Texas Waltz Playlist

Here are 26 Texas songs I love, arranged in a somewhat geographical manner. So put it on and get ready to waltz across Texas. Here's the Spotify link.

Let's kick it off with Gary P. Nunn telling us What I Like About Texas. My buddy Venancio Figueroa has created a great video that goes along with the song. Here's the link.

You ask me what I like about Texas
I tell you it's the wide open spaces!
It's everything between the Sabine and the Rio Grande.
It's the Llano Estacado,
It's the Brazos and the Colorado;
Spirit of the people down here who share this land!

We're going to start our tour in Austin where, Waylon Jennings will tell you, Bob Wills Is Still The King.

Then we'll bring back Gary P. for his classic London Homesick Blues (Home With the Armadillo).

Now we head down I35 to San Antonio. We're going to hear two versions of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys' San Antonio Rose. The original was an instrumental with those twin Texas fiddles and pedal steel guitar. This was a hit, but the record company wanted a version with lyrics so Tommy Duncan wrote and sang the New San Antonio Rose, with more of the big band instrumentation the Playboys were known for.

San Antonio's Doug Sahm made his fame with Mendocino in California with his band the Sir Douglas Quintet but came back to Texas in 1972 and recorded (Is Anybody Going To) San Antone, which had been a 1970 hit for Charley Pride.

We leave town to Tish Hinojosa's autobiographical West Side Of Town and head down to the border.

My favorite version of The Streets of Laredo was song by a guy who's not from Texas but it's Johnny Cash so we'll let it slide.

Next we swing back up to the Texas Hill Country for Waylon and Willie's Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love).

Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood could happen anywhere in Texas but I'm placing it in the Hill Country to commemorate the adventure we had picking up our kids from their camps in Hunt, Texas when the Guadalupe overflowed!

Now we take a left turn and head out west, where Marty Robbins will spin a tale of old El Paso.

Lubbock's Butch Hancock wrote the classic West Texas Waltz but I like the way his Flatlanders bandmate Joe Ely sings it more.

From Lubbock we head up 87, the Amarillo Highway. Terry Allen wrote it but I prefer Robert Earl Keen's version better. More from REK later.

I don't wear no Stetson
But I'm willin' to bet son
That I'm as big a Texan as you are

Can't have a Texas playlist without George Strait's Amarillo By Morning.

We'll stay up in the Panhandle for a minute to catch Texas country music supergroup The Panhandlers' West Texas in My Eye, written by Charlie Stout. Check out the video with William Clark Green, John Baumann, Cleto Cordero and Josh Abbott taking turns on the verses.

Lately I've been thinking that I could leave this town
I'd cut back on my drinking, stop this running 'round
Playing songs 'til after midnight, staying up till dawn
There's something in the dust and wind that keeps me hanging on
And I never thought I'd live to see the day I'd say goodbye
I ain't crying, that's west Texas in my eye

From the Panhandle we head down to Dallas, Jimmie Dale Gilmore's song. Once again we are going with his Flatlanders bandmate Joe Ely's version.

You can't have a playlist about Texas without Tanya Tucker's Texas (When I Die).

Texas Sun by Houston's Khruangbin, with a vocal by Fort Worth's Leon Bridges, is a little tour of Texas by itself.

I had to include Wide Open Spaces by The Chicks, which is clearly about Texas even if it doesn't mention Texas. If I had to pick one voice that represents Texas it would be Natalie Maines's!

Sir Douglas Quintet's Texas Tornado starts out in Port Aransas and wipes out a bunch of Texas cities includes Galveston, Amarillo, Houston and Corpus Christi.

Speaking of Corpus, Robert Earl Keen tells us about life on the Corpus Christi Bay.

From the coast we'll head back toward Houston.

The Yellow Rose of Texas goes back to the 1840s. Many historians believe it is about Emily Morgan, a free mulatto working for Capt. James Morgan in 1836 whom Santa Anna met when his army came through what is now the Houston area in pursuit of the Texian army under the leadership of Sam Houston. To get at her, Santa Anna stopped in an indefensible position in San Jacinto, and was in his tent with her when the Texians attacked and routed the much larger Mexican army. Santa Anna was captured and was traded back to Mexico in exchange for Texas's freedom. Everybody in the world has recorded this song, from Gene Autry to Mitch Miller. My favorite, by Artie Morris, is not available on Spotify, so I'm going with Texan Michael Martin Murphey's version.

Houston's most successful musical export of course is Beyoncé and this is her song about her father, Daddy Lessons. I picked the version where she is backed up by The Chicks. What a combination!

Before we leave the town, we need to hear Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers' Houston (Means I'm One Day Closer To You).

Asleep at the Wheel are from Philadelphia but they have been the biggest proponent of Western Swing since they got here in the 70s so let's celebrate this road trip with Miles and Miles of Texas. And, yes, I'm gonna live here until I die.

I hoped you enjoyed this Waltz Across Texas. Take us home, Ernest Tubb!