Martin M103 – Joe Petek’s Orchestra – c. 1947

Posted on October 24, 2024 by R. Connor Montgomery

“[Texas Czech music] was not like it sounded in Europe; this had much more of the Southwest swing to it. A year later I heard the Joe Patek Orchestra in person at a dancehall in north Houston. There were many of these bands in the area, but Patek’s was the best of them.”

— Chris Strachwitz

Out of the myriad of ethnic groups that comprise the melting pot of modern-day Texas, the Czechs have had a particularly significant impact on the culture of the Lone Star State. Arriving first in the early days of Anglo settlement in Texas and settling largely in the southeastern quadrant of the state, there now number more individuals of Czech heritage in Texas than in any other state in the union. And with them, they brought bountiful treasures which are appreciated by Texans of every race, color, and creed, including kolaches, klobasneks, bock beer, polka music, the SPJST, and Czech Stop. In their honor, October has been declared Czech Heritage Month by the Texas State Legislature, and it would seem remiss to allow the month to pass by without paying tribute to their rich musical contributions to Texas culture

Of the many Bohemian bands in central and south Texas—Rhine Winkler’s, Rudy Kurtz’s, Frank and Adolph Migl’s, the Baca family’s, and others—perhaps none exceeded the renown of Joe Patek and his family band. Hailing from Shiner, Texas—home of the eponymous Shiner Bock beer—at the heart of Texas’ Czech community, Patek’s Bohemian Orchestra has been hailed as the greatest renowned of the numerous such bands in the region, though they claimed to have only played for their own amusement. The Patek family band was founded in 1895 (or 1920) by Czech immigrant John Patek, Sr., who had been a musician in the old country. One of six Patek brothers, Joseph Patek was born in Shiner on September 14, 1907, and took over leadership of his father’s band from his older brother Jim in the 1930s. Once the reins were in his hands, Patek’s Bohemian Orchestra recorded seven sides for Decca during their field trip to Dallas in February of 1937, of which only one record was released, and which sold quite poorly. Patek attributed that commercial failure to the band being rushed by the recording director. They would not record again until the rise of small, regional record companies in the years following World War II, beginning with a series of discs on the tiny San Antonio label Martin. Subsequently, they recorded somewhat prolifically for the FBC (Fort Bend County) and Humming Bird labels out of Rosenberg and Waco, respectively. Transitioning to the 45 RPM and LP era, Patek’s band cut records for San Antonio’s illustrious Tanner ‘n’ Texas (or TNT) and Bellaire Records from the Texas town of the same name. They continued to record into the 1970s, with albums remaining in print on CD to the present day. In addition to recording, Patek’s orchestra also had a weekly radio program on KCTI in Gonzalez, Texas, in the mid-1940s, and toured central and south Texas dance halls and picnics. Their repertoire consisting of polkas, waltzes, and marches, many with Czech vocals, they became as well known as the beer that made Shiner famous. Under Joe’s leadership, the Patek orchestra incorporated jazz and Latin influences in a uniquely Texan blend unheard in traditional Bohemian music. In addition to music, Patek operated a grocery store, meat market, and slaughterhouse, still in business today in Shiner. The Patek orchestra dissolved following a 1982 New Year’s Eve dance at the Shiner American Legion. Five years later, Joe Patek died in Victoria, Texas, on October 24, 1987.

Martin M103 was recorded around 1947 by the S.W. Martin Distributing Company. The actual date of recording is untraceable and may be lost to time. It was their first record for Martin. The label misspells Joe Patek’s last name as “Petek”.

On the A-side, Patek’s band plays what is surely their most widely and perhaps fondly remembered piece, the “Shiner Song” (“Když jsme opustili Shiner”), an “all-time favorite song” of the Texas Polka Music Association, derived from the older “Praha Polka” and rededicated to the popular beer produced by the Spoetzl Brewery of their hometown of Shiner, Texas.

Shiner Song, recorded c. 1947 by Joe Petek’s Orchestra.

On the reverse, they play a waltz dedicated to our great nation titled “Beautiful America” (“Krásná Amerika”), a number which they recorded again for TNT in the decade that followed.

