Professionalism never sounded so good Marshall Crenshaw opened last year’s performance in Deep Ellum with the offhand greeting “Hello, we’re professional rock musicians.” He then proved his yeomanlike salutation a massive understatement, revealing himself as a masterful songwriter who could’ve topped the charts three or four decades ago alongside the…

David Newman’s Oak Cliff home contains a living-room wall of fame–the “Fathead National Museum”–adorned with his 28 album covers in chronological order. They date from 1959’s Fathead: Ray Charles Presents David Newman to last year’s Mr. Gentle, Mr. Cool. The great tenor sax player’s feisty old Aunt Freda runs his…

Bluesy singer-songwriter Keb’ Mo’ (street vernacular for Kevin Moore) has reached critical mass with his second OKeh/Epic album, Just Like You, setting the stage for a national breakout. The tall, lanky, and just plain lovable guitarist still looks 20 years old in his baseball cap. He appears to be one…

Doc Watson–one of the purest and most soulful figures in country music history–has never been on commercial radio and was denied Young Country’s chance to reap teen coin. “If it had been done all over,” says Doc from his porch in Deep Gap, North Carolina, “I think ‘Freight Train Boogie’…

In Sam Myers’ East Dallas space-age bachelor-pad apartment, the bluesman keeps vintage 1950s LPs of Louis Jordan, Percy Mayfield, T-Bone Walker, and, of course, his old partner in music and moonshine, guitar great Elmore James. An honorary lifetime-achievement award from the Sonny Boy Blues Society and three W.C. Handy Awards…

“I have to admit, there’s a guaranteed future in dirty dishes, which there ain’t in blues,” Keith Ferguson concedes. “I seem to be the only one who regards himself as a professional musician. Our lead singer’s a dishwasher in the back of some restaurant. If he put half the energy…

In 1992, when I began performing Monday nights at the Winedale Tavern on Lower Greenville Avenue, it was Skid Row’s royal palace in Dallas. There, some patrons behave as if released from Parkland Hospital’s observation ward directly to the Winedale; others, as though sprung from the dog pound. The audience…

Jeff’s boogie There was a time when only one man in the world generated guitar sounds that millions of musicians now take for granted. Though John Lennon plucked the first note of feedback ever produced on vinyl ( intro to “I Feel Fine” in 1964), Jeff Beck was the first…