Kevin Pask, Deep Ellum Blues

Dallas's economic growth began with the arrival of the Houston and Texas Central Railroad in 1872, followed by the Texas and Pacific Railroad in 1873. From an early moment less reputable saloons began to operate around the H&TC station on the eastern edge of Dallas, which later became known as Central Track, and attracted a variety of cowboys, farm workers, and locals, perhaps including J. H. "Doc" Holliday, who seems to have augmented his dental practice with gambling during his Dallas years. (He was run out of town by a posse after shooting a prominent local citizen.) The H&TC brought cotton pickers to and from the fields of the Texas cotton belt at the same time that elite Dallas was making some of its first fortunes in the cotton trade; others came to work in Robert Munger's cotton gin factory, or later the Ford factory, both in the neighborhood, which also quickly established itself as the entertainment and shopping district of black Dallas, and thus also much of Texas and surrounding states. Both the musicians and their audience were frequently on the move between the farm and the city.

Lead Belly later recalled meeting Blind Lemon Jefferson around 1912 in Dallas, and spending some time as his guide. The two worked Deep Ellum together, and sometimes also "serenaded" white neighborhoods for tips.3 There is no record of white response to such excursions, probably the most formidable cultural collaboration ever to occur in the city of Dallas. One can only imagine that it was some mixture of irritation and condescension. The history of "Deep Elem Blues," on the other hand, suggests something of the deeper and more interesting relationships between white and black cultures in the South.

Streaming Video:

"Deep Ellum Blues," (10:56 min)
http://www.folkstreams.net/film,159
This film is one of three short films in the Living Texas Blues series which explores the 1920's and 1930's night life in Dallas through the music of Bill Neely.

"Blues in the Dallas school is about Dallas," emphasizes Paul Oliver. "In fact, no other blues school, with the exception, perhaps, of Chicago, gives us quite such a picture of the urban life which inspired it."4 From the WPA Guide to Dallas onwards, which treated Deep Ellum as "Harlem in Miniature," "Deep Elem Blues" has served as the emblematic song of the blues experience in Dallas (though it shares a number of lyrics with "Georgia Black Bottom.") Whatever the original provenance of "Deep Elem Blues," it was in fact first recorded by the country and western band, The Shelton Brothers, in 1935. Deep Ellum became one of the signature references for the group, including songs such "Just Because You're in Deep Ellum" and "What's the Matter with Deep Elm?" (the spelling varying each time). In the era of hillbilly populism, when bands often appeared as part of southern political campaigns, the Shelton Brothers later developed a close relationship with singer Jimmie Davis ("You Are My Sunshine"), who became governor of Louisiana in 1943. Meanwhile, the group became a firmly established presence on the "Saturday Night Shindig" at WFAA in Dallas (the more local version of the Big D Jamboree at the Sportatorium, which attempted to compete with the Louisiana Hayride). If white Dallas largely avoided the neighborhood, the musical intersection between black blues and white country was at least partly negotiated in places such as Dallas and in the readily available blues traditions there. Marvin Montgomery and Dick Reinhart, who later joined Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, picked up aspects of the blues in Deep Ellum clubs in the 1930s.5 The Texas country tradition has remained the bluesiest of the regional variations of country music, including the honky tonk classics of Ernest Tubb and Hank Thompson. Another version of a blues/country synthesis returned to Texas in alien splendor in the 60s and 70s. California bands like the Grateful Dead and Gram Parsons and his Flying Burrito Brothers popularized roots music for a new youth culture, and changed its cultural associations, even in Texas itself. When Texas musicians such as Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Jerry Jeff Walker created their own native blend of the redneck and the hippie in the 1960s and 70s, its base was significantly the Austin of the university and its adjacent hippie culture rather than Dallas, which had previously been the undisputed musical center of Texas.

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