By Wittliff staff member, Library Specialist, Sherri Turner-Herrmann. Rock and roll hit me like a freight train early on. When I was 8, my cousin introduced me to Alice Cooper and that’s when the first train hit. Shock rock, hard …
Category: Texas Music
The Moving Sidewalks meet Jimi Hendrix
Texas music lovers hold ZZ Top especially dear. After 50 years, Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard feel more like friends than rock icons. Here at The Wittliff Collections, we love ’em, too. The new Netflix documentary “ZZ Top: …
Tamara Saviano receives 2020 Margaret Moser Women In Music Award.
(AUSTIN, TEXAS – March 12, 2020; source: Juice Consulting) – On the evening of March 11, 2020, author, filmmaker and producer Tamara Saviano, whose papers reside in The Wittliff Collections, was awarded the 2020 Margaret Moser Women in Music Award …
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Waylon and Lefty: Marine Corps pitch men?
The forgotten 60-second Marine Corps. recruiting spot fades in with the familiar symphonic chorus of “MacArthur Park” – “Someone left the cake out in the rain . . .” But the voice is not that of actor Richard Harris, who …
Houston’s glorious R&B past has a home at The Wittliff Collections.
The recent acquisition of the archives of Austin record collector/photographer/indie music newspaper publisher Doug Hanners, means the deep dives are beginning at The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University into one of the most important and fascinating aspects of the …
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Susannah Broyles discusses “The Ramón Hernández Tejano Music Collection.”
The Wittliff has recently acquired the extensive Tejano music archive of Ramón Hernández, a San Antonio publicist, journalist, and photographer. The collection includes music memorabilia consisting of various artist’s costumes, records, original marketing posters, handwritten sheets of music, personal photographs, …
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The making of Wyatt McSpadden’s traffic-stopping photo of Abra Moore
It’s a face that’s launched a thousand conversations at The Wittliff Collections. Wyatt McSpadden’s iconic photograph of singer-songwriter Abra Moore has been a conversation piece since it was first published in Texas Monthly in January 1996. The framed print — …
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Funeral for a friend: Rita Vidaurri
Golden Age ranchera singer Rita Vidaurri, who died January 16 in San Antonio at age 94, was a friend of The Wittliff Collections. Thanks to the Ramon Hernandez Collection, and a 2017 exhibition “Legends of Tejano: Highlights from the Ramon …
Teen Canteen letters shed light on ’60s youth culture
Sam Kinsey’s fabled Teen Canteen, a teen dance club which operated from 1961 to 1977 at various locales in San Antonio, wasn’t only an important rock venue of the era – the Sir Douglas Quintet, Mike Nesmith (pre-Monkees), Mike Post, …
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The Boys Who Wrote the Songs
The Rogers & Hammerhead Show aired from 1996-1997 on the Austin Music Network on cable access TV. Freddy Powers and Bill McDavid created the show to shine a spotlight on songwriters who developed country music in Texas—and whose songs …
