Gone To Texas

I've journeyed back to mi tierra this week, visiting family out in West Texas. Won't be able to blog again until I return.

Meanwhile, here are some morsels from the Lone Star State . . .

Roy Orbison hailed from nearby Wink, Texas, which is just the other side of Notrees, Texas. (No, there are no trees in Notrees, Texas.) My father and aunt saw Roy play at their high school dances back before he became famous. Here he's doing "Only the Lonely," which goes out to La Reina, who I cry out for like a coyote when she's so far away.

A genuine Texas tumbleweed.

We saw one on the road from the airport to the house. Felt like a cosmic, "Welcome Back, Son."



Another West Texas boy, Buddy Holly (from Lubbock), sings "Peggy Sue." (Ah, Buddy, you died too soon.)

And just to show the range of Texas culture, here's a clip of Kilgore boy Van Cliburn playing Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No.12. In 1958, at the heighth of the Cold War, Cliburn won the First International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, a stunning accomplishment at the time. He was welcomed back to the USA with a ticker-tape parade in New York City and made the cover of Time, with the headline: "The Texan Who Conquered Russia." According to Wikipedia, Cliburn's "subsequent recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, became the first classical album to sell a million copies. It was the best-selling classical album in the world for more than a decade, eventually going triple-platinum."

Since my own experience is a Tex-Mex one, I thought I'd include some Tejano music, courtesy of Flaco Jimenez, Freddy Fender, Doug Sahm and Augie Meyers, better known as the Texas Tornadoes: "Hey, Baby, Que Paso?"

Gonna go heat up some tamales and open a Shiner Bock. See y'all real soon. . . .