Sinatra's life makes an interesting way to look at 20th-century America. Just this famous mugshot shows things have changed a bit since 1938: The charge is seducing a single female of good repute. He was born in 1915 and died in 1998. Crowds screamed for him two decades before the Beatles. The documentary "Sinatra: All or Nothing at All" grounds young Sinatra in an America where race... Continue Reading →
Here's Robert Earl Keen as Antonio Vivaldi opening his eighth annual benefit in Kerrville for an organization he said "it's my passion to tell people about": the Hill Country Youth Orchestra. Keen told the crowd at the Feb. 21 show that on his travels around the country, he'll get to talking with people about the... Continue Reading →
A year kicked off with loved ones in Fort Worth is a year that's gonna go well. I grew up near here, love the city and was tickled to hear the Metroplex referred to on the radio as "FW-D." Sundance Square decked out for the holidays. It was barely above freezing, so nobody's loitering in... Continue Reading →
Heard on the radio yesterday: An old norteño version of the old, old Hank Thompson hit "Wild Side of Life." "Mi Nueva Casa," I learn from musica.com, was a 1982 hit for Los Invasores de Nuevo León, boosting them to their first gold record. That is totally fitting in a number of ways, one being... Continue Reading →
Turnpike Troubadours have been closing some shows with an acoustic version of "I've Just Seen a Face," a lovely Paul song whose description in "Revolution in the Head" is just so wonderful I wanted to share it here: "the simplest of descending-sequence guitar songs, made indelible by a melody based on" intervals of the A-major... Continue Reading →
I usually favor Guy's album cuts because they seem to catch his meaning best and he tended to have people like Emmylou hanging around harmonizing, or Waylon sawing away at the top end there in the back of "Anyhow I Love You." An exception is the solo acoustic version of "Texas Cookin' " that was... Continue Reading →
I saw this beautiful thing played at a concert by La Follia Baroque; its player, James, told me about its history. Designed and built by luthier Timothy Johnson of Hewitt, it is a division viol (which the VdGSA says is an English type of bass viola da gamba). Johnson says the inlaid pattern is acanthus... Continue Reading →
Piano scholar and player James Goodwin has a number of videos up on YouTube. This, he says, "is an improvisation in the piano blues style that developed in the barrelhouses and whorehouses of Texas in the 1920s and 1930s. Characteristic is the use of slurred notes in the right hand and pumping chords or stride... Continue Reading →
Ran across this piece of history by Western swing man Adolph Hofner. To quote a Texas Monthly story from 2000 about him: Here's the true sound of the South and Central Texas dance hall. Adolph Hofner, born in 1916 in the predominantly Czech community of Moulton and based mainly in San Antonio since the thirties,... Continue Reading →
Lately I've been trying to simplify and automate a lot of tasks, and I keep thinking of this quote: "I'm trying to develop a lifestyle that doesn't require my presence." Yes! If everything could keep humming along while I took a week-long nap ... This quote, or a version of it, is attributed all over... Continue Reading →
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