Twenty years ago I moved back to my home state of California from Texas. On many occasions over the past twenty years, when discussing blues music with my fellow Californians, the subject of Texas blues would surface. If I happened to mention that I lived in Texas someone would invariably say something to the effect of, “Cool...I’ll bet you loved visiting Austin to check out the great live blues music.” I did in fact visit Austin and caught some live blues music there. The fact remained though that I lived in a city whose live music scene and blues history was second to none, Houston. I realized that few people outside Houston have any appreciation for this and I suspect too few inside the city do either.

In the late 1980’s I took a job in Houston, Texas. I was working at the time in Dallas and as all good corporate soldiers do when they are in their late twenties, I answered the call of duty and took the promotion. I was told by every Dallasite that Houston was cursed with miserable humidity. I am so happy that Dallas has such an agreeable climate. I was told Houston is located in a swamp. Again, I was thrilled to have lived in a place like the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex that is nestled amongst so much natural beauty. I was told that Houston had horrible traffic problems. Wait a minute Dallas dude...have you ever driven on the Central Expressway?

I shouldn’t get into a fight betwixt a couple of Texas behemoths anyway. I’m from Southern California. What would I know about a place that has a mild climate, natural beauty and freeway traffic? Back in those days I just figured I was swapping one mosquito for another.

As they say, everything is bigger in Texas and in Houston it’s even bigger than that. What I did find was that Houston was the biggest little city I had ever experienced. It had a down home feel to it despite its enormous proportions. There was civic pride that had enough dignity not to ever mention its intra-state rival to the north. Houston acts like it has no rival. Again, I don’t want to get in the middle of this but it doesn’t. My favorite quote about Houston is it’s a nice place to live, I just wouldn’t want to visit there.

Anyway, I moved to a city that, at the time, had a mayor that was reputed to look like Dustin Hoffman in drag. It was where the Tennessee Titans were playing and calling themselves the Oilers. Like their pro football team, their major league baseball franchise played in the recently renovated eighth wonder of the world, the Astrodome.

I was born in a town that had celebrities everywhere. Houston’s celebrities however had been to the moon. It’s one thing to have actor like Tom Hanks or Scott Glen stroll past you on the concourse at Dodger Stadium but it’s quite another to have Commanders Lovell and Sheppard standing behind you in a concession line at a Houston Rockets basketball game.

Houston was the home in those days of the President of the United States, Bush 41. His autographed picture hung at the entrance to Otto’s Barbeque. It was with a great deal of pride that the commander of chefs, Otto would remind me that the Commander in Chief declared his food his favorite barbeque anywhere.

I kind of enjoyed living only 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. While it’s not the California Coast and the blue Pacific, it isn’t Lake Grapevine either thank goodness. It is clear to anyone who knows me that when I think about Houston or the Bayou-Plex as I like to call it, it is with a great deal of fondness and we haven’t even got to the good part yet.

Houston takes a great deal of pride in playing an important role in the pioneering of space, open heart surgery and innovative air conditioning applications, but it also has a proud heritage that it is not so anxious to embrace. It is a history that is deeply rooted in the city’s African–American population. It is a history that has had a cultural and artistic impact on the world. It is history you can dance to. It is a history unique to Houston. It is the extremely underappreciated history of Houston blues.

Blues music may not be the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Houston, Texas. Even people who consider themselves blues aficionados might not think of Houston as a blues town. The bayou city could make an argument for itself as the most important blues city in American history. It seems to be content however to let other municipalities rake in tourist dollars as blues music Meccas. New Orleans, Memphis, Saint Louis, Chicago and even Austin celebrate their blues past and these cities benefit from this in the present. The city of Houston seems to want no part of this.

In the Big H, the city fathers and mothers have spent a fortune trying to spruce up its shit kicking, oil boom town, urban cowboy image by supporting an opera company and symphony orchestra. This of course is commendable. European musical traditions are well represented by business and political interests while its own grand historical musical contributions to the world are virtually ignored.

From a blues, regional folk and roots music standpoint Houston has always benefited from its geographical location. The city is about equal distance from San Antonio and Austin to the west and northwest respectively as it is roughly from southwest Louisiana’s Cajun country. It is about 100 miles or so due west from another well spring of musical talent, the part of Texas known as the Golden Triangle. In other words, Houston is where Bob Wills and Clifton Chenier meet. It is how you get a Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, who was the first musician to be recorded at the famed Peacock Studios.

