Texas! Music Center will tune into musicians, fans, rare collections.
Over the years, the Dallas/Fort Worth music scene has forged cycles of creative genius. At this influential crossroads, many popular music styles were shaped: jazz, country, blues, rockabilly, gospel, Tejano, honky-tonk and Western swing. The future Texas! Music Center at Fair Park will enshrine this phenomenon and other major moments in Texas sounds.
Larry Taylor represents a group of volunteers with a deep appreciation for Texas music. They recognized the need for a venue to tell the story of the Dallas area’s world-class musical heritage. “If you trace the beginnings of rock, country, jazz and blues, they evolved from common roots,” he explains. “And by nature, Dallas’ urban boomtown status in the early 20th century was fertile ground for producing new styles of music. The mission of the Texas! Music Center is to preserve our cultural history, educate, entertain and connect with the community.”
The museum, which plans to open in Spring 2008, will be located in the former Hall of Religions Building…near the Magnolia Lounge and African American Museum. Look for interactive exhibits, actual instruments of music pioneers, multimedia experiences, live concerts and musician meet & greets. The Texas! Music Center will also be a godsend for music aficionados who will finally have a place to showcase their collections.
High cotton rhythms.
This musical legacy speaks volumes about our cultural history. Much of the early music evolved as a result of Southern, Western and Latin cultures mixing together, something that was unique to Texas. Cotton workers came to Dallas on their days and nights off, notes Taylor. “As a railroading and transportation hub, Dallas stitched the region together. The emergence of radio and recording technology further accelerated a cross-pollination of musical styles. The Deep Ellum area, home to a large African-American community, and downtown Dallas, were key hot spots.”
The innovators who emerged from this collection of diverse musicians expanded the musical frontiers of the 1920s and 1930s. “Blind Lemmon” Jefferson of Couchman, TX recorded standards like “Matchbox Blues” (1926) and became the first commercially successful African-American male blues musician.
“Chuck Berry is often regarded as the godfather of Rock & Roll,” states Mr. Taylor. “But he’d be the first to say he picked up his famous stage antics from T-Bone Walker of Dallas, who first popularized the electric guitar for the blues.” Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys—with their horns, amplified guitars and falsetto hollers—turned music on its ear in the 1930s. And Ernest Tubb from Crisp, TX recorded “Walkin’ the Floor Over You” in Dallas, launching honky tonk music, the first type of country music to feature the electric guitar.
More Texas greats emerge.
The list goes on, including Gene Autry (“The Singing Cowboy”) and Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson, who recorded in Dallas in the late 1930s. Johnson’s songs so influenced Eric Clapton that he came to Dallas in 2004 to record at the same site that Johnson used, at 508 Park Avenue. When Clapton selected Dallas as the site for his Crossroads Guitar Festival he said, “The musical history of Dallas, Texas, and my personal relationship with the city made it a natural fit for this get-together.”
And who can argue with the impact these Texans have had on music: Erykah Badu, Edie Brickell, The Dixie Chicks, Don Henley, Trini Lopez, Lyle Lovett, Narcisco Martinez, Steve Miller, Charlie Pride, LeAnn Rimes, Selena, Boz Skaggs, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Willie Nelson, ZZ Top and many others. Classical music has been broadly represented by institutions such as the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, while the piano mastery of Fort Worth’s Van Cliburn melted barriers during the Cold War. Women in music, such as Cindy Walker (who transformed country music as one of the genre’s most prolific songwriters) and Norah Jones, will also be showcased at the museum.
As the Texas! Music Center works with fundraising, you can almost hear the rich rhythms of the past and present echoing around Fair Park. In a place already inhabited by the Smirnoff Music Centre, Band Shell and the Fair Park Music Hall, the museum will surely hit the right notes for every type of music lover.
For more information, visit www.texasmusiccenter.org.
