The Chronicle focuses on books about rock & roll and popular music twice a year. Even that barely scratches the surfaces of titles out there and, typically, books well worth noting arrive too late for deadline.

That would be the case with Texas Music by Rick Koster (St. Martin’s Press, $29.95 hard). Besides being one of the most comprehensive surveys of Texas music in its present state, author Koster (formerly with the Dallas Morning News and currently on sabbatical in Connecticut)

offers readers mini-portraits of “Criminally Overlooked” artists such as C.J.Chenier, Tish Hinojosa, Denny Freeman, W.C.Clark, and Vince Bell – names we know well but which often lose their cachet outside the Lone Star state.

Hub City Music Makers: One Southern Town’s Popular Music Legacy by Peter Cooper (Hub City, $19.95 paper) performs much the same service for musicians hailing from Spartanburg, SC. That’s home to David Ball, who is profiled at length here, as is Champ Hood and the late Walter Hyatt. Cooper’s loving focus on Spartanburg makes for complementary reading with Koster’s tome; ample evidence of Texas’ bigger-than-life influence. – Margaret Moser

This article appears in March 20 • 1998 and March 20 • 1998 (Cover).

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US