Beautiful America, recorded c. 1947 by Joe Petek’s Orchestra

Globe 122 – Jesse Lockett with Earl Sims’ Sextette – 1946

Posted on September 23, 2024 by R. Connor Montgomery

Performing and recording alongside more famous contemporaries like Lightnin’ Hopkins, L.C. Williams, and Melvin “Little Son” Jackson, blues shouter Jesse Lockett was a big figure on the 1940s Houston blues scene and a pioneering vocalist in the postwar Texas record industry—notable for making the first blues record to appear on a Texas-based label—yet very little is known of him and his scant recording career today.

Jesse Eugene Lockett was born on September 23, 1912, in Trinity County, Texas. He grew up in Houston, where he attended Wheatley High School. In adulthood, he was described as a heavyset, dark complected man, about five feet, ten inches tall and weighing as much as three-hundred pounds, and was called at point a “buxom and vociferous singer of the blues (all gut bucket).” While living in Houston in the summer of 1935, Lockett—despite a plea of not guilty—was convicted of burglary and theft and sentenced to seven years on the Clemens State Farm in Brazoria County beginning on September 11, 1935. There, on April 16, 1939, noted folklorist John A. Lomax recorded him singing “Worry Blues” and accompanying himself on the guitar in one of his prison recording trips for the Library of Congress. Only a few months later, he was released early, walking free on September 14, 1939. Soon after his release, he formed a band called the Blue Five, which was well received in Houston in the early-to-mid-1940s, making appearances at both public venues and private functions. Known for composing most of his own material, he earned regular mention in the local black newspaper, the Informer and Texas Freeman, in which he was hailed as “Houston’s gift to the music world.” Some of his known appearances included regular revues at the Lincoln Theatre at 711 Prairie Street, nightclub shows, including a bi-weekly “Harlem Review” at Lee Curry’s New Harlem Grill and opening night at Sutton Batteau’s Blue Room, and at least one concert at the City Auditorium. He was often joined in these shows by tap dancer Jimmy De Barber and blackface comedian “Cream Puff” Smith, and he shared the stage at times with such noted bands as LeRoy Hardison’s Carolina Cotton Pickers and I.H. Smalley’s Rockateers. In the early 1940s, Lockett had a string of engagements on the East Coast, and around the same time was purported to have been a “Decca recording artist,” with some of his songs listed as “Defense Blues” and “The New Sugar Ration Blues”, though no evidence of these songs or of Lockett ever recording for Decca appears to exist. A few years later, around late 1945, he made his documented commercial recording debut for Bill Quinn’s Houston-based Gulf label with “Boogie Woogie Mama” and “Blacker the Berry”, the first and only known blues record to appear on the first record label based in Texas. An October 1945 newspaper article reported that Lockett had recorded ten sides for an unnamed “local record company” (presumably Gulf), but only the aforementioned two are known to have been released. Soon after, he ventured out west to join Earl Sims’ Sextette on a pair of jump blues sides recorded for the Los Angeles-based Globe label. Following this stint in California, Lockett returned to Houston, at which point he recorded once again for Bill Quinn—whose Gulf label had become Gold Star—cutting four sides as a vocalist with Will Rowland’s Orchestra (who had apparently traveled with him from California) in late 1948, including “Run Mr. Rabbit Run” and “Reefer Blues”. Afterwards, he seems to have gone back to California, where—apparently finding it hard to stay out of trouble—he was incarcerated again by 1950, this time in the Los Angeles County Jail, ostensibly putting an end to his promising career in music. After serving his sentence again, Lockett remained in California, where he died in San Luis Obispo on March 14, 1966.

Globe 122 was recorded sometime in 1946 in Los Angeles, California, and released the same year. Earl Sims’s Sextette consists of Sims on alto saxophone, Doc Jones on tenor sax, Jimmy Moorman on trumpet, Laurence Robinson on piano, C. LeChuga on string bass, and Felix Gross on drums.

On the record’s first side, Jesse Lockett sings a slow blues of his own composition titled “Mellow Hour Blues”. Lockett seems to have been both a fine singer and songwriter, drawing inspiration from the folk blues tradition.

Mellow Hour Blues, recorded c. 1946 by Jesse Lockett with Earl Sims Sextette.

On the “B” side, Lockett sings a “jump boogie” titled “Hole in the Wall”, not to be confused with the different song of the same name recorded by fellow Texas blues singer L.C. Williams around two years later.

