by Harold McMillan

The Blues Family Tree Project began in 1990 with a mission to spend 10 seasons producing live performances for archival recordings and photography. For the most part, the folks we book for these shows have some direct connection to black Eastside music history. Yes, in a town whose music legacy is fueled by remnants of 1970s cosmic cowboys, 1980s Westside blues, and 1990s alt - garage - punk - grunge - pop, we focus on connecting to pre-'80s blues, R&B, gospel, and jazz. And, yes, we focus on black folks doing this music. And we very consciously produce the shows to coincide with the celebration of African American History Month.

Now, because I founded the project and spend a good deal of time talking about this stuff, this all makes perfect sense to me. However, year after year, I keep finding that many folks don't understand the motives or methods involved. As much as possible, the artists we select, the venues in which we produce, and the specific media spin we attempt for the African American History Month Concerts all have a very integral connection to the cultural -- historical, educational, social -- goals of the Blues Family Tree Project. And because I really want the work to be understood, this column offers up for consideration some of the reasoning underlying the project and its programming.

For starters, let's consider some hypotheticals. Let's say it's the early/mid 1980s and you, reader, happen to be a UT student with a keen interest in the history of East Austin and its music scene. You're not from around these parts originally, so you don't have the benefit of a grandfather's stories about the good - bad - old - days. And you also happen to be a musician, a bass player who wants to hang out and play R&B, blues, jazz -- whatever you can -- with some Eastside homeys who've been on the scene for awhile. If this were the situation, you might think the blues scene would be the place to hang.

So, you get out there and make the rounds, visit the jam sessions, check out the clubs. What you find is a lot of activity around town, a lot of young cats who are really into the blues, a good buzz in the press about the scene, everything seems to be hip.

Now, because you just started your research into the scene, you haven't gotten around to checking out the Eastside. But hey, black folks play blues. Right? So it would seem to be a good assumption that when you do check out Black East Austin, you're gonna find the old blues cats hanging out and playing some stuff. Seems like a normal expectation. But then you go out and drive through the 'hood on East 6th, 7th, 11th, 12th and Rosewood Streets (the places where the night spots were supposed to be) and you don't find much happenin'. In fact, what you find are boarded-up buildings, street corner hangin', and virtually no sign of this business district that is supposed to be there. It's not totally gone, though. The East Room is there on Lydia. Phases is a little further out on Rosewood. The Bottom Line is there on 6th. And you might even find (if you go at just the right time) some blues at Marie's Tea Room, off of 7th and Webberville.

But that "district" you've heard about, 11th and 12th Streets, the "End," is dead. Boom!

In the early '80s, there was blues all over the place in Austin. Just not so much on the Eastside. And there were young cats out there jamming and getting gigs who really were into the blues -- lifestyle, music, ethos. There were just not very many of them who were black. So, if you were a UT student who played bass, liked the blues, and had an interest in cultural history, Austin just might have been the ideal place to be in the early 1980s.

Given all I've said so far in this 1980s hypothetical scenario, now factor in your strong interest in seeing black communities thrive, your interest in seeing black folks benefit (as much as anyone else) from the fruits of African American art and culture. Factor in your deep understanding of how important it is for an older generation to pass on its oral culture to the next generation. Include your understanding of how racism, even -- god forbid -- in the music business, can contaminate the integrity of cultural expression. And acknowledge that your take on this whole situation is not necessarily understood or appreciated by other folks with whom you will interact. Also factor in that, at least hypothetically, you are a young black man.

What you find in Austin in the early '80s, young black man, is a music scene where black players (old and young) are trying, working hard to "break into" the jazz and blues live music scene. There's a mood in town and it seems like there is about to be a blues rebirth. There's blues at the Austex on South Congress, at the Rome Inn near campus, at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel downtown, at Spelman's on West 5th, the Bottom Line, the Continental, Hut's, Antone's, and other places around town.