In the city’s Fifth Ward, just a few short miles from Houston’s gleaming post modern, downtown skyline, there is a spot where as much great blues music was made as perhaps any single location in American history. There is a free standing, somewhat innocuous, building in a semi-residential neighborhood which should have an address at least as famous as that of Chess Records at 2120 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. It doesn’t. At 2809 Erastus Street is a building which still stands, but is no longer in use. This place should be a shrine. It should be a destination location for any blues fan on a pilgrimage. It was at one time the largest African–American owned recording studio and record company in the country, Peacock Records. The building also was home to the famed Bronze Peacock Ballroom.

The Bronze Peacock Ballroom was opened, owned and operated by Houston native Don Robey. Peacock Records was also the providence of Robey. The label which started putting out records in the late 40’s produced music for both the gospel and secular markets. In 1952, Peacock Records merged with the Duke label out of Memphis. Duke-Peacock began producing a string of great recordings aimed exclusively at the secular “race” market. Many of these records were hits in their own time and have become enduring classics in the blues canon. Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Johnny Ace, “Little” Junior Parker, “Big” Walter Price, James Booker, Memphis Slim, Jimmy McCracklin, Otis Rush, Willie May “Big Mama” Thornton, Johnny Otis, Bobby Bland and Little Richard are just a few of the names that recorded at Don Robey’s Peacock studios.

They had a jazz division that recorded Betty Carter and Sonny Chris. While gospel artists that came to or lived in Houston included the Dixie Hummingbirds, The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, The Mighty Clouds of Joy and others who recorded at the Peacock studios as well.

There was one man Don Robey wasn’t interested in recording, but became a star anyway. He was the man who perhaps is as closely associated with the Houston blues scene as anyone. His name was Sam Lightnin’ Hopkins. Hopkins is the most prolific blues recording artist of all time. His brand of country blues stood in sharp relief to the uptown, sophisticated, jazz influenced jump blues that was championed by Robey on his Duke-Peacock label. Hopkins however still found an audience, with his bare bones approach to blues which harkened back to music from an earlier era. He remains the single most important country blues artist since World War II.

Hopkins was playing on Dowling Street in Houston’s Third Ward when he was “discovered” by an Aladdin Records executive and persuaded to record for that label in Los Angeles, which he did in 1946 and ‘47. He returned to Houston in 1947 and Lightnin’ bolted to Houston’s Gold Star Studios where he recorded in the late 1940’s and 1950’s.

Gold Star Studios was founded by Bill Quinn and originally called, Quinn Recording Services. The Gold Star recordings that were made in Houston extended beyond the world of blues music. The company is still operating today as Gold Star Recording Services. Their legacy includes working with Houston music luminaries with names as big as Beyonce’ and Billy, that’s Knowles and Gibbons in case an astronaut left you in outer space for the past quarter of a century. This small Houston studio not only caught Lightin’ in a bottle during their first few years of existence, but has been a Houston success story for seventy plus years. It is the longest running recording studio in American history. It is tucked into a semi-residential neighborhood in the Third Ward.

If as they say everything is bigger in Texas, then this naturally extends to their blues bands as well. In Houston, the harmonica was no match for big horn sections. Houston’s legacy is also very much tied to the great horn players. Houston native Milt Larkin was born in 1910 and was a fixture on the Houston Blues scene up until the time of his death 1996. The trumpet player and band leader put together a group in the 1940’s that included fellow Houstonians alto sax man and vocalist Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and tenor saxophonists Arnett Cobb, Tom Archia and Illinois Jacket who joined Larkin’s band when he was fifteen.

Trumpet player Calvin Owens, another Houston native, was born in the Fifth Ward in 1929. In 1953, Owens joined B.B. King’s band. He eventually became a producer, arranger, composer and band leader for King’s great ensemble. He also played trumpet with fellow Houstonians Amos Milburn, Arnett Cobb and guitarist Johnny Clyde Copeland as well as with T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner and Little Junior Parker.

The tradition of the Houston honkers continues with Grady Gaines. He recorded and toured behind many popular artists inside and slightly removed from the blues field, most notably Little Richard. Gaines’ band the Upsetters sometimes called the Texas Upsetters blurred the lines between early rock&roll, blues, jazz and soul. Gaines and his bands also backed up many artists and appear on numerous recordings that were recorded at the Peacock studios.

