Deep Ellum, on the eastern edge of downtown Dallas, retains its character as an alternative to the city s staid image with loft apartments, art galleries, nightclubs, and tattoo shops. It first sprang up as a ramshackle business district with saloons and variety theatres and evolved, during the early decades of the twentieth century, into a place where the black and white worlds of Dallas converged.
This book strips away layers of myth to illuminate the cultural milieu that spawned such seminal blues and jazz musicians as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Buster Smith, and T-Bone Walker and that...

In the 1950s, as the leader of the Upsetters, the original backing band for rock pioneer Little Richard, Grady Gaines first exposed the music world to his unique brand of "honkin'," bombastic, attitude-drenched saxophone playing.

In the years that followed, the Upsetters became the backing band for Sam Cooke and crisscrossed the country as the go-to-band for revue-style tours featuring James Brown, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Supremes, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, and Etta James.

In I've Been Out There, the Houston blues and R&B legend Grady Gaines speaks candidly...