With a bellowing voice and masterful piano playing, Mercy Dee Walton emerged as an early influence in rhythm and blues not only in Waco but across the country. Towering figures such as Ma Rainey and Fats Domino are rightfully remembered as foundational for the blues and later rock n’ roll, but artists with less recording opportunities, like Walton, also shaped the country’s music scene in the early twentieth century.

Walton grew up on the water. His parents, Fred and Bessie Walton, worked on a small farm on the banks of Brazos in Waco and welcomed their son on August 30, 1915. Though a young Mercy Dee Walton worked the corn and cotton fields, he found himself captivated by local music. Aspiring musicians traversed Texas, performing on stages and in homes for little to nothing. Thirteen-year-old Walton listened, soaking in soulful vocals and rhythmic instrumentals. The blues artists he heard told stories of hardship and of love to steel guitar and striking barrelhouse piano arrangements. Searching for his own voice, Walton began to play piano and sing the blues at ten-cent house parties, where locals could pay a dime to hear the young artist hone his skills.

Waco’s own musicians influenced Walton’s sound. Unrecorded artists, such as Pete the Grey Ghost and Delois Maxey, impacted his style and song. Though many blues artists of the early twentieth century never recorded albums, their artistry formed other musicians. When Walton witnessed Maxey’s piano expertise at house parties, for example, he modeled his own playing after him. Others also influenced his sound, including Waco and Marlin piano players Son Brewster and Bob Jackson. Though labels never captured their talents, their inflections remained present in the work of later blues musicians.

Audiences certainly understood the talent of these rising artists. As Walton grew in popularity, he moved from intimate venues to larger crowds in Fort Worth. In the early 1930s, he took the stage at the Dixie and Bryson Taverns. Other emerging musicians, such as Pinetop Shorty, joined him. After playing the Texas circuit, Walton decided to move westward to an up-and-coming music metropolis, Los Angeles, in the late 1930s.

While playing around Fresno, Chester Lu, an executive at a smaller recording label called Spire Company, heard Walton’s talent. Walton recorded his first song “Lonesome Cabin Blues” with Spire. Though the song rose to the top ten on R&B charts, Walton’s performances and albums did not result in financial prosperity. As he sang about his troubles on stage, they persisted in his life as he continued to labor for little pay. For instance, at one venue, Walton performed for a few dollars and a hot meal. Agricultural work provided supplemental income as Walton continued to pursue his musical career, and he often performed at bars where Black farmworkers gathered to listen to lyrics that illustrated their experiences. 

After reaching number seven on the charts with “Lonesome Cabin Blues,” Walton cut a record with Imperial Records. The songs never charted, and Walton did not record any more songs with Imperial. Things changed when Walton joined Specialty Records. He recorded his hit song “One Room Country Shack” in May 1952, and garnered national attention. He briefly toured with the popular Jay McNeely Band, whose smooth saxophone sound skyrocketed the group to the top of the Billboard charts. A long way from the Texas circuit, Walton traveled across the country, singing popular tracks, such as “Roamin’ Blues” and “Romp & Stomp Blues,” in auditoriums for large crowds. One song that captured fans’ attention was “Rent Man Blues,” which featured Walton’s wife, Thelma Walton, who received the pseudonym Lady Fox on the record.

Walton cut more records with Specialty, but none accumulated extensive recognition. Notably, payola, the practice of bribing radio hosts to play certain songs to increase an artist’s popularity and a label’s success, ran rampant throughout Walton’s career. Though he recorded with two small labels, Rhythm and Flair, in the mid-1950s, his albums did not reach previous heights on the charts. He moved to Stockton, California, where he continued agricultural work and played music on a smaller scale.

Though Walton’s recording opportunities seemed to decline over time, in 1961, record producer and blues fan Chris Strachwitz began to record with Walton on his newly founded label, Arhoolie. With his remarkable barrelhouse piano style, Walton put down multiple tracks with Strachwitz. Tragically, as his career seemed to be resurging in the recording studio, Walton died suddenly in December 1962. Though his recordings remain few, his conceptions of rhythm and blues live on, shaping artists in Waco and beyond.

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In Prohibition-era New York City, a dose of Texas flair enlivened the city’s roaring nightlife. Larger than life in personality and style, actress “Texas” Guinan commanded the nightclub circuit with her saucy wit. She sensationalized her life, blending fact with fantasy. The child of Irish immigrants, Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan was born on January 12, 1884, outside of Waco, Texas. Her family ran a grocery business while Guinan attended Sacred Heart Academy, where classmates knew her as Mamie. Even in childhood, Guinan craved mischief, pranking local shop owners and irking her teachers. She also cultivated skills in roping and riding, which she’d draw upon later in her film career. Combining her cowgirl skills with the musical training she received in Chicago, Guinan started performing in Wild West theater acts around the turn of the twentieth century. She also entered into a brief marriage with Denver cartoonist John J. Moynahan before following her show business dreams to New York City. Guinan struggled working as a chorus girl in NYC before becoming a regular on the vaudeville circuit and performing in musical shows like The Hoyden. She did this work for about a decade until, in 1917, a talent scout offered her the opportunity for a Hollywood career starring in silent westerns. So she rode off to California and into a new phase of her career. During her time in New York, Guinan acquired the nickname Texas. The moniker’s nod to her roots and its lone star bravado made it an apt name for an emerging star of western gunslingers. Beginning with The Wildcat (1917), Guinan portrayed heroines in films like Little Miss Deputy (1919) who possessed both strong wills and real gun skills. In 1921, she started her own production company in response to Hollywood’s ageism and beauty standards negatively impacting her film career. As a producer, Guinan displayed the same independence and ingenuity as her onscreen characters. She actively engaged in publicity, rights distribution, and cast actors that fit her films, rather than using a set company. Texas Guinan Productions made a few films such as Texas of the Mounted (1921) that are no longer extant before ceasing operations in 1922. Her silent film career on the decline, Guinan returned to New York and the stage.

