Location: Lubbock

Lubbock High School produced Mac Davis, who wrote “In the Ghetto” for Elvis Presley, and Joe B. Mauldin, bassist for Buddy Holly’s Crickets — two of the most important figures in 1950s American music.

Two streets in Lubbock carry the names of musicians. One is Buddy Holly Avenue. The other is Mac Davis Lane — the renamed 6th Street that runs through the downtown blocks where Mac Davis grew up.

Mac Davis wrote seven songs for Elvis Presley, including “In the Ghetto,” from the flat Panhandle city where he grew up. He promised to be buried in Lubbock in his jeans. He kept the promise.

CB Stubblefield opened a barbecue restaurant at 108 East Broadway in Lubbock in 1968. He said he was just a cook. The musicians who played his Sunday night jams — Johnny Cash, B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan — didn’t believe him.

Terry Allen grew up in Lubbock, Texas — and the 1979 double album he came back to make became one of the finest country records of all time.

Evelyn Mendez's father never stopped playing music. That obsession became The Spins Vinyl Café — coffee, tamales, and weekly vinyl themes in the old Sugar Browns building on 19th Street.

Spencer Gaydon has been collecting records since junior high. In 2024, he finally opened Hub City Records on Boston Avenue — Lubbock's collector-focused vinyl shop for punk, metal, and experimental.

Ralph DeWitt opened Ralph's Records across from Texas Tech in 1980. Owner Doug Stapp started working there at 16. Now he owns it, plays guitar, and keeps Lubbock spinning.

Angela Strehli was born in Lubbock in 1945. At Texas Tech, she mastered harmonica and bass, co-founding the Fabulous Rockets blues band.

Born in Lubbock in 1940, Delbert McClinton grew up to master blues harmonica—and once gave John Lennon a lesson that changed rock and roll history.

Bobby Keys grew up in the orbit of Lubbock, Texas, befriended Buddy Holly as a teenager, and hit the road at fifteen — launching a career that would take his saxophone to the top of rock and roll.