Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

Honoring Nanci Griffith today. She was an Austin treasure that never completely got her just "due" in the music world. From Wikipedia:
Nanci Caroline Griffith (July 6, 1953 – August 13, 2021) was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter.[1] She appeared many times on the PBS music program Austin City Limits starting in 1985 (season 10). In 1994 she won a Grammy Award for the album Other Voices, Other Rooms.[2]
Griffith toured with various other artists, including Buddy Holly's band, the Crickets; John Prine; Iris DeMent; Suzy Bogguss; Judy Collins and The Everly Brothers.[3] Griffith recorded duets with many artists, among them Emmylou Harris, Mary Black, John Prine, Don McLean, Jimmy Buffett, Dolores Keane, Willie Nelson, Adam Duritz (singer of Counting Crows), the Chieftains, John Stewart; and Darius Rucker (lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish). Griffith had a backing band which she referred to as the Blue Moon Orchestra.
(more information can be found there).
Have a listen to a couple of my favorites:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GK462XnRjQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTBzGjp6JDM

Jake

[Shakey Jake]

Today's post comes from the Traces of Texas Facebook group:
Traces of Texas reader Woody Franke thoughtfully submitted this great photo of Curly Fox and Texas Ruby, two TV performers in Houston. Says Woody: "Growing up in Houston in the 40s and 50s, KPRC TV (Channel 2) had local entertainment in the afternoons with a 30 minute music show by Curly Fox and Texas Ruby. Here are a couple of photos that they would send on request. I wonder how many of your followers are as old as me and remember them. They were backed by a three-piece band that were rumored to be ex-cons from the Huntsville Prison. I don't know if that was true or not."

[Shakey Jake]

I went to see Carlos Santana last evening. My son purchased ticket for us to go. The Arc Angles performed before Carlos. They're a group formed by the remnants of "Double Trouble" after Stevie Vaughan's death. Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon were part of Double Trouble and the original Arc Angels. Tommy quit playing with them years ago. Doyle Bramhall II and Charlie Sexton are still part of the group. They disbanded for a number of years because of Doyle's addition to heroin. I was surprised, and I don't think they've played together since 2012 or so. Earth, Wind and Fire was supposed to be the group performing before Carlos, but something must have transpired for the change. Anyway, they just played the same songs on their "Living the Dream" album from around 2009. They didn't have any new material at all which makes me think they just put the group together at the last minute to fill a void.
Here's the setlist from Santana's concert:
1.
Soul Sacrifice
2.
Jin-go-lo-ba
(Babatunde Olatunji cover)
3.
Evil Ways
(Willie Bobo cover)
4.
Black Magic Woman / Gypsy Queen
5.
Oye cómo va
(Tito Puente cover)
6.
Europa (Earth's Cry, Heaven's Smile)
7.
Everybody's Everything
8.
Ain't No Sunshine
(Bill Withers cover)
9.
Venus
(Shocking Blue cover)
10.
The Game of Love
11.
Joy
12.
Roadhouse Blues
(The Doors cover)
13.
Put Your Lights On
(with Orianthi)
14.
Corazón espinado
(with Orianthi)
15.
Maria Maria
(with Orianthi)
16.
Foo Foo
Encore:
17.
Are You Ready
(The Chambers Brothers cover) (with extended drum solo)
18.
Smooth

[Shakey Jake]

The small town of Cut N' Shoot was on the news last week because of the shooting and manhunt following the Cleveland, Tx murders. It has a strange name and the story of how it got it's name is equally strange (if you believe it). It is believed that the town of Cut and Shoot's name originated from a community conflict in July, 1912 that nearly resulted in violence. The exact cause of the dispute is uncertain, as there are different versions of the story. Some accounts suggest that it revolved around the design of a new steeple for the town's only church, while others claim that it centered on conflicting land claims among church members or the issue of who had the right to preach at the church. As per reports, a young boy who was present during the confrontation exclaimed, "I'm going to cut around the corner and shoot through the bushes in a minute!" The boy's statement stuck in the minds of the locals and eventually became the name of the town.

[markiver54]

Thanks for the Santana review Jake. I hope you and your son enjoyed the concert.