The history of the Delta migration to the northern industrialized cities such as Detroit and especially Chicago is a well documented legacy. There was more than one road out of the Deep South and one of those goes directly through Houston. That road also continues all the way to the Pacific Ocean and that’s also part of the blues history of Houston.

The arrival of T-Bone Walker from the east Texas town of Linden had a profound impact on the Houston Blues scene as well as virtually every blues musician who picked up an electric guitar.

Walker was a star who made frequent appearances on Houston stages. He is also one of the first and certainly biggest blues star to make the migration west to California. One of Walker’s many protégés was a man born in Houston on February 3, 1935, Johnny “Guitar” Watson. Watson, like Walker, was an innovator on his instrument and man of immense talent. Also like T-Bone Walker, Watson was a flamboyant showman who relocated to Los Angeles where a thriving blues scene had been taking place on the city's famed Central Avenue.

It should also be noted that Houston sits at the southern and western edge of a large heavily forested region universally referred to in Texas as the Piney Woods. It is in the lumber camps found in this part of the country where the barrelhouse piano blues traditions developed. Charles Brown from nearby Texas City, Floyd Dixon from the small east Texas town of Marshall and Houstonian Amos Milburn are very closely associated with the Los Angeles blues scene, but they all got their start on Houston’s stages, like the Bronze Peacock, the Eldorado Ballroom and the Continental Showcase. For many years, well into the 1990’s, Houston native Katie Webster, known as the Swamp Boogie Queen, carried on this tradition in her home town.

There were many other blues musicians who recorded and performed in Houston as well. The list is long but some of the names of important artists that had an impact on Houston’s blues scene are Ivory Joe Hunter, Percy Mayfield, Hop Wilson, Teddy Reynolds, Miss Lavelle White, Earl Gilliam, Trudy Lynn and Peppermint Harris.

Houston’s geographic location within the Texas–South Louisiana region and its central location in the U.S. continued to pay musical dividends as the hub of the blues revival that started in the mid 1980’s. This revival that took place all over the country was even more pronounced in Houston. It represented the last shout, the last note and the last hurrah for the musicians who were such an important part of the Duke-Peacock legacy in Houston. The city already had blues musicians practically waiting in the wings when the blues revival began. They seemed very glad and almost astonished in some cases that their music finally found an audience again after being pushed aside for a couple of decades.

My arrival in Houston coincided with this revival. If you craved blues music you couldn’t have been at a better place at a better time. I lived in the Heights section of the city in those days. There were at least a half a dozen clubs in this old inner city neighborhood that featured live blues music several nights a week. In the shadow of the city’s downtown skyline were aging buildings that were blues joints that had had colorful names like the Reddi Room, White Oak Bayou Inn, and Black Forest Tavern. Also close by was Fitzgerald’s.

Fitzgerald’s was a big free standing two story wooden building that had been a Polish beer hall at one time. It had pool and picnic tables downstairs. Upstairs there was a big dance hall with a large stage, wooden floors and great sound. It is the first place I saw the great Etta James. Lonnie Mack would play there once a year when he came through town. It was where Omar and The Howlers, who were based in Austin, would play when they came to town. Houstonian Ian Moore and his two piece backup band Moment’s Notice played at Fitzgerald’s. Just a few years earlier Stevie Vaughan played at Fitzgerald’s with some regularity before he became a crossover artist and big concert draw.

The tiny Reddi Room was directly across Studemont Street from Fitzgerald’s. It was a red brick building with a small bar and a handful of cocktail tables. It had one small pool table that was off to one side of the tiny “stage” that was only elevated one inch above the dance floor. Guitarist Milton Hopkins played there each and every Friday and Saturday night in those days. Hopkins was the nephew of Lightnin’ Hopkins. Hopkins had two different stints with The Upsetters and had been on the road with B.B. King and his orchestra for about eight years throughout much of the 70’s.



The national touring acts that played on the big stage at Fitzgerald’s on weekends would often come by and sit in with Hopkins. On one Saturday night, I recall having to make the choice of Fitzgerald’s who had young Louisianan Kenny Neal playing or go and see Hopkins at the Reddi Room. I chose the Reddi Room. When Neal finished his set, he walked across the street with guitar in hand and sat in with Hopkins and his band.

