and the first successful male blues performer. Don't have an account? What, not one of her affecting love songs, like “Como la Flor”? Jacquet was only nineteen when he first entered a recording studio with Lionel Hampton’s 1942 band and played the solo that would define his more than sixty years on the stage. 3. Flaco Jimenez “Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio”. I spend any chance I get traveling, enjoying nature, trying out new recipes, and meditating. He wasn’t the first, but he played with an invention no one had imagined before (and some would say since). The second appearance on this top 10 list by Texas native George Strait was released in 1987 and won a Grammy award for Best Country Song. 27. The rat-tat-tat of the rhythm section is as unnerving as the overdubbed gunshots at the beginning of the song; there’s been very little else in white pop music with such propulsive thrust. “Watch it now! Leave them blank to get signed up. Yet in his entire free-ranging repertoire, there’s something about this melodic slice of Louisiana black magic, most of its lines adapted from other songs, that remains irresistibly pure Lightnin’. Their responses, combined with our own lists, brought us to some consensus, but we still had more than four hundred songs. It was 1966; the Grateful Dead had yet to release an album. But all my exes live in Texas. Jack Teagarden: “Basin Street Blues” A double threat as both a superb vocalist and trombonist, Vernon’s Teagarden somehow missed the limelight. 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