10 Best Songs About Texas Cities: The Authoritative List

I love lists of best things, although I usually disagree with the list compilers' recommendations. Over the last few days, I perused several lists, and all were flawed.

Inside Hook posted a list of "72 Books Every Man Should Read." I scanned it twice and realized I hadn't read any of them. Nor do I plan to. That list is no good to me.

Food and Wine published a list of the top ten barbecue restaurants, but only two were in Texas, so that list is bogus. 

And today, the New York Times presented a list of the 21st century's 10 best movies, and The Guard, starring Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle, wasn't on it. So you know that list is total bullshit.

Not long ago, I compiled a list of the ten best songs about Texas, and today, I'm releasing my list of the ten best songs about Texas towns.

1. Dallas from a DC 9 at Night, written by Jimmie Dale Gilmore, is the stand-alone best song about a Texas city. I lived in Dallas for six years and love the town (great hamburgers), but Jimmie Dale perfectly captures a distinct coldness in the Dallasites. Here's a sample:

Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes
A steel and concrete soul with a warm-hearted love disguise
A rich man who tends to believe in his own lies
Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eyes

2. San Antonio Rose, the signature song of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, captures the magic of Texas Swing music during the 1930s when the people of Texas danced to forget about the miseries of the Great Depression. Patsy Cline's version is probably the most famous, but the song has been recorded by a host of artists, including Pat Boone, Clint Eastwood, and Bing Crosby. The lyrics have a mystical quality:

Deep within my heart lies a melody
A song of old San Antone
Where in dreams I live with a memory
Beneath the stars all alone

3. 11 Months and 29 Days, a Johnny Paycheck tune, tells the tale of a guy who gets arrested in Austin and sentenced to a year in the Huntsville penitentiary. His advice to his friends is timeless:

Keep the Lone Star cold
And the dance floor hot while I'm gone
Keep the Lone Star cold
And the dance floor hot while I'm gone, hey now
Keep your hands off my woman
I ain't gonna be gone that long

4. Telephone Road, an ode to Houston's honky tonk district, may be my favorite Texas song. Back in the day, Telephone Road was where the refinery workers went to dance and drink beer. During my sad sojourn at the University of Houston, I often ate lunch at a Telephone Road hamburger joint or Mexican restaurant. Nothing like a plate of enchiladas and a Modelo to cheer you up after being waterboarded at a faculty meeting.

Steve Earle's lyrics capture the vitality of Houston's blue-collar culture:

Come on, come on
Come on, let's go
This ain't Louisiana
Your mama won't know
Come on, come on
Come on, let's go
Here everybody's rockin'
Out on Telephone Road

5. El Paso, one of Marty Robbins's famous ballads, is about a cowboy who gets in a gunfight over "Wicked Felina," whom he loves unaccountably. The cowboy shoots his rival, rides off into the Badlands of New Mexico, and then returns to El Paso to die from a bullet from a posse member's rifle. All ends well, however, because Felina finds him and he dies in her arms.

A sample from Marty Robbins's baroque and bathetic lyrics:

From out of nowhere, Felina has found me kissing my cheek as she kneels by my side 
Cradled by two loving arms that I'll die for. One little kiss and Felina, goodbye

6. Corpus Christi Bay, a profound song written by Robert Earle Keane, is a story about a young oil rig worker who can't stop drinking. He carouses with his brother for a time, but his brother wises up after his wife and children leave him. Several people have covered this song, but perhaps Johnny Rodriguez sings it best. Here is a snippet from the song's depressing story:

[My brother] came to Corpus just this weekend.
It was good to see him here.
He said he finally gave up drinking.  

Then he ordered me a beer

If I could live my life all over
It wouldn't matter anyway.
'Cause I never could stay sober
On the Corpus Christi Bay

7. Amarillo by Morning, a song about what a man gives up to be a rodeo bull rider, is most widely known as a George Strait song. I love this song, which is a cautionary tale about misplaced priorities:

Amarillo by mornin'
Up from San Antone
Everything that I got
It's just what I've got on
When that Sun is high
In that Texas sky
I'll be buckin' at the county fair
Amarillo by mornin'
Amarillo, I'll be there

8. Home in San Antone is on my list because San Antonio, the oldest Texas city, deserves two top-10 songs. Although others have sung it, Home in San Antone is a Bob Wills song articulating the genial patriotism most Texans feel for their communities. These lyrics assure us that we'll be okay, even if we're broke, so long as we own a little piece of San Antonio real estate:

Haven't got a worry, haven't got a care
Haven't got a thing to call my own
Tho' I'm out of money, I'm a millionaire.
I still have my home in San Antone.