The White Oak Bayou Inn was less than a mile away and was actually in a semi-residential neighborhood and sat next to the bayou from which it got its name. “Texas” Pete Mayes had a regular gig there. The room was sparsely decorated and the stage was at the far end of the building opposite the front door. The room’s notable feature, for me anyway, was the low ceiling that actually was sagging in the middle. If I was going to make it to the tip jar in front of the bandstand, I had to actually walk around the drooping ceiling to avoid having to duck or be bonked in the head. Thank goodness Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon was not a regular.

Nearby there was the Black Forest Tavern which had an outside beer garden and stage that made for a large, almost festival kind of environment. I saw the Fabulous Thunderbirds there in 1990. The inside of the establishment had a German beer hall motif. The place had a number of long tables set perpendicular to a large elevated stage. A bar with windows that faced the tree shaded beer garden ran the entire length of the room and had an unobstructed view of the stage. It is on one of these bar stools I saw Albert King perform on a Sunday afternoon.

Less than a mile away and roughly half way between the Black Forest Tavern and Fitzgerald’s, for point of reference, was Club Hey Hey. This nightspot was the premier blues venue in the city. The club sat on the old thoroughfare that once connected Downtown Houston and the state capitol in Austin, a couple hundred miles away. The modern interstate Highway system left this road, just outside of the central business district, a decaying hodge-podge of old brick buildings, vacant lots and modest little businesses like used auto parts yards, pawn shops and even a boxing gym. This was a club that was open as a live blues venue Wednesdays through Saturdays. The club was run by some neighbors of mine Pete and Pat Selin. They were dedicated blues fans who put “nationals” on the stage every Friday and Saturday night. It is where I first saw Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Ronnie Earl, Charlie Musselwhite and others.

Other Texas based bands like Anson and The Rockets featuring Sam Myers, Marcia Ball, Doyle Bramhall, Lou Ann Barton, Joe King Carrasco and the Crowns, Angela Strehli, Johnny Reno and the Sax Maniacs, Kathy and The Kilowatts, Paula and the Pontiacs and the Booze Weasels (I’m not kidding) played this room when they came through this part of the state.

On Wednesdays and Thursdays it wasn’t unusual to hear local and regional bands that would have a one month residency at the club. I remember for instance Grady Gaines and the Texas Upsetters played at the club every Thursday for a month. The Upsetters’ show was an old fashioned rhythm and blues revue that included vocalists Joe Medwick and “Big” Robert Smith. Even on a Wednesday or Thursday you might be able to catch a national touring act as in those days, bands were rolling across the country to the network of blues clubs that existed everywhere. I saw the great Duke Robillard and his two piece backup band called The Pleasure Kings on a Wednesday night in 1990. It was on a Thursday night I saw another trio at Club Hey Hey, The Paladins from San Diego. The San Francisco based soul band, The Dynatones made regular stops at Club Hey Hey as well. Floridian Warren Haynes played there shortly before he joined the Allman Brothers Band and formed his own band Government Mule.

The club eventually lost its lease. The Selins just packed up and moved down the street and it became known as Pat and Pete’s Bon Ton Room. The club had a pre-opening party that starred Houston stalwart Miss Molly and her band known as the Whips which featured guitarist Bert Wills. Wills fronted his own band, The Crying Shames for years and is still a fixture on the Houston blues scene.

The club was a bit smaller and didn’t quite have the same vibe, but magic was still capable of happening the four nights a week they were open. It was during this period that Buddy Guy, Magic Slim and The Teardrops, Big Twist and the Mellow Fellows and a host of others from Chicago played this room. Zydeco acts like Cliften Chenier’s son C.J. Chenier, Boozo Chavis, Terence Simian and the Mamou Playboys and Stanley Dural and his band Buckwheat Zydeco made their way to the Bon Ton Room on a fairly regular basis.

Directly across the street from the old Hey Hey sat the old Heights Bank and Trust building. The building was small by modern big city bank standards, but it had a stately elegance none the less. It hadn’t been a bank for many years at this point. The building had been converted to a concert, dinner and dance hall that booked big national touring acts. They had an eclectic booking policy that catered to all kinds of musical genres but you didn’t have to go too many nights without hearing blues music. It was at Rockefellers that I heard Albert Collins live for the first time. He would come back to his hometown from California where he was living in those days to play in front of packed houses a couple of times a year. I saw Katie Webster and Roomful of Blues there as well. Rockefellers was where B.B. King would play when he came through town.