During the 1920s, Guinan fashioned herself onstage and off as the grand dame of NYC nightlife. She personified the flashy and excessive spirit of the age. Guinan appeared on Broadway, but it was her rapier wit and brassy style that earned her the job of emcee at the Beaux Arts Hotel. It was a rare position for a woman in the 1920s. Starting in 1924, she reigned over several clubs and speakeasies—such as the El Fey or the 300 Club—first with mobster Larry Fay and then on her own. Guinan took to greeting patrons with the phrase, “Hello, Sucker.” It became her trademark, coming with enough sass to entice patrons to purchase more bootleg liquor. Effortlessly working a room, Guinan comedically blended entertainment and allure. She even turned her continuous arrests for violating Prohibition into a show, complete with music and photo ops. When federal or local authorities shut down one of her clubs, she simply opened up another. Audaciously flagrant, Guinan styled herself and her clubs to be the center of New York’s nightlife. Capitalizing on her reputation, she again took to the screen and the road.

In the late 1920s and early 30s, Guinan created touring shows and appeared in a few films. Her already mercurial fortunes declined with the Great Depression. Guinan’s autobiographical talkies like Queen of the Night Clubs (1929) were not commercial successes, but these films nevertheless kept her profile before the public. She traveled domestically with her club’s shows, but Europe rebuffed her attempt to present her act internationally. Her incendiary character prevented her 1931 European tour from obtaining an audience. Nevertheless, she brazenly turned the experience into a popular satirical show: Too Hot for Paris. It was this life on the road, however, that eventually toppled the imposing Guinan.

She died on November 5, 1933, in Vancouver from either amoebic dysentery she contracted in Chicago or ulcerative colitis. Guinan’s memorial at Broadway’s Campbell Funeral Church brought 12,000 people in to pay their respects. The service exhibited the brash glamour the late star embodied. Initially buried in White Plains, New York, her remains were later reinterred in a family plot at Calvary Cemetery in Queens. The rascally cowgirl from Waco had sauntered her way to big city stardom.

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Julius “Jules” Bledsoe’s extraordinary musical talent transcended racial discrimination of the nineteenth century and established him as a pioneer in American music.

Bledsoe was born on December 29, 1897, to Henry and Jessie Bledsoe in Waco. Even as a young child, he loved to sing. Bledsoe first performed publically at the age of five at New Hope Baptist Church, a church founded by his grandfather in 1866. In 1914, Bledsoe graduated from Central Texas Academy as valedictorian, and travelled to Marshall, Texas, to study liberal arts and music at Bishop College. After graduating magna cum laude in 1918, Bledsoe served as a civilian chaplain for an ROTC program at Virginia Union University in Richmond from 1918 to 1919.

In 1920, Bledsoe began his graduate study of medicine at Columbia University. After taking voice lessons with notable musicians such as Claude Warford, Luigi Parisotti, and Lazar Samoiloff, however, his career plans began to shift. He made his professional music debut on April 20, 1924, in the Aeolian Hall in mid-town Manhattan. Sol Hurok, a twentieth-century American impresario, sponsored Bledsoe’s first performance. Over the next several years, Bledsoe performed in various capacities around the city. He received his first leading role in an opera in 1926, when he performed the baritone role of Tizan in Deep River. Following one of Bledsoe’s New York performances, a critic from the New York Morning Telegraph praised Bledsoe as the star of the cast who could “pick the heart right out of anybody.”

Yet it was Bledsoe’s portrayal of Joe in a 1927 production of Jerome Kern's Showboat which launched him into the spotlight. His interpretation of the tune “Ol’ Man River” became a classic in American music. He later starred in the 1929 film production of Showboat as well. Bledsoe quickly earned international renown. He performed both in the United States and in Europe, and was praised for his command of several languages, his impressive vocal range and control, and a power to communicate ideas and emotions through music.

During this time, racial discrimination prevented African Americans from performing with major opera companies. Yet Bledsoe’s talent and renown earned him the right to perform with distinguished organizations such as the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the BBC Symphony in London, the Royal-Dutch Italian Opera Company, and the Cosmopolitan Opera Association in New York.

Bledsoe did not confine his career solely to the performance of music, but also composed many pieces. He wrote several spirituals and patriotic songs, such as “Pagan Prayer” and “Ode to America.” The Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam performed his African Suite, a set of four songs for voice and opera. Bledsoe also composed an opera titled Bondage in 1939, based upon Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.