When I greet my neighbor with a howdy all,
I'm wealthy as a king upon a throne.
You can have your mansion or a cottage small
I'll just take my home in San Antone

9. Cross the Brazos at Waco, like Marty Robbins's El Paso, is a song about a gunman who tries to give up a violent life to be with his sweetheart, but repents too late. He promises his darling that he'll ride from Waco to San Antonio and arrive at dawn, which is impossible since the towns are a hundred miles apart:

Cross the Brazos at Waco
Ride hard,and I'll make it by dawn
Cross the Brazos at Waco.
I'm safe when I reach San Antone

10. Fort Worth Blues, by Steve Earle, is the last song on my Top 10 list. 

Amsterdam was always good for grieving,
 And London never fails to leave me blue.
Paris never was my kinda town,
So I walked around
With the Ft. Worth Blues

Did Steve Earle really mean it when he said Paris was never his kind of town? Maybe he was referring to Paris, Texas.

If so, I agree with him. I suffered a stroke in April 2023 at the Whataburger in Paris, Texas. Very disagreeable event, but if you have to have a stroke, the Paris, Texas Whataburger store is the right place to have it.

 

Don't go hating on Tulsa just because President Trump willl speak there in a few hours

President Donald Trump will hold a rally in Tulsa this evening, his first rally since the coronavirus pandemic descended on the United States.

Trump's media critics often mention the fact that Tulsa is the site of one of America's worst race riots. Indeed, on June 1, 1921, white rioters rampaged through Tulsa's Greenwood District, an affluent African American neighborhood, and destroyed or damaged more than 1,000 homes and businesses. Between 100 and 300 people were killed, and 6,000 African Americans were interned by law enforcement authorities. The Tulsa race massacre may, in fact, have been the worst race riot in American history.

Trump's media enemies insinuate that Trump picked Tulsa for his first post-coronavirus rally because he is a racist, and he finds Tulsa's history of racist violence appealing.  But to say such a thing, or even to imply it, is a slander on Tulsa, one of MidAmerica's most charming and lovely cities.

Tulsa was transformed during eastern Oklahoma's oil boom of the 1920s and 1930s, which brought enormous wealth to the city and a construction boom. As anyone knows who has visited Tulsa, the city is the home of an extensive collection of Art Deco buildings. It is truly a museum of early twentieth-century architecture.

Oil wealth also made possible the establishment of two nationally acclaimed museums: The Philbrook and the Gilcrease. The Philbrook Museum is located in what was once the home of oil magnate Waite Phillip and his wife Genevieve and contains an impressive and eclectic collection of art.

The Gilcrease Museum houses perhaps the world's most extensive collection of western American art. Thomas Gilcrease, another oil magnate, donated his own art collection to form the foundation of the museum's treasurers. Born of a mixed-race family (Scotch-Irish, French, and Creek), Gilcrease was enrolled in the Creek tribe when he was nine years old.

And Tulsa has other cultural treasures. The Bob Dylan papers and the Woodie Guthrie papers are housed in the city.  Both collections were purchased by the George Kaiser Foundation.

Over the years, Tulsa has been the home of countless famous actors, sports figures, and musicians. Tony Randall--part of The Odd Couple, is from Tulsa, along with Time Blake Nelson, the actor, screenwriter, and movie director.

Tim Blake Nelson deserves special mention. He is best know for his role in Brother Where Art Thou, but he also directed The Grey Zone, perhaps the best movie ever made about the Holocaust.

Before closing my paean to Tulsa, I must also mention that Tulsa is the home of Cain's Ballroom, where Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys performed both live and on the radio during the 1930s. Cain's Ballroom helped popularize a new form of American music that blended classic swing with western themes and melodies. Even today, Cain's Ballroom is known as the Carnegie Hall of western swing.

Why am I going on so long about Tulsa?  Perhaps it is because I grew up in rural Oklahoma and always considered Tulsa as Oklahoma's most beautiful, gracious, and culturally rich city.  I still feel that way. So--whatever happens tonight at the Trump rally, please don't let the evening's events tarnish one of the great cities of America's flyover country.

Bob Wills and Texas Playboys performed in Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma.