Here’s the rest of the list John Nova Lomax and Chris Gray’s 2007 list of “Houston’s Very Best Songs Ever”
Let’s start with a review of the methodology
Here’s the methodology Lomax and Gray used in making their selections. As this is about John Nova, I am omitting Gray’s comments while indicating his selections.
Alas, this article is not available in its original form online from the Press site.
“The songs were selected using several criteria. First, they're “Houston-ness” by which we mean an indelible tie to the Bayou City. Songs composed by Houstonians are all eligible though natives and long-term resident scored higher than transients. For example, two-thirds of the principal members of the Geto Boys were born and raised here and remain in the city, while Willie Nelson spent three short though creatively productive years living in Pasadena. Thus, the Geto Boys are more Houston than Willie.
Other ways to qualify include being signed to a Houston label (The Thirteenth Floor Elevators for example), if the song is about Houston no matter where the artist comes from, or if the song was recorded here. If a song combines several factors, it obviously scores higher in Houston-ness than those with fewer connections.
As for the aesthetics, this was not strictly a popularity contest of course; it isn’t merely based on what Houston songs sold the best. It also had to be both a great tune and at least somewhat historically important, And finally, to make the Top 20, a song must be at least five years old. True classics need at least a little time to prove themselves as such.
To recap, here’s the choices from the first post last month:
#20 “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” ** Freddy Fender ** 1974
#19.I Just Dropped in (To see what Condition My Condition Was In)”** Kenny Rogers and the First Edition **1967A Chris Gray selection
#18 Midnight Special ** Lead Belly ** 1937 Chris Gray selection
#17. Killing Time **Clint Black** 1989 Chris Gray selection
#16.White Freightliner Blues ** Townes Van Zandt ** 1977
15. Guyana Punch** The Judys ** 1981
#14. “Bootylicious”**Destiny’s Child **2001 A Chis Gray Selection
#13. Treat Her Right ** Roy Head & The Traits ** 1965 A Chris Gray Selection
#12. “Merry Christmas From the Family **Robert Earl Keen**1994
#11. “Damn it feels Good to Be a Gangsta” **The Geto Boys **1992 A Chris Gray
#10. “You’re Gonna Miss Me ** 13th Floor Elevators **1966 A Chris Gray Selection
#9. Whiskey River ** Johnny Bush/Willie Nelson** 1972/1973 A Chris Gray selection
#8. “Please Send Me Someone To Love **Esther Phillips ** 1970
And here’ the Top 7
#7 Mind Playin’ Tricks on Me/The Get Boys/We Can’t Be Stopped, 1991
In 1991 the eyes of the then young hip hop America, rap was still a bi-coastal game. Sure, Miami’s the 2 Live Crew had enjoyed a couple of hits, but those nasty party jams were mere novelty records.
The Dirty south had not yet begun to truly fight. “MindPlayin’ Tricks on Me” would change all that. Not only would the song top the Billboard rap charts and crack the Top-25 in pop, but it would also demonstrate that Southerners could rap about something other than sex.
Over a melancholy, insistent jazz guitar riff culled from “Hung Up on My Baby”, and Isaac Hayes instrumental, the paranoid, borderline psychotic rhyme of Bushwick Bill, Willi D and Scarface set a new standard in true gangsta poetry. Often tabbed by many national critics as one of the top rap songs ever, “Mind Playin’ Tricks” surfaces often in the work of other masters. The Notorious B.I.G. would nod to the song in the lyrics of his hit single “One More Chance” while Scarface’s “I Had A Woman Down With Me . . .” lines bubble up in the effervescent mix behind Andre 3000 on “OutKast’s “She Lives in My Lap”.
#6 Tun On your Love Light/Bobby “Blue” Band/Here’s The Man!/Duke Records, 1961
Joe Scott, Duke/Peacock in-house conductor/arranger/music director, epitomized the word, “sublime”. There’s never so much as a sixteenth note e out of place in his creations, and “Turn On Your Love Light” is a flawless example.
The up-tempo, gospel-drenched rave-up erupts out of the blocks with a trumpet fanfare over drums and Teddy Reynolds’s prominent piano riff; seconds later Wayne Benne’s electric guitar interlocks with Reynolds’s keyboards and Band comes swooping in with his alternately scratchy and silken baritone singing blue words that don’t jibe with the joyous band of the music: “Without a warnin’, you broke my heart, you took it darlin’ and you tore it apart”.
At about the 1-minute mark, all falls away save for the sanctified, funky beat of not one, but two drummers who pop and crash away as Bland, by now pleading, croons that hets a little lonely in the middle of the night, and he needs you darling to make things all right. An impeccable sax solo leads into Bland’s trademark “squall”, and he roars, redeemed on the age-out with “I feel alright!”. Rarely can 2 minutes, forty seconds be better spent.
