The Handbook of Texas Music

Rating:
Summary: Packed with history, trivia, and critical insights
Review: 125 illustrations add spice to The Handbook Of Texas Music, an encyclopedia-style reference of famous Texas composers, performers, musical artifacts, and much more. Packed with history, trivia, and critical insights on the evolution of Texas music, from tradition to popular culture and much more, The Handbook Of Texas Music is a resource guaranteed to foster new fascination and appreciation for this Texas musical and cultural expression.

Rating:
Summary: A NOTEWORTHY COLLECTION
Review: Believe it or not, Texas music is not all twangin' or "I'm A Lone Cowhand" - music of the Lone Star State reflects the diverse cultural backgrounds from which it sprang - American Indians, Anglo- Americans, African Americans, German Americans, and various other immigrant groups. Representatives of this musical heritage are as different as Janis Joplin and Van Cliburn, yet all share one thing in common - the great state of Texas.

Here, in The Handbook of Texas Music one finds alphabetical listings of all that has contributed to this rich musical background. Beginning with Elmer Akins, a radio announcer and gospel music promoter who formed the Royal Gospel Quartet in the early 1940s, and concluding with Zydeco, "a type of music that evolved from an acoustic folk idiom known as la-la, dating back to the 1920s and unique to black Creoles..."

In between there is a plethora of information. We learn that the "Yellow Rose of Texas" is a song about a slave who was supposed to have assisted in winning the battle of San Jacinto, and that musician and composer Roger Miller had no formal training on any of the instruments he played nor did he ever learn to read music.

The roster of notables included is lengthy, including Buck Owens, Stevie Ray Vaughan, ZZ Top, Willie Nelson, Selena, the Light Crust Doughboys, and the list goes on.

A bonanza for scholars and music lovers alike The Handbook of Texas Music is 390 pages of facts and noteworthy (pun intended) information.

- Gail Cooke