Texas and The West Coast
The towering figure of West Coast blues may be guitarist T-Bone Walker, famous for the song "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad)", a relocated Texan who had made his first recordings in the late 1920s. During the early 1940s Walker moved to Los Angeles, where he recorded many enduring sides for Capitol, Black & White, and Imperial. Walker was a crucial figure in the electrification and urbanization of the blues, probably doing more to popularize the use of electric guitar in the form than anyone else. Much of his material had a distinct jazzy jump blues feel, an influence that would characterize much of the most influential blues to emerge from California in the 1940s and 1950s. Other Texas bluesmen followed: Pianist/songwriter Amos Milburn, singer Percy Mayfield, famous for the song "Hit the Road Jack", and Charles Brown moved to Los Angeles. Guitarist Pee Wee Crayton divided his time between Los Angeles and San Francisco, while Lowell Fulson, from Texas by way of Oklahoma, moved to Oakland.
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Famous quotes containing the words texas, west and/or coast:
“During the cattle drives, Texas cowboy music came into national significance. Its practical purpose is well known—it was used primarily to keep the herds quiet at night, for often a ballad sung loudly and continuously enough might prevent a stampede. However, the cowboy also sang because he liked to sing.... In this music of the range and trail is “the grayness of the prairies, the mournful minor note of a Texas norther, and a rhythm that fits the gait of the cowboy’s pony.””
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Frequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words “ANGLO SAXON” on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)