Traces of Tx (today)

[Shakey Jake]

I've posted about this feud before but on this day in 1870, in a particularly violent chapter of the infamous Sutton-Taylor Feud, a detachment of Texas State Police under the command of Jack Helm arrested Henry and Will Kelly of the Taylor faction on a trivial charge and shot them. The Sutton-Taylor Feud, the longest and bloodiest in Texas, grew out of the bad times following the Civil War. The Taylors were descendants of Josiah Taylor, a Virginian who settled near Cuero in DeWitt County. His sons, Pitkin and Creed Taylor, and their sons, nephews, in-laws, and friends were the mainstay of that faction. The other party, originally centering on the Texas State Police, took its name from William E. Sutton, a native of Fayette County who had moved to DeWitt County. The feud began either in 1866 or 1868, depending on which actions are considered part of the quarrel. Women of the Kelly family witnessed the 1870 murders of Henry and Will Kelly, and their story caused such a public outcry that Gov. Edmund J. Davis could not ignore the outrage. Helm was suspended in October and dismissed in December, but killings associated with the feud were recorded as late as 1876. More about Helm can be found here: https://www.legendsofamerica.com/jack-h ... as-lawman/

[Shakey Jake]

On this day in 1990, Texas blues musician Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash on the way to Chicago from a concert in Alpine Valley, East Troy, Wisconsin. Vaughan was born in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas on October 3, 1954. His exposure to music began in his childhood, as he watched his big brother, Jimmie, play guitar. Stevie's fascination with the blues drove him to teach himself to play the guitar before he was an adolescent. By the time he was in high school, he was staying up all night playing guitar in clubs in Deep Ellum, a popular entertainment district in Dallas. Vaughan moved to Austin in the 1970s, and by the early 1980s he and his band, Double Trouble, had a solid regional reputation. His career took off in the 1980s, and his work eventually garnered four Grammy Awards. Vaughan was killed at the height of his career. More than 1,500 people, including industry giants such as Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Wonder, attended his memorial service in Dallas.

One of my personal favorite albums is a Stevie Ray and Albert King recorded in Toronto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7A12LuA8-U

[Shakey Jake]

Lordy, I don't know how I missed this. It's only a week late but here it is anyway! (I have to add that Patsy was my first crush when I was about 7.)
This Day In Music Aug 21 1961 - American country singer Patsy Cline records then-struggling songwriter Willie Neslon's song "Crazy", in Nashville, Tennessee.
"Crazy" is a song written by Willie Nelson and popularized by country singer Patsy Cline in 1961. Nelson wrote the song while living in Houston, working for Pappy Daily's label D Records. He was also a radio DJ and performed in clubs. Nelson then moved to Nashville, Tennessee, working as a writer for Pamper Music. Through Hank Cochran, the song reached Patsy Cline. After her original recording and release, Cline's version reached number two on Billboard's Hot Country Singles, also crossing to the pop chart as a top 10 single.
Cline's version is considered a country music standard and, in 1996, became the all-time most played song in jukeboxes in the United States. "Crazy" was covered by many artists; different versions reached the charts in a variety of genres. The song was featured in television shows, while many publications have included it in their all-time best songs lists. The Library of Congress inducted Cline's version into the National Recording Registry in 2003.

[markiver54]

Great song. I love her version.

[Shakey Jake]

Great song. I love her version.

I admit that I was in love with her when I was 7 or so. I made my mom buy her records and play them for me. I wasn't allowed to use phonograph. We had one of those Magnavox televisions with the am/fm radio and phonograph combinations. I still have all her recordings on CD and on my ipods. It's a bit funny for some when they hear Godsmack then Patsy when I shuffle the playlist.
Jake

[markiver54]

[Shakey Jake]

From the T of T Facebook group:
Marlin, Texas was somewhat of a mecca for major league baseball spring training after the turn of the last century. The Chicago White Sox were there, and so were the St. Louis Cardinals, the Cincinnati Reds and the Philadelphia Athletics. But the New York Giants remained in Marlin the longest, holding their training camp there for 11 seasons. Here we see All-time baseball pitching great Christy Matthewson warming up at the New York Giants spring training camp in 1916. Matthewson is, of course, in the MLB hall of fame, having won 30 games three straight seasons and being among the most dominant pitchers in baseball history, ranking in the all-time top 10 in several key pitching categories, including wins, shutouts, and earned run average.

