Texas and The West Coast
The towering figure of West Coast blues may be guitarist T-Bone Walker, famous for the song "Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad)", a relocated Texan who had made his first recordings in the late 1920s. During the early 1940s Walker moved to Los Angeles, where he recorded many enduring sides for Capitol, Black & White, and Imperial. Walker was a crucial figure in the electrification and urbanization of the blues, probably doing more to popularize the use of electric guitar in the form than anyone else. Much of his material had a distinct jazzy jump blues feel, an influence that would characterize much of the most influential blues to emerge from California in the 1940s and 1950s. Other Texas bluesmen followed: Pianist/songwriter Amos Milburn, singer Percy Mayfield, famous for the song "Hit the Road Jack", and Charles Brown moved to Los Angeles. Guitarist Pee Wee Crayton divided his time between Los Angeles and San Francisco, while Lowell Fulson, from Texas by way of Oklahoma, moved to Oakland.
Read more about this topic: West Coast Blues
Famous quotes containing the words texas, west and/or coast:
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“He is every other inch a gentleman.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“What do we want with this vast and worthless area, of this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds, of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs; to what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of 3,000 miles, rockbound, cheerless, uninviting and not a harbor in it?”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)