A few blocks north, in the Heights was Dan Electro’s Guitar Bar. The little neighborhood joint was famous for its Wednesday night blues jam. With all the talent in town at any one given time the musical amalgamations often rose above the usual pedestrian sounds that are more likely than not to come from a blues jam. Dan Electro’s is still the home base for alto sax man Eric Demmer. In those days Eric was in Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown’s band. He now leads an ensemble he calls the Sax Dawgs.

It was not unusual for local legends like guitarist Joe “Guitar” Hughes, Texas Johnny Brown, Jimmy T99 Nelson or Clarence Holliman to be playing in their hometown on any given night. They often would be called up on stage to sit in with traveling musicians who wanted some of that gulf coast mojo to rub off on them. It seemed like something special could happen almost any night of the week and more often than not, it did.

Another component to this blues revival was the emergence of the Black Top Record Label. Even though the record label was based out of New Orleans they were instrumental in resurrecting the careers of many gulf coast blues artists including those living and working in Houston. Among these artists who Black Top signed were Grady Gaines and the Texas Upsetters, Carol Fran and Clarence Holliman, pianist Teddy Reynolds as well as Joe “Guitar” Hughes. The label had a distinctive house sound that is still the envy of record producers, sound engineers and fans to this day. The label closed its doors in 1999 but not before releasing well over 100 albums.

Just on the other side of downtown from the Heights in the city’s Third Ward sat perhaps the oddest nightclub whose door I ever darkened. It was called Local Charm. The little joint at one time appeared to be a deli and the small room was ringed by glass refrigerated cases that now contained beer. The seating consisted of small school desks attached to chairs. The circular cutout at the upper right hand corner of these desks were designed to store pencil cups for students, but worked perfectly as cup holder or, in this case, a long neck beer holder. Local Charm was owned and operated by kind of a swash buckling rogue by the name of Rory Miggins. The clientele of Local Charm was an interesting mix of Third Ward residents and college students from nearby University of Houston. Blues men from the area, including Texas Johnny Brown, were regulars and Miggins treated them like royalty.

Miggins was kind of an unofficial Houston booster. He loved the city of Houston. He taught me much about the unwritten history of Houston. He was a colorful character and a generally agreeable guy as long as you didn’t mind him hitting on your girlfriend right in front of you, which he did constantly. I did mind and yet that didn’t stop him from trying. I had to admire that kind of chutzpah.

It was this kind of passion that doesn’t quite border on insanity, but comes awfully darn close, that is required for success it seems in the blues business. It is why when nobody would book Jerry Lightfoot and the Essential Blues Band, later shortened to just “The Essentials,” Rory would bring him to Local Charm on a regular basis. Lightfoot had a substance abuse problem in those days and had developed an unsavory and unreliable reputation with virtually every club owner in town.

It was Lightfoot and Miggins however that had as much to do with the Houston blues revival of this period as anyone. When you booked Lightfoot you also were booking some of the old timers from the halcyon days of the Duke-Peacock label from twenty five to thirty years earlier. Like Miggins, Lightfoot was a walking encyclopedia of Houston blues history. One player in particular that Lightfoot championed was “Big” Walter Price “The Thunderbird”.

During a Lightfoot set he would often bring the band down a little and give a very dignified introduction to Price. Price’s stature as an important figure in the pantheon of Houston blues was elevated almost exclusively by the dogged determination and enormous generosity of Lightfoot.

Lightfoot and his band backed up Walter Price at the 1989 Junteenth Blues Festival. The Juneteenth Blues Festival began in the mid 1970’s and ran through the early 90’s. The festival was held each year at the Miller Outdoor Theater in Herman Park and at the time was the largest free blues festival in the world. It was held on the weekend of June 19th, which was the day that the slaves in Texas learned of their freedom. The festival’s director, Lanny Steele, brought every big name blues act from all over the country and slotted them along side local legends.