Hole in the Wall, recorded c. 1946 by Jesse Lockett with Earl Sims Sextette

Silver Star 101 – Cecil Gill – c.1946

Posted on September 19, 2024 by R. Connor Montgomery

Back in the days when radio was king, a great many singing and musical stars of yesteryear made their fame on that medium, often producing few if any records, and so faded from public memory along with the generation that enjoyed their music like the ephemeral waves that carried their sounds through the air. We hear from one such star on the record herein: once a familiar voice on north Texas radio: the “Yodeling Country Boy”, Cecil Gill.

Cecil Gill, Yodeling Country Boy, circa 1930s.

Cecil Harris Gill was born in Des Arc, Arkansas, on September 19, 1912, but grew up in Texas from the age of seven when his family moved to the small west Texas town of McCaulley. There, on Christmas Day of 1928, when he was sixteen-years-old, Gill made it up in his mind that he wanted to be a singer and yodeler. And so he did, making his radio debut on KFYO in Abilene—some forty miles to the southeast—alongside fellow budding star Stuart Hamblen, who was four years his senior. At a 1929 show at Simmons University, Cecil Gill met his hero, Jimmie Rodgers, who invited the young singer to join him on stage for a performance of “Never No Mo’ Blues”. The next year saw Gill relocate to Fort Worth, where he began singing on KTAT under the sobriquet for which he would be best known: the “Yodeling Country Boy”. His repertoire consisted of both traditional folk songs and originals of his own composition. In the early 1930s, he married Pearl Bernice Nelson, and the couple had two children, a boy and a girl. In 1932, he was appearing on WBAP, and by 1935, was singing multiple times a day on KFJZ, with whom he seems to have had the lengthiest affiliation. In 1936, he gained note for singing the “Little Frontier Centennial March” in honor of Amon G. Carter’s Frontier Centennial celebration in Fort Worth. By the beginning of the next decade, he was on the popular station KGKO, alongside “Smiling Troubadour” Ernest Tubb, whom he would later join in a Grand Ole Opry show at Fort Worth’s North Side Coliseum in 1945. He was also known to have made appearances on other stations, and bounced back and forth from station-to-station throughout the years. Gill estimated at one point that he had been before the microphone on 6,448 broadcasts. He also made numerous public appearances. Though known primarily as a regional star, Gill was known to have performed outside of Texas as well, including a stint on WGAD in Gadsden, Alabama in 1947, and apparently even an appearance at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. Around 1946—after roughly two decades on the air—Gill made his recording debut, waxing six sides for the Fort Worth-based Silver Star Records. He reportedly made further recordings for Dallas’ Blue Bonnet Records in 1948, though none of these seem to have surfaced (it is possible that this report had simply confused his Silver Star recordings with the more prolific Blue Bonnet label). He would not record again until 1963, when he began producing five albums worth of material for the Bluebonnet label in Fort Worth (a separate entity than the aforementioned), all titled The Yodeling Country Boy. In 1971, he came out of retirement to record an album of gospel songs titled How Big is God for the Inspiration label in Arlington, Texas. On the side, Gill operated a café—”Cecil Gill’s Eat Shop”—and later a laundry service. Making his home in Arlington in his later years, Cecil Gill died of a heart attack on March 28, 1978, at Huguley Hospital, and was interred at Laurel Land Memorial Park in Fort Worth.

Silver Star 101 was recorded presumably in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1946 or 1947; the exact date seems to have been lost to time. It features the vocals of Cecil Gill, backed by a small honky-tonk band (most likely Ernest Winnett’s Texas Trailblazers, who accompanied Gill on his other Silver Star records) that sounds to consist of—at least—steel guitar, standard guitar, and string bass. According to some sources, it was released in February of 1948. It was also issued on the Tennessee-based Rich-R-Tone, record number 393, the following year.

A personal favorite of mine, the poignant “Tear Drops in the Rain” seems to have been something of a signature song for Gill, and he recorded it again on his second Bluebonnet album in 1966.

Tear Drops in the Rain, recorded c. 1946-47 by Cecil Gill.

On the reverse, he sings another original composition, “Say Goodbye”. Though he was known as the “Yodeling Country Boy”, Gill did not yodel on these recordings.

Say Goodbye, recorded c. 1946-47 by Cecil Gill.

Okeh 8455 – Blind Lemon Jefferson – 1927

Posted on March 14, 2023 by R. Connor Montgomery

Blind Lemon Jefferson, circa 1926; as pictured in the Paramount Book of Blues.

