Today is the birthday of Flaco Jiménez. He is 88 today. Leonardo Jiménez Jr. was born in San Antonio, Texas on March 11, 1939. His father, Don Santiago Jiménez Sr., was one of the founding figures of conjunto music. The accordion was already in the family kitchen. Flaco started playing it as a boy and […]
Today is the birthday of Vinnie Paul. He would be 63 today. Vinnie Paul hit drums like he was trying to crack the earth open. Abilene, Texas, claims his birth, but Arlington shaped his youth. His father, Jerry Abbott, owned Pantego Sound Studio nearby. Music filled that house long before Vinnie ever picked up sticks. […]
Today is the birthday of Paul Wall. He would be 46 today. Paul Wall turned dental hardware into a genuine art form. He grew up in Houston, Texas, deep inside its rap scene. He absorbed DJ Screw's chopped and screwed sound as a teenager. That slow, syrupy influence shaped his laid-back vocal delivery. His name […]
Today is the birthday of Lightnin' Hopkins. He would be 115 today. Sam John Hopkins was born in Centerville, Texas on March 15, 1912. Leon County is in the heart of Central Texas — rolling piney-woods country that sits between the old plantation belt to the east and the blackland prairie to the west. Hopkins […]
Today is the birthday of Charley Pride. He would be 92 today. Charley Frank Pride was born on March 18, 1934, in Sledge, Mississippi. But Texas was where he became Charley Pride. He moved to Dallas in the early 1960s after a career in the Negro American League. He was playing semi-pro baseball and singing […]
Today is the birthday of Bun B. He would be 54 today. Bun B built rhymes like a refinery builds pressure, slow and relentless. Port Arthur, Texas, raised him under a skyline of oil refineries. Smoke stacks lit the skyline every night of his childhood. In 1987 he teamed with Pimp C to form UGK. […]
Today is the birthday of Jimmie Vaughan. He is 76 today. Jimmie Vaughan was born in Dallas, Texas on March 20, 1951, and grew up in Oak Cliff on the city's south side. He was playing guitar in Oak Cliff clubs by his mid-teens, absorbing T-Bone Walker, Freddie King, and the West Side Chicago sound […]
Marcia Ball was born in Orange, Texas, on March 20, 1949. Nobody rocks a Texas blues piano like she does — six Grammy nominations prove it.
Charley Crockett was born March 24, 1984 in San Benito, Texas — the Rio Grande Valley town that shaped his Gulf and Western sound.
Today is the birthday of Moon Mullican. He would be 118 today. Moon Mullican pounded a piano like he owed it money and was settling the debt. He grew up in Corrigan, Texas, in the deep piney woods near the Louisiana line. Moon Mullican's Corrigan, Texas upbringing mixed Black blues, gospel, and Cajun sounds together […]
Norah Jones grew up in Grapevine and swept the 2003 Grammy Awards with eight wins for her debut album Come Away with Me on Blue Note Records.
Lefty Frizzell was born in Corsicana on March 31, 1928. He invented the way country singers phrase a note — and Merle Haggard was listening.
