90-second Music Review: My Top Ten List of Songs about Texas

 Texas Monthly recently did a tremendous public service when it published a list of 71 songs titled "Texas, " ranking them from worst to best. I consider myself an authority on Texas music, yet I was astonished by the number of songs on the list, most released in the last 25 years.

In this same civic spirit, I am listing the best ten songs about Texas. If you are a recent immigrant to the Lone Star State, I urge you to memorize these songs because they will be on the test when you die and seek admittance to Texas Heaven.

1. "Waltz Across Texas," sung by Ernest Tubb, is undoubtedly the Texans' favorite song. When I hear it, I always envision a cowboy and his sweetheart dancing from Beaumont to El Paso, only stopping at Buc-ee's occasionally, where they can always count on a clean bathroom.

2. My second favorite song is "The Eyes of Texas," the University of Texas school song. The lyrics are simple but stirring. 

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the livelong day.
The Eyes of Texas are upon you,
You cannot get away.
Do not think you can escape them
At night or early in the morn --
The Eyes of Texas are upon you
Til Gabriel blows his horn.

3. "Deep in the Heart of Texas" is another excellent song--a patriotic paean to America's largest state, if you don't count Alaska, which Texans don't count.

Texas Monthly considers "Deep in the Heart of Texas" the State's unofficial state anthem, and I agree. There are at least three films with the same title. The 1996 movie, a whimsical look at Texas culture, is my favorite.

Hint: You're supposed to clap your hands three times before you sing the words "Deep in the Heart of Texas."

4. "That's Right, You're Not From Texas," Lyle Lovett's musical assurance that everyone is welcome, is a good tune to play when your Yankee relatives visit. The song contains a handy sartorial guide. Remember to wear your cowboy hat squarely on your head and not tilted. And be sure your jeans are long enough to cover the shaft of your boots.

5. "Texas Trilogy," Steve Fromholtz's ode to the gritty West  Texans, is a profoundly moving song and should be played every time you cross the Brazos River going west.

If the Brazos don't run dry
And the newborn calves, they don't die,
Another year from Mary will have flown.

6. "All My Exes Live In Texas" contains the only acceptable reason for a native son to leave the Lone Star State. If your ex-wives live in Texas, moving to Tennessee is permissible.

7. "Miles and Miles of Texas," sung ably by Asleep at the Wheel, tells you what you will see when you look into your True Love's big blue eyes: Miles and miles of Texas, of course.

8. "Ballad of the Alamo," written by Dimitri Tiomkin and Paul Webster and sung by Marty Robbins, is a blood-rousing song about the siege of the Alamo. If you listen to this song when you are twelve years old, as I did, the song becomes embedded in your DNA, and you will never be able to think of the Alamo without weeping. 

 9. "There's a Little Bit of Everything in Texas," sung by Ernest Tubb, Hank Thompson, Willie Nelson, and others, is the most jingoistic Texas song ever written, and that's saying something. But really, why travel when Texas has mountains, beaches, and verdant forests? Admittedly, you can't ski in Texas, but that's why God made New Mexico--to give Texans a place to ski.

10. "Texas, Our Texas," is the official State song, and the state's equivalent to Great Britain's "God Save the Queen."

Texas, our Texas! All hail the mighty State!
Texas, our Texas! So wonderful, so great!
Boldest and grandest, Withstanding ev'ry test;
O Empire wide and glorious, You stand supremely blest.

I know what you're thinking. How could I have skipped over "San Antonio Rose"? That song is about a city in Texas, not the state as a whole. That's a separate list, which I'm still working on.

"You can go to hell. I'm going to Texas." Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and Tesla are heeding Davy Crockett's advice

 Davy Crockett went to Texas after he lost his seat in Congress.  "You can go to hell," he told his political enemies. "I'm going to Texas."

That decision didn't work out so well for Davy. He was killed in the Alamo by Santa Anna's army. 

Despite Davy Crockett's bad luck, many Americans are heeding his advice and moving to Texas.  Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, and Tesla are three corporate giants relocating to Texas from California, and thousands of individual Californians are making the same move. 

I think they are making the right decision. Many people have migrated to Texas since the day the Alamo fell, and most of them have prospered. I am one of those people. I went to Texas as a young man and graduated with honors from the University of Texas Law School in 1980. Forty years later, it is still my proudest professional achievement.

Even as a child growing up in Oklahoma, I knew that Texas was different from the rest of the United States. My family occasionally visited my Aunt Ann and Uncle Grady, who lived in Borger, Texas, in the bleak Texas panhandle. As we crossed the Texas border on old Route 66 in our 1958 Chevy, I would see that Lone Star flag snapping in the Texas breeze, and I knew things were better on the Texas side of the border.  

What does Texas have that the rest of America doesn't? I think it is a distinct heritage that Texans remember on at least a subliminal level--a legacy of courage, risk-taking, and supreme self-confidence.  

Texas, after all, is the only state to have once been an independent nation.  For ten years--from 1836 until 1846--Texas was on its own, and it organized its own defense against the marauding Comanches--the world's finest and most ruthless light cavalry. 

Ed Bruce perfectly expresses my sentiments about the Lone Star state:

When I die, I may not go to heaven.

'Cause I don't know if they let cowboys in

If they don't, just let me go to Texas

Texas is as close as I've been

I'm 74 years old now, one year closer to death than I was a year ago. I once comforted myself in the belief that my end would be marked by a Catholic funeral Mass. But that won't be happening.

So now my instructions are these. When I die, just let me go to Texas. I wish to be cremated and my ashes scattered over the upper Colorado River near the historic Regency Bridge in West Texas.

It will comfort me to know that my friends and family will assemble somewhere to eat Texas barbeque after my ashes are scattered. I hope they will commemorate my life by toasting me with cold bottles of Shiner Bock and perhaps listening to some of my favorite songs. 

Maybe the immortal Ernest Tubb will croak out the words of Waltz Across Texas. Perhaps someone will play a recording of the Texas Playboys playing Roly Poly, Big Ball's in Cowtown, and  San Antonio Rose. 

When my friends gather for my farewell party, I  hope they will listen to Johnny Rodriguez's rendition of We Believe in Happy Endings. If so, that will certainly be good enough for me.

Shiner: "The beer your mother would want you to drink if she knew you were drinking."