In his all-too-brief four year recording career, Blind Lemon Jefferson produced nearly one-hundred songs that helped to define the country blues and open the door for future guitar-slinging blues singers to record their art. All but one of those records appeared on the Paramount label—a few of which have been examined previously on Old Time Blues—this time around, we turn our attention to the odd one out.

As 1926 turned to ’27. Blind Lemon Jefferson’s recording career entered its second year. The previous one had seen a bountiful debut, producing a total of twenty recorded songs to his credit (roughly one-fifth of his total recorded output), all for Paramount Records of Port Washington, Wisconsin. The Texas bluesman was becoming a sensation, and other record companies soon took notice. It wasn’t long before the Okeh record company—then a subsidiary of Columbia Records and top competitor to Paramount with their extensive catalog of popular “race” records featuring the music of black artists—was the first to act Early in 1927, Jefferson was contacted by Atlanta-based Okeh representatives Polk C. Brockman (best remembered for orchestrating Fiddlin’ John Carson’s recording debut) and T.J. Rockwell. They extended an invitation to Jefferson for a recording session in Atlanta, to which he obliged. The singer arrived at his destination in mid-March, a little later than expected, for Jefferson had made an unplanned stop in Shreveport, Louisiana, as he had never “seen” the city before. Thus, on March 14, 1927, Lemon Jefferson recorded seven songs for Okeh, and one more the next day. The first two of those titles were released the following month, comprising Okeh 8455. When the record began to gain steam on the market, Paramount evidently threatened legal action against Okeh for “poaching” one of their top stars, and as a result, the remaining six sides were never issued. While the recordings are now presumed lost, what is known of those six songs reveals a rather different character than most of the material he recorded for Paramount. Of those six titles, “Elder Green’s in Town” was a version of “Alabama Bound”, and “Laboring Man Away from Home” was a rendition of the English ballad “Our Goodman” (also recorded by others as “Cabbage Head Blues” and “Drunkard’s Special”). “English Stop Time” was an instrumental piece similar to “Buck Dance” pieces recorded by many blues and ragtime guitarists. “Woman’s Labor Man” (or “Laboring Man Blues”) and “‘Stillery Blues” were evidently original songs never otherwise recorded or published. When Lemon returned to the Paramount recording laboratory in Chicago the next month, he remade “My Easy Rider” as “Easy Rider Blues”, coupled with a re-recording of “Match Box Blues”. The company saw to it that Lemon didn’t get away again, and all of Jefferson’s further recordings were for Paramount.

Okeh 8455 was recorded on March 14, 1927, in Atlanta, Georgia, featuring the voice and guitar of Blind Lemon Jefferson. It was first advertised for sale on April 23 of the same year.

On the “A” side of Okeh 8455, Lemon sings a re-telling of his famous “Black Snake Moan”, one of his more popular Paramount recordings, which he had recorded about five months prior to his Okeh session.

Black Snake Moan, recorded March 14, 1927 by Blind Lemon Jefferson.

The “B” side contains Jefferson’s first recording of another of his most memorable—and most widely covered—hit songs: “Match Box Blues”. Jefferson subsequently re-recorded two more takes of the soon-to-be blues standard upon his return to Paramount, each one noticeably different than the others.

Match Box Blues, recorded March 14, 1927 by Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Updated on May 12, 2025.

Tanner ‘n’ Texas TNT-1003 – Red River Dave – 1953

Posted on December 15, 2022 by R. Connor Montgomery

One of the true blue, larger-than-life Texas characters, Red River Dave McEnery tried his hand at just about every occupation that appealed to him at one point or another: prolific songwriter, blue yodeler, rodeo cowboy, television personality, real estate agent, Shriner, ventriloquist, fine artist, truck stop preacher, and many, many more. This brief article can only scratch the surface of the multifaceted entertainer’s storied life.

Red River Dave McEnery, as pictured on a promotional handout, c. 1940.

