Going back in the archives to find something on Bob Dylan to post on his 73rd birthday. This was written in advance of the best Dylan show I will ever see- Nov. 1995 at the Austin Music Hall- when he called up such Austinites as Doug Sahm, Ray Benson, Charlie Sexton and, maybe, opening act […]
From 2014 Bill Martin, who married into the Franklins, Austin’s first family of gospel, delivered good news. The night before East Austin’s legendary gospel announcer and promoter Bill “The Mailman” Martin was laid to rest at age 81, there was a musical memorial at the St. James Missionary Baptist Church on MLK pastored by his […]
By Michael Corcoran originally published in 2001 Charles “Lucky” Attal looks back to 1959 and wonders if his life would have been different if he’d happened upon that garage sale on East 11th Street just a few minutes later and the bowl marked 50 cents had already been sold. Would he have gone into the […]
by Michael Corcoran Gilbert Askey left Austin for good at age 17 in 1942, but the former Motown arranger, who received an Oscar nomination for his work with Diana Ross on “Lady Sings the Blues” and had a part in “discovering” the Jackson 5, said Austin has never left him. I interviewed the trumpet man, […]
by Michael Corcoran www.artslaboraustin.com Before SXSW there was NMS, Manhattan’s New Music Seminar. It got so big in the ‘80s that the New Yorkers decided to do a little spinoff in Austin, Texas, yee-haw! But they got cold feet in January 1987 and gave their blessing to an Austin group headed by Roland Swenson, supported […]
Last week, I wrote this story about Charlie’s Playhouse. Which led to my discovery of photos by Neal Douglass of a female impersonators’ show at an unnamed East Austin bar. Today, I went to the Austin History Center and went through a city directory for 1957. Here are all the bars I could find in […]
Ernest Tubb, the father-protector of pure Texas honky-tonk music, died of emphysema Sept. 9, 1984, but since he created a spirit, he gets to live forever. On Feb. 9, the media will turn enmasse to acknowlege the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ culture-changing first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. But let’s also mark the […]
The sign outside Railroad BBQ in Manchaca says, simply, “Live Blues.” It’s Tuesday night just past 7:30 and a family of four chucks their Styrofoam cups on the way out of the smoke-perfumed establishment. Outside, the father says, “that was pretty cool”. “Yeah, that guy was good,” adds the daughter, about 20. They check the sign on the way out for a name and then drive away, unaware that they’d just been eating brisket and sausage to Muddy Waters’ former harmonica player Paul Oscher.
by Michael Corcoran “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned” – W.B. Yeats, “The Second Coming.” NEW YORK CITY — It’s a long Tuesday, this 21st of April, 1998, which begins for Fastball with a 9 a.m. live acoustic appearance on some stupid radio station on Long Island. In […]
OASIS `BE HERE NOW’ (Epic) **** Even when they were so unknown that they had to feud with Blur to get noticed, Manchester, England, band OASIS — led by a pair of uncouth party yobs named Gallagher — laid claim to the title of the best band on the planet. On their third album, “Be […]
