Texas Blues

Texas Blues are either songs and music that are created in Texas, or Blues by Texas artists who then take it on the road or overseas to other countries. Audiences around the world can distinguish between Texas Blues because the songs speak or tell of "certain events" in the Lone Star State, say ZZ Top's "La Grange," T-Bone Walker's "Trinity River Blues," or Townes Van Zandt's "Rex's Blues." The two main areas producing Texas Blues are Dallas/Ft. Worth area and surrounding cities and the Houston area and surrounding cities, with Austin and San Antonio also producing native blues in smaller numbers. Rural towns and cities also produce Texas Blues, such as Bastrop, Texas, which in December 1903 produced Roosevelt Thomas "Gray Ghost" Williams, who recorded "BBC Blues" in 1940, which was heard all the way across the Atlantic on the BBC (England) during World War II. Some out of state artists, such as Robert Johnson, born in May 1911 in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, only recorded in Texas! In San Antonio (1936) and Dallas (1937), Johnson recorded 29 different blues songs, his entire catalog.