David Largus McEnery was born in San Antonio, Texas, on December 15, 1914, one of at least six children born to Gerald and Stella McEnery. As a youth, he began his entertaining career partaking in Texas’ national sport—rodeo—by spinning a rope and singing cowboy songs, drawing inspiration for the latter from the early greats of country music like Jimmie Rodgers and Vernon Dalhart. While still in his teens, McEnery made his radio debut on KABC in San Antonio, before going on the road at sixteen to strike it big as a cowboy star. He made his way to the East Coast, where he earned the nickname “Red River Dave” from his frequent performances of “Red River Valley” on Petersburg, Virginia’s WPHR. In 1936, he began his ascent to fame when he yodeled cowboy songs from the Goodyear blimp over WQAM in Miami, Florida. He arrived in New York around 1938 and remained there for several years, broadcasting over stations WOR, WMCA, and WEAF. During those years, he officially endorsed the Gretsch Synchromatic guitar, and for a while the company offered a signature “Red River Dave Special” archtop years before Chet Atkins’s association with the company.

Foreshadowing his later output, McEnery wrote “Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight” in tribute to the lost aviatrix following her 1937 disappearance, which won him greater fame and remains one of his most popular and best known compositions to this day. He sang that song on a pioneering television broadcast at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, becoming—as he would later bill himself—the “world’s first television star.” While in New York, Red River Dave began his recording career on January 18, 1940, for Decca, going on to cut fourteen titles for the company over the course of that year. Subsequently, he recorded more prolifically for the Musicraft, Savoy, Continental, and M-G-M labels from 1944 into the early 1950s. 1944 brought him another song success in the form of the patriotic wartime number “I’d Like to Give My Dog to Uncle Sam” (also known as “The Blind Boy’s Dog”) on Savoy. But it was surely his radio performances that won Red River Dave his greatest fame during his life. After World War II, Dave returned to home to Texas, where he began an association with the long-running western swing group the Texas Top Hands. In the middle of the 1940s, he broadcast for a time on the Mexican border blaster station XERF in Villa Acuña, just across the border from Del Rio. He also ventured to Hollywood, where he appeared in the feature films Swing in the Saddle and Echo Ranch, as well as a series of soundies. In his hometown of San Antonio, he hosted regular radio and television shows on WOAI. Beginning in the mid-1950s, most of his recording activities were conducted with local Texas labels such as Tanner ‘n’ Texas. Thereafter, his musical output began to shift away from the traditional cowboy and hillbilly material that and toward his own brand of eccentric and often rather morbid topical songs about current events.

Over the course of the 1950s, his repertoire evolved from standard material such as “San Antonio Rose” and “Cotton Eyed Joe” to the likes of “James Dean (The Greatest of All)” and “The Ballad of Emmett Till”. His songs increasingly reflected his patriotic, conservative, and staunch,y anti-communist politics, as heard in such numbers as “The Bay of Pigs”, “The Great Society”, and “The Ballad of John Birch”. For a time in the mid-1960s, Dave turned his attention toward being a “dynamic real estate salesman,” even billing himself on contemporaneous records as “Singing Cowboy Realtor.” Though sales of his private press 45 RPM singles were usually fairly poor, Dave continued to record and publish his old-time yodeling songs about current events all the way into the 1980s, with numbers like “The Pine-Tarred Bat (Ballad of George Brett)”, “The Ballad of E.T.”, and “The Night Ronald Reagan Rode With Santa Claus”. In total, McEnery penned more than a thousand songs over the course of his life, many of which were never commercially recorded, and are now likely lost to time; in one 1946 publicity stunt, he wrote fifty-two songs in twelve hours while handcuffed to a piano. Later in his life, he broadened his horizons to include oil painting, usually western landscapes, which he sometimes sold. At the age of eighty-seven, David McEnery died in his native San Antonio.

Tanner ‘n’ Texas TNT-1003 was probably recorded in late 1953—presumably in San Antonio, Texas—and was released in November of that year. The same coupling of songs was later issued on Decca 29002, featuring a different take of “The Red Deck of Cards”, but seemingly the same take of “Searching for You, Buddy”. Those recordings were reportedly made on December 22, 1953, but it is unclear if that date produced the TNT or Decca take..

On “The Red Deck of Cards”, Dave re-worked the classic “Deck of Cards” war story popularized by T. Texas Tyler into one of the earliest of his anti-communist pieces, marking a shift in his recording career from (frankly sometimes rather bland) western themed “citybilly” songs towards the frequently politically-charged topical folk songs for which he would become known in later years.

The Red Deck of Cards, recorded 1953 by Red River Dave.

Dave sings on the B-side, a war song also of his own composition: “Searching for You, Buddy”. Though contextually connected to the Korean War, the song makes no reference to any conflict in particular, the song could easily apply to any war.

Searching for You, Buddy, recorded 1953 by Red River Dave.