Happy New Year and Welcome to Texas Songbook!

So here we are at the start of a brand new decade. Here is what is special about this one: it is the last decade in a century of recorded Texas music, a century that started with a fiddler from Amarillo making the first country record, an ex-cowboy from Jefferson turned New York light opera singer making the first big country hit, and a blind blues man from the streets of Deep Ellum becoming the best selling blues artist of the time. These recording milestones barely even hint at the amazing decade that was starting in Texas music 90 years ago, but let's talk about 20s music, or as the Texas Songbook and Musical Companion called it "songs to play before a great depression," another time. The important thing is that each of the past nine decades in Texas music has unveiled surprises, wonders, great stories, and most of all history making music. We need expect any less of the present one.

The Texas Songbook and Musical Companion celebrates the treasures of Texas music past and present in equal measure. "These are the good old days" of Texas music, Eddie Wilson blogs as he chronicles his own golden age of the Armadillo World Headquarters in the 1970s, and we agree, so they are. Never have the opportunities and potential been greater to produce and enjoy great music in greater variety than now. But without the rich legacy of the past nine decades, this would not be so.

But enough pontificating...

In Fort Worth, this decade was rung in on the "Eve before New Year's Eve" at Bass Hall by Robert Earl King, Jr. Keen delivered the expected crowd pleasing ballads and earned approving reviews in the Fort Worth Star Telegram and from Channel 8's art critic Gary Cogill, who said how great it was to hear some real, good, Texas music. Keen's music is a collection of stories from various Texas slices of life, stories that are better with each re-singing, and the audience knows them well enough to join in more often than not.

Also in Fort Worth, on January 2, 1936, Roger Miller was born. He was a member of the legendary Cherokee Cowboys backing up Ray Price. (They were Hank Williams band, the Drifting Cowboys, till his death, when Ray Price took them under his wing.) He wrote Price's hit "Invitation to the Blues" and became one of Nashville's most prized songwriters hitting his peak in the 1960s with his own hits such as "Kansas City Star" and "King of the Road." His most endearing songs were novelty items which ranged from quirky to wacky.

Also on January 2 in 1974, Tex Ritter died in Nashville. Ritter was a protege of the great music historian John Lomax and star of over sixty "B" westerns of the 30s and 40s. The unique thing about Ritter as a movie singing cowboy is that he always viewed his films as a vehicle to expose the authentic cowboy music rather than the manufactured Hollywood variety. Ritter provided Bob Wills his first movie opportunity in Take Me Back to Oklahoma in 1940. He became best known for his hits "Rye Whiskey," "Boll Weevel," and "High Noon."

Keen, Miller, and Ritter used widely diverse styles to make superb Texas music, but they do have a common link - to Willie Nelson. Miller and Nelson were part of Ray Price's Cherokee Cowboys together, and they were also in Nashville together in the sixties as two of country music's elite songwriters. Ritter appeared in Nelson's Dripping Springs Reunion, the precursor to the Willie Nelson picnics, in 1972, along with country music legends Ernest Tubb and Roy Acuff and many others. Keen attended Willie Nelson's second Fourth of July Picnic in 1974, where he was able to meet Nelson as a result of his car being one of 40 burned up a in a grass fire in the parking lot. Nelson unfortunately had to cut the meeting short because he was "jamming with Leon Russell," as hilariously told by Keen on his Live No.2 Dinner CD on the "Road Goes On Forever Intro."

We will return to these three in future posts for a Keen-Miller-Ritter road trip and play list.

Here is the Robert Earl Keen site: http://www.robertearlkeen.com/

Roger Miller's site is: http://www.rogermiller.com/

Tex Ritter's museum site is: http://www.carthagetexas.com/HallofFame/museum.htm