[Shakey Jake]

Today's entry comes per TSHA:
On this day in 1930, an angry mob stormed the Grayson County courthouse in Sherman and lynched an African-American farm hand accused of raping a white woman. The ensuing riot was one of the earliest and worst examples of racial violence during the Great Depression, and initiated a flurry of similar incidents in Texas. Despite the efforts of a small detachment of Texas Rangers, including the legendary Frank Hamer, the mob burned the courthouse and most of the town's black business section, prompting Governor Dan Moody to impose martial law. Eventually, fourteen men were indicted on various charges, though lynching was not among them. By October 1931, only two of the fourteen had been convicted, one for rioting and the other for arson.

[Shakey Jake]

Today's entry comes from the T of T Facebook group:
Boz Skaggs is touring again. He'll be in Texas for three concerts in June. Boz, who is 78 years old, was born in Ohio but moved to Plano as a boy. He learned his first instrument, the cello, at age 9, then received a scholarship to attend a private school in Dallas, St. Mark's School of Texas.
At St. Mark's he met Steve Miller, who helped him to learn the guitar at age 12. A classmate wanted to give Scaggs a "weird" nickname. This started out as "Bosley", then "Boswell" and "Bosworth". The name was later shortened to Boz. In 1959, he became the vocalist for Miller's band, The Marksmen. After graduation in 1962, the pair later attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison together, playing in blues bands. Boz didn't get his solo career going until 1969, which is when he recorded this AMAZING piece of music with Duane Allman and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm section. Everything here blows me away. The arrangement is fantastic, the horns, naturally, are exquisite, and the piano and organ playing send chills up my spine. And then, of course, Duane freakin' Allman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv60Dz9hUPo

[Shakey Jake]

Another goodie form T of T Facebook group:
I hope y'all find this as interesting as I did. This photo was sent in by Traces of Texas reader Chris Hogg. It is of four unidentified graves that he ran across a few years ago while working on a ranch in the oil fields of southeastern Howard County.
The graves belong to a woman and three children who died of cholera while traveling with a wagon train in the mid 1800's. Their names have long since faded from the sandstone used as headstones and nobody knows who they were. But that hasn't kept the ranch from maintaining the graves for well over 100 years now. They built a fence around it and they keep the weeds down.
Just Texans being Texans. Makes me proud to live here. It kind of brings a little lump to my throat, thinking of these people and the way they lived and the suffering and how they've been cared for all these years by folks who never knew them. Thanks to Chris for sending this to me!

[Shakey Jake]

"My time just had not come." That's the way [Texas Ranger] Captain John H. Rogers explains why he was able to walk into the muzzle of a double-barrel shotgun in the hands of a desperado who had it leveled at him and cocked, threatening to shoot if the ranger captain took another step.
It was at Cotulla in the early days. A saloonkeeper had been in the habit of shooting up the town and doing as he pleased. He resented the intrusion of the rangers. Rogers' company had been there but a short time when the man got drunk, took several shots at another man who was riding away from the saloon, shot up the town and then defied arrest. The saloonkeeper loaded a double-barrel shotgun with buckshot, cocked both barrels and said he would kill anybody who tried to arrest him. "I looked in the door," said Captain Rogers, "and saw him with his gun to his shoulder. He had it leveled on me and both barrels cocked. My first thought was that maybe I had best not try to go in the front way. "I naturally figured that he might shoot and that I had better try to get in the back way. But then I realized that such a step would be showing weakness and that it might cause trouble. There was but one thing to do and that was go in and get him right then and there. He had been getting by with his gun play too much and it would not do to let him think he had anybody bluffed."
Old rangers tell the rest of the story. "Praying" John Rogers walked right in to the muzzle of the gun that was leveled at his head and told the "bad man" he knew better than to shoot. "You have been getting by with this stuff too long. You'll have to cut it out,'' the captain was saying as he walked straight to the bar behind which the man had fortified himself. Captain Rogers then caught the gun by the barrel, raised it away from his head and caught the man by the collar. Come out of here come with me," he commanded and the fact that Captain Rogers is living today proves that the gunman "came out."
----- San Antonio Light, September 10, 1925

[Shakey Jake]

On October 19, 1918, at the age of eighty-three, Alejo Perez Jr. died in San Antonio. Perez was less than a year old when his mother took him with her into the Alamo at the beginning of the siege in February 1836. He was almost certainly the youngest person in the mission during the battle and on the day of his death was the last survivor of the Battle of the Alamo.
Here's a photo of Alejo Perez at roughly the time of the Civil War.