[Shakey Jake]

A "two-fer" day. I was thinking of Clovishound and his macro journey when I saw this. Here's another post from the T of T Facebook group:
Texas is beautiful in many aspects. Today's Beautiful Texas photo comes from Traces of Texas reader Ben Roeder, who was nice enough to send in this photo of a praying mantis on a support post on his mother-in-law's place near Jefferson, Texas.

[Shakey Jake]

Huddie William Ledbetter, better known as "Leadbelly." Huddie was one of the most influential blues musicians of all time and, as such, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though he was born in Louisiana he spent a good portion of his life in Texas, in part because he was incarcerated here on several occasions. He received his first musical instrument, an accordion, as a gift from an uncle after he had moved to Texas with his father and mother, and he played on the streets of Dallas with such legends as Blind Lemon Jefferson. His signature instrument was the 12-string guitar. He was convicted of murder and while imprisoned at Sugar Land he first heard the song "Midnight Special." While at Sugar Land he impressed Texas governor Pat Neff and was pardoned after serving the minimum sentence of seven years. You can read more about him at various places on the internet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IjPmIEgeIU

[Shakey Jake]

Here's more information on Sugar Land's Central Unit. It was closed in 2011 and sale of the property was finalized in 2016 with the idea of expansion for the Sugar Land Airport. I toured the Central Unit while it was still in operation while attending the Sugar Land Citizens Police Academy back in 2009. At that time, it housed prisoners who were about to be released from the system:

Following the Civil War when Texas could not afford to keep its prisoners in Huntsville, the state sought to lease convicts to planters, said Theresa Jach, a Houston Community College history professor who studied Texas prison farms. In 1878, convicts from across the state were leased to Imperial Sugar owners Col. Edward H. Cunningham and Col. Littleberry Ambrose Ellis, according to “The Texas Department of Justice’s Central Unit Main Building and its Historical Significance” by Don Hudson. The Central Unit received $75,000 from the leasing deal while Cunningham and Ellis could also lease out prisoners to other planters, Jach said.

"In 1880, [Cunningham and Ellis] had over 1,000 convicts that they were working on their own plantations,” she said. “Then there were about 1,100 more that they were leasing out to other planters, so they’re making tons and tons of money doing this.” Jach said the conditions were deplorable, the work was hard and prisoners died as a result. The property includes a cemetery for inmates without families to claim them. She said prisoners were separated by work ability and race, but it was mostly black prisoners incarcerated for petty theft who were working the fields, Jach said.
“The average lifespan of a convict leased on a sugar plantation is about seven years, so it’s really brutal,” she said. “There’s a lot of horrible mistreatment going on and so the state starts to think, ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we owned the farms, and we worked the convicts and grew the sugar and make all of the money?’”

Cunningham and Ellis sold the Imperial farm to the state in 1908, and sugar from the land was processed at Imperial Sugar on Hwy. 90. The state constructed the Central Unit Prison’s Main Building that stands today in 1932 for $350,000. Until then, inmates lived in out buildings that had vermin and often flooded, according to Hudson. Over time, prison work moved away from agriculture as a means of rehabilitation and focused on vocational endeavors beginning in the 1960s. “Convicts worked from ‘can till can’t’ in extremely filthy and brutal environments until the 1960s,” said Sandra Rogers, curator of collections at the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville. “This was true for Blue Ridge [in Missouri City], Retrieve, Ramsey, Darrington, Clemens, Eastham, Harlem [now Jester State Prison farm] and Ferguson farms.”