“I sure wish polka music like [Joe Patek Orchestra] was still around,” Mary Ann Pullin commented in a blog post. That blog post commemorates the legacy of the Joe Patek Orchestra and the influence they had on musicians across Texas. The blog can be read here. Krásná Amerika translates to …
Caddo History Pre 1500s Originally settling around 700-800 along the Arkansas River, and stretched all the way out to the Red, Sabine, Angelina, and Neches rivers. This territory took up present-day Northeast Texas, parts of Arkansas and Louisiana. Throughout their miles of territory, there were over 25 different close-knit groups, …
Summary In the 1947 film Bells of San Angelo, Lee Madison (played by singer and actress Dale Evans) sings the original song “I Love The West”. Between 1940-1950, Evans was the leading lady for Hollywood’s most iconic musical westerns which glorify a false narrative of cowboy culture. The cowboys that …
About the Artist – Blind Willie Johnson Blind Willie Johnson (BWJ) was an American gospel blues singer and guitarist known for the power and emotion in his voice and his innovative slide guitar playing. Not much is known about his childhood, but he was born on January 22, 1897, in …
Who is Gregorio Cortéz? Gregorio Cortéz was born on June 22, 1875, near Matamoros, Tamaulipas. After his family moved to Texas in 1887, he began working as a vaquero (cowboy). In 1901, he fatally shot Sheriff Morris in self-defense when Morris incorrectly accused Cortéz and his brother Romaldo of stealing …
Adolf Hofner’s music career would begin in 1936, but surprisingly “Shiner Song” was recorded later in his career with his Czech-Western band named “The Pearl Wanglers”. Shiner Song has a long history as its foundation rests on an old Czech ethic tune “Farewell to Prague”. Its lyrics changed to bring …
Arizona Dranes was a blind African and Mexican American gospel music artist who is said to have been born sometime between 1889 or 1894 in Greensvile, Texas. Dranes attended the Institute for Deaf, Dumb and Blind Colored Youths located in Austin Texas which it is said that she received her …
Blues music and all of the music that has derived from it is inseparable from its history. Sharecroppers and Southern laborers are the forefathers of the blues, a music with its roots trailing back to the work songs of enslaved African Americans on Southern plantations during the 1800s. Mance Lipscomb …
About the Artist Carmen and Laura Hernandez (born 1921 and 1926 in Kingsville, Texas) were a musical act that consisted of two Mexican-American sisters. They were often called the Tejano version of the Andrews Sisters because the two groups had songs that referenced and were popular during wartime (especially about …
About Carson Robison Carson J. Robison, also referred to as “the granddaddy of the hillbillies”, was a popular singer, guitarist, whistler, and actor during the 1920s and late 1950s. He was born in Oswego, Kansas, and later moved to Chetopa, Kansas, where he spent most of his childhood. Robison began his …
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