Texan jazz

Texans have made a significant mark on all of jazz's major movements, from hot jazz, swing, and bebop through the birth of cool and hard bop up to the creation of free jazz, the music's most advanced, contemporary stage of development. Yet these Texas musicians are seldom identified as Texans because their careers often took them to the leading jazz centers in New Orleans, Chicago, New York, Kansas City, and Los Angeles.

In Texan Jazz, Dave Oliphant reclaims these musicians for Texas and explores the vibrant musical culture that brought them forth.

Working chronologically through the major movements of jazz, he describes the lives, careers, and recordings of such musicians as Scott Joplin, Hersal Thomas, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sippie Wallace, Jack Teagarden, Buster Smith, Hot Lips Page, Eddie Durham, Herschel Evans, Charlie Christian, Red Garland, Kenny Dorham, Jimmy Giuffre, Ornette Coleman, John Carter, and many others.

While Texans Jazz includes Anglo Texan and Latino Texan musicians, its great strength is its record of the historic contributions to jazz made by African-American Texans.