Documentary Reveals Houston’s Unsung Blues Legacy

The phrase “luv ya, blue” is synonymous with Houston thanks to the Oilers football team, but maybe the phrase should be “luv ya, blues.” The Bayou City is one of the most important places in the history of the musical genre, but scant few people know it.

Hopefully that will change with the film When Houston Had the Blues, a deeply fascinating documentary that explores the rise and fall of the genre in the city’s historic Third and Fifth Wards. It screens Juneteenth at the River Oaks Theatre, with producer Drew Barnett-Hamilton in attendance.

Barnett-Hamilton is, at first glance, an odd midwife for this sort of delivery. She’s white and thoroughly L.A.-ified to judge by her voice during a brief phone interview. However, she has Texas roots deeper than a magnolia tree. Born in Austin and raised in Houston, her family goes back eight generations to the first German settlers. She jokes that a photo that appeared in her high school Texas history book was also on her living room wall. 

While she was working as a producer on American Horror Story: Apocalypse (and seven months pregnant to boot), she returned to Houston to work on a fictionalized script about her grandparents growing up in the city. Researching nightclubs they might have gone on dates to, she stumbled across tales of the El Dorado Ballroom. It was here, and in several clubs across the city, that she started unraveling the story of Houston blues for the next five years.

“The first piece of that puzzle was Big Mama and realizing there was such a big gap in my knowledge,” she said. “This wasn’t something we were taught in Texas history. So many people from Houston were a part of this legacy, and I had never even heard of them.” 

“Big Mama” in this case is Willa Mae Thornton. She’s best known as the original singer of “Hound Dog,” which later became a breakout hit for Elvis Presley. Hearing Thornton sing it in the original blue vernacular, growling the lyrics like a swear word, renders The King’s version impotent in comparison no matter how many teenage girls fainted to him singing it.

Thornton moved to Houston in the late 1940’s. She started singing at the El Dorado for $50 a night, and was signed to the most underrated record label in music history, Don Robey's Peacock Records. What Motown was to R&B, Houston-based Peacock was to blues, signing acts like Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Arnett Cobb, and even Little Richard. Over the next several years, a new blues scene separate from the Mississippi Delta grew up with Houston as the epicenter. 

When Houston Had the Blues is a treasure trove of songs, interviews, footage, and images of this turbulent but triumphant time in music history. Barnett-Hamilton drew on a wealth of sources, living and archival, to piece together the history. Often, she relied on the blues musicians still living and playing in the city. One of her favorite memories is bringing Shipley donuts and La Madeleine to Katie Welch’s daughter as a thank you treat as she scanned her mother’s surviving pictures. 

“One of the biggest breakthroughs was connecting with all the Houstonians,” she said. “This era of music, there is so much value in the performance, and I think people knew how special it was. This was before cellphones, and it was only available if you were in the room at that moment. Cellphones have made that a little less special. That feeling when you’re at a concert and the room is electric and you just have to remember.”

Barnett-Hamilton’s passion for the project and penchant for extensive research into the subject quickly got her access to the blues community. She filmed hours with performers and their families, all of whom trusted her with heirlooms and stories that make the movie possible.

“Trust has to be earned,” she said. “I had to do years of research just to feel comfortable being the person making this movie because I wasn’t sure it should even be me. I wanted to make sure that we were doing this as the whole picture, not just one part of the story. It’s not just about one club or record label. This is a story about people.”

Houston has always had a bit of a PR problem. The city has no defining films or songs the way New York, Los Angeles, or even Chicago do. It’s rich in history, but like Barnett-Hamilton said, you often have to go digging for it.

When it comes to the blues, the lack of recognition for Houston is bizarre. Two of the Three Kings, Albert and Freddie, lived and worked in the city. Zydeco blues probably wouldn’t even exist with Clifton Chenier, and Big Mama was only one of a dozen talented women singers that crafted the unique Texas blues sound. Most people only think of Texas and the blues when Stevie Ray Vaughan enters the conversation. Appropriately, Barnett-Hamilton keeps Vaughan at arm’s length in the documentary, with him only appearing very briefly.

Challenging the ignorance is what makes When Houston Had the Blues a remarkable film. Not only does it catalogue these groundbreaking musicians at a pivotal junction that birthed all of modern rock, it reminds people of how much Houston contributes to the great cultural gumbo pot. 

“Our education didn’t fill us in on these things, and now it’s lost,” she said. “Several of the people we interviewed, this was the final interview. They didn’t get their credit, and the whole city’s credit gets diminished.”