Everything’s big in Texas, including its perception of itself. But to be fair, it’s practically a country unto itself, from the size to its idiosyncratic manners and behaviors. So it’s only natural that Texas’ cities and towns should become inspirations as well. A place that big and wide is gonna have a lot of different and peculiar vibes; these songs capture that spirit.
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“El Paso,” Marty Robbins (1959)
Marty Robbins was already a budding pop star when he wrote “El Paso,” having crossed over in 1957 with “A White Sport Coat,” which was his third No. 1 country hit and went to No. 2 on the pop charts.
While continuing to score country hits, none of his subsequent singles had done as well on the pop charts and his label, Columbia Records, was worried whether an album of songs about gunfighters would help his profile. They paid for Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs (featuring “El Paso”) on the condition it be cut in a single daylong session. As a result the musical approach is spare and direct.
Robbins conceived of the song on this third time through El Paso on his way home to Phoenix from Nashville. The song came all at once, and Robbins didn’t know how it would end until the last of its 14 verses, finishing it in the backseat while his wife drove them home.
The song was the first country song to go to No. 1 on the pop charts, and it helped Robbins win the inaugural Grammy Award in country music. The song’s length (over four minutes) overthrew conventional wisdom and opened the door to longer radio hits.
“Amarillo by Morning,” George Strait (1982)
Like many of his hits, George Strait didn’t write this song, but there’s artistry in the choice and execution. The original was composed by Terry Stafford and Paul Fraser. Stafford, who wrote “Suspicion” for Elvis Presley, was returning to Amarillo, Texas, from San Antonio, where his band had played rodeo.
Stafford had just seen an ad for a company that promised to deliver your package anywhere overnight, even to Amarillo. Stafford called Fraser with whom he was writing a movie soundtrack and agreed to work on the song the next morning. But Fraser was juiced and wrote it at his kitchen table in an hour. They finalized it the next morning. Stafford gave it full ’70s country pop treatment with a xylophone and choir of backing singers. It reached No. 31 on the country charts.
Strait covered this song on his 1982 second album, Straight from the Heart, in a spare, straightforward manner that doesn’t overpower the sentiment with orchestration. It went to No. 4 for Strait. While he has plenty of No. 1s, this is Strait’s signature song, in part because it embodies his understated but evocative neo-traditionalist approach.
“Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love),” Waylon Jennings with Willie Nelson (1977)
There was once probably a neanderthal living in a cave near the outskirts of Dinosaur Way yearning for a simpler, less-anxious time; the complaint’s that old. The characters in this song are burnt out on the better life, and suggest getting back to basics might just the panacea, er, solution. Ironically or fittingly, per your perspective, neither the song’s writers, Chip Moman and Bobby Emmons, nor Waylon Jennings himself had ever been to Luckenbach, Texas, when they wrote/sang it, so this simpler life they are singing about truly was a fantasy.
Willie Nelson’s contribution was unplanned; he happened about the studio that day and Jennings roped Nelson into singing on it, perhaps so he didn’t feel as self-conscious dropping his own name in the chorus. But he couldn’t have minded too much, he had another hit the next year with the more self-reverential, mock complaint, “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand?” Jennings never much cared for the song, telling his drummer to remind him “when I’m picking singles from now on that I got to sing that motherf–ker every night.”
Meanwhile, Luckenbach, which was little more than two old wooden buildings in Texas Hill Country—a general store and a dance hall—has become a country music thirst trap for tourists far and wide.
“Corpus Christi Bay,” Robert Earl Keen (1993)
Robert Earl Keen’s father worked in the oil industry and it’s something that appears in his song. Keen himself was a roughneck for four summers around college and a derrick man the last summer. “Not that I’d recommend it,” Keen told the Reflector in 2013.
The song is largely autobiographical. “My brother lived down there and it was like we never slept and this job was like a seven-day-a-week job. We didn’t even have a day off,” he said. “Everyday I’d head off to work and everyday I’d come home to go to bed. My brother would say ‘Man, you can’t do that—we’ve got to go out. Be a man.’ He’d intimidate me or goad me into this stuff and we’d go out and tear up the town. It was wild, funny and scary.”
Keen, 67, retired from touring last September in an effort to go out on his own terms. He still plans to write songs, probably record some more music and perhaps play an occasional show, but he’s given up on the “music career” aspect. He recently released a box set with a two-LP gatefold album, a DVD chronicling the making of the album, 32-page songbook and 92-page graphic novel, though the songs were written before the retirement announcement.
“Dallas,” Jimmy Dale Gilmore (1972)
This song was written by the legendary Flatlanders, who formed in 1972 around Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock. Each had a different personality and musical predilection but they melded their talents during the several years they were together to create an album that forged a template for a style of music that didn’t yet exist. Their efforts are now seen as the first stirrings of Americana, uniting the rock, folk, and country impulses around a single, wide-ranging sound.
The album was forgotten and rereleased 18 years later by Rounder Records in the wake of cowpunk’s rise and fall. “Dallas” was the original album’s promotional single, but when it failed to do anything the entire release was scrapped and only a limited run of 8-track tapes were made to fulfill contractual obligations.
The song was conceived by Gilmore on a flight into Dallas. “The line just presented itself to me. I had all those mixed feelings about the city and the song just came gradually. I’ve never felt that I’ve got it down right though. I’ve always been a perfectionist about that song. Joe also recorded it several times,” said Gilmore in the liner notes. “I’ve had a strange relationship with the song. I’ve had periods when I wish I’d never written it, then I’ve rediscovered it, looking at it through different eyes.”
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Photo by Andrew Putler/Redferns