#5 La Grange/ZZ Top/Tres Hombres London/1974 A Chris Gray Selection
#4 Pancho & Lefty/Townes Van Zandt/Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas/Tomato Records, 1977 release of a 1972 recording
An enigmatic tale with a more or less story part, Van Zandt’s tale of two bandits and their respective demises seems likely to become an American standard. Over a gorgeously simple, achingingly sad melody, Van Zandt spins an epic in which just enough detail is omitted to eternally tantalize all who fall under the song’s spell. So what did Lefty do to Pancho? Why did the Federales let him get away? Why does Lefty go to Cleveland, of all places? Is the song about Pancho Villa and Lefty Frizzel as I thought as a kid? Van Zandt himself, said that he knew the answers to none of these questions, save the last.
(The answer is no, , it is not about either of them)
A willie Nelson and Merle Haggard duet took the song to the top of the country charts in 1983 and the song first recorded by Emmylou Harris, had been followed by dozens of other artists of lesser fame..
More than that, the song has infiltrated the world’s psyche. A few years ago, a Pancho & Lefty’s sports bar stood on a barrio corridor on the near north side, and Rodney Crowell recently told me several hundred Swedes sang along on the chorus when he performed the song there. Van Zandt himself once had a close encounter with his own brainchild on the outskirts of Houston decades after it was released. Pulled over for speeding near Brookshire by Anglo/Mexicanan-American highway patrolmen. Van Zandt was summarily dismissed when his authorship of the song was discovered. Turns out that the two cops were as “Pancho & Lefty” back at the station house.
John Lomax III note:
My brother Joseph Lomax published For the sake of the song, The Townes Van Zandt Songbook and in it, Townes has this to say:
“I remember thinking while writing “pancho ^ Lefty” that it was not about Pancho Villa. So many say that it is however, that it might be. I’ve heard that a grad student at Yale or Harvard is doing his doctorate on the song so the answer may be forthcoming.:
#3 I Can See Clearly Now/Johnny Nash/I Can See Clearly Now, 1972
Big Pharma should bottle this song and sell it; shrinks should prescribe it to all those who have the blues. This is one tune with optimism enough to put Prozac out of business. The pop-reggae gem passes like a giant sigh of relief; it’s plain from the hard-won calm, obvious in Nash’s angelic, Sam Cooke-style tenor that he has indeed been truly delivered from some very dark places.
Native Houstonian Nash has had one of oddest careers in American pop history. After stint as an actor and a billing as “America’s First Black Teen Idol,”, Nash’s career took off after he moved to Jamaica in the late ‘60s. There he befriended the not not-yet'- internationally famous Bob Marley and started incorporating rocksteady and early reggae into his gospel-tinged r’n’b.
“I can See Clearly Now” was the most famous and best result. Up until its release no one reggae song had captivated mainstream listeners with as much force, and Nash belong right up there with artists like Marley and Desmond Dekker as one of the music’s foremost early popularizers. Not bad for a guy who only a decade or so before had been humping golf bags in Herman Park.
#2Night Life/Willie Nelson/The Essential Willie Nelson, circa 1960
And her’s a live clip with Merle Haggard
As the ‘60s dawned, Willie Nelson was fresh out of the Air Force and living in Pasadena with his first wife and three kids. He worked six nights a week backing local star Larry Butler on bass and DJing the 7th day.
Meanwhile he was writing a few songs on the side in his car, while commuting between his digs in Pasadena and his gigs on the Hempstead Highway. He got hot one week and wrote three of the greatest songs in country music history: “Cray”, “Funny How Time Slips Away” and “Night Life”, perhaps the most covered country song of all time.
And deservedly so. Lovable losers and no-count boozers could hope for no better anthem than this resigned statement of near suicidal intent. Sure, the barrooms might be full of people dreaming of old use-to-bes and reenacting scene after scene after scene from the road of broken dreams, but “just listen to the blues they’re playing. The night life ain’t no good life but hit’ my life, indeed.
#1 Tighten Up/Archie Bell & The Drells/1968
The very best song has to do it all. It has to be a great piece of music made by Houstonians still based in town, it has to mention Houston and it has to draw on native musical traditions. And it is also known all over the world. And just for good measure, “Tighten Up” is also preeminently danceable and stands as one of the greatest party records ever put on wax.
“Tighten Up” does all that and even more. Somehow it can almost make you feel our climate. Think about it. The way the timbre of the band - the T.S.U Toronados - seems to breathe in and out. The balmy, sighing horns, the funky little electric guitar riff, the sweaty organ and a loping bass guitar with a tone so warm it seems to be grinning.
It’s all as gracious and hospitable as springtime sunshine: the music on “Tighten Up” sounds the way a sunny April day in Houston feels. playing it in your car can carry your mind from an exhaust-choked stop-and-go pileup on the Katy Freeway in the great December twilight to a beery beach blanket picnic in the noontime sun on West Beach in May. Like Archie, now make it mellow!”
Noe: there’s some controversy about Bell’s intro, to wit, does he say, “We can dance just as good as we walk” or “We can dance just as good as we want?” I’m siding with “as we want”, for two reasons. One, it makes more sense, and two, it is clearly what he actually does say.