In 1989, Walter Price was named the Juneteenth Blues Festival Artist of the Year and was presented a plaque citing his cultural contributions to the city of Houston. A small story appeared the next day in the Houston Chronicle discussing this commendation. In a time when musicians didn’t carry business cards with links to their websites, Price would carry this newspaper clipping with him in his suit coat pocket and show it to anybody who he thought would be interested.

Price, who was already in his mid seventies, was very proud of his legacy but asked me on more than one occasion, “Why did they have to wait so long to recognize me”? I never had a good answer to that question. Price would live another twenty two years. He died one year ago this month. At the time of his death at 97, it was speculated he was the oldest living blues man. It was also reported in the Houston Chronicle he was the last living person to record at the famed Peacock studios. That simply isn’t true, but he is one of the last and, like most things related to the Houston blues scene, it remains a mystery why this blues history hasn’t been given more care by a city who has a great opportunity to show the world it is much more than petro-chemicals and cowboys.

The blues business has struggled everywhere and Houston is no different. The old haunts for the most part are long gone. The city has of course an enormous House of Blues downtown that it seems puts on every style of music on its main stage except blues. The place does have a smaller music room next to the large main room called, the Bronze Peacock. It is here, their website tells people, that they are interested in putting local blues musicians on the stage.

The actual location of the Bronze Peacock Ballroom and the Peacock Recording studio is now a vacant building. It had been a church for a time. It does however have a historical plaque on the side of the old building. As far the Duke–Peacock catalogue is concerned, it is under the control of Universal Music Group. They have never given anything remotely close to a comprehensive re-issue or box set treatment of this wonderful material, the way they did to some extent to the Chess catalogue.

There has been discussion for many years about building a Houston Blues Museum, but even if the powers that be could ever agree on a site, there is still not enough funding to make this dream a reality.

For those who made up the old guard of Houston blues musicians and Duke-Peacock recording artists they would have one last brief shining moment.

The greatest tribute to Houston’s immense contribution to the blues landscape came not in Texas, but in Long Beach, California in 1996. That year the famed Long Beach Blues Festival put on a three day extravaganza celebrating Texas blues. Musicians from all over the Lone Star State were represented, but it was the Houstonians that captured the imagination, the hearts and the soul of the 45,000 people that attended the, dare I say, Texas sized event that took place over the long Labor Day weekend. For three days the warm California sun served as spotlight on the wonderful musicians that had helped to make Houston, Texas, such a special place.

The big stars whose careers were a part of the Houston blues legacy were there such as Bobby Bland, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown and Johnny Clyde Copeland. There were the Houston area ex-patriots to the Golden State such as Charles Brown, Floyd Dixon, Roy Gaines, Cal Green and Guitar Shorty. There was also the Houstonians who continued to live in their home town but came out to play at the festival, such as Clarence Holliman, Carol Fran, “Texas” Johnny Brown, Joe “Guitar” Hughes, Cal Green’s older brother Clarence Green, Jimmy T99 Nelson and Texas Pete Mayes.

For this very special occasion Grady Gaines reunited past and present members of his famous band the Texas Upsetters including guitarist Milton Hopkins, as well as their pianist and vocalist Little Richard. Even Richard dispensed with much (not all, mind you) of his ‘Liberace meets Jerry Lee Lewis’ shtick and dug his heels in for some real old fashioned, piano pounding, teeth rattling’ rhythm and blues...Texas style. He seemed to have as much to prove to his peers on stage as he did to himself. On this sun drenched, hot and almost Houston humid afternoon in Southern California, Grady Gaines climbed on top of Richard’s piano for the last time, tilted his torso back, pointed his sax towards the heavens, clenched his eyes shut and let wail as if to say, “Dear Lord come and get me. I fuckin’ dare ya.”

For many of the Californians in attendance, it would be the first and perhaps only time they would see some of these great musicians perform. For the artists, the backstage area was like a giant family reunion, picnic and barbeque all rolled into one. Suddenly the fifteen hundred miles and fifty years that separates those glorious times and wonderful places in Houston’s Fifth Ward and L.A.’s Central Avenue were just a hug, a handshake and a pass the corn bread away.

- David Mac

Recommended Reading:

Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues by Roger Woods, Charles Roger Woods and Photographs by James Fraher

House of Hits: The Story of Houston’s Gold Star/Sugar Hill Recording Studios by Andy Bradley and Roger Wood

Both these books are published by the University of Texas press.