W.C. Clark is the most visible black face in the blues scene at that time, playing all around the scene. Black-owned downtown businesses seem to take notice of what's happening. Big Scotty's BBQ joint on Neches tries to get in on the local blues explosion, Brooks' Fine Food on 6th Street soon follows. Next thing you know Major Burkes is trying to get back out there and take advantage of the renewed interest in Austin blues. George Underwood and his sons put together blues jams for Brooks' Fine Food. Blues Boy Hubbard hosts a weekly jam session at C-Boy's Bottom Line. The point is black folks seemed to be getting "back into blues" because there was renewed interest in the stuff. Ironically, the new interest in Austin was coming from the Westside of town and mostly from young white folks.

Please understand. There was some great music brewing up here. The energy in the blues scene was some exciting stuff. It was fresh. It was full of hot jam sessions, a whole scene was developing around really getting into this old music that had for years been the domain of black folks in cut-and-shoot joints, reflections of what the good-hard-life is all about. But, in Austin, the blues had found this new energy, new players, new venues. Believe me, it really was an exciting time to be out and playing in the local scene.

Now come back to our hypotheticals. What if you, young black man, found yourself in all of this good energy about the music and stopped to think about some of the cultural ramifications of what was going on in the scene. Perhaps you might ask some question about this. You might ask about why it was necessary for these journeymen black players to have to work so hard to "break into the scene."

Wasn't there a legacy, a tradition in the Austin blues/jazz scene that connected it directly to the community and players that created and performed that music to begin with? Weren't the local "old masters" of Austin's jazz and blues scene the guys who had been playing the stuff the longest? Weren't they the veterans of the Huston-Tillotson jazz programs of the past, weren't they the cats who had cut their musical teeth in the 1950s playing blues and jazz on the Eastside at Ernie's, Charlie's Playhouse and the Victory Grill?

Enough of the hypotheticals. Reality sets in right here. Truth is the Eastside blues and jazz scene was all but dead by 1980. Truth is black folks had very little to do with the business of booking/promoting this music in Austin in 1980. Truth is James Polk, through his work with the group Passenger, was one of the very few black faces (or Huston-Tillotson jazz alums) to be found doing jazz gigs around town. Truth is that the East 11th and 12th Street night life district (the focus of present day Austin Revitalization Authority efforts) -- the End -- was not involved in the rekindling of Austin's new interest in jazz and blues.

Further truth is that I was out in the scene, playing bass and learning from these folks in the mid 1980s. I played at the jam sessions, worked with Major Burkes, sat in with W.C. and Stevie Vaughan, played gigs with Blues Boy Hubbard and Matthew Robinson, hauled my geared nightly between Scotty's BBQ to the Austex to Hut's to the Bottom Line to the Stephen F. Austin Hotel. To tell the truth, I was a pretty good R&B/blues bass player then. But there was always something that just didn't seem right about how this stuff was working in Austin.

When I went back to graduate school, I decided to do some original research and put together some materials on the history of the Eastside music scene. I wanted to find some documentation of this glorious Eastside musical heyday of the 1950s that I heard so much about. The cats were always telling me good stories about the old days on East 11th Street, about Charlie's, about playing with Johnny Taylor or B. B. King at the Victory. I thought it would be a good project to go through the local libraries and put together some materials to illustrate this colorful past.

The Blues Family Tree Project took shape in my head in the late 1980s. The thing is, it was supposed to be just a little research project on the music scene. The original goal was to just collect some materials from the libraries and media.

It is true now, and was true then. Efforts to find a "usable and complete history" of Black East Austin in our public, university, and media research facilities and libraries results in an abundance of frustration and very few materials. Truth is, you really cannot, even today, go to the UT Library System or the Austin Public Library and find archival materials that illustrate what Austin's black music heritage is all about. The Statesman didn't write the stories, the scholars didn't write the books, the players didn't publish memoirs. The folks who wrote the published histories of Austin simply didn't give a damn about the culture, music, or people who lived East of East Avenue/I-35. So the great idea I had for pulling that material together just never worked. For the most part, the materials don't exist.

The Blues Family Tree Project can't create archival materials for an era, a time already past. We can't time-travel back to the early 1950s and record Bobby Bland jamming at the Victory Grill. We can't recreate T.D. Bell and Erbie Bowser's early collaborations. It's too late for that. We missed it.

What we can do (and are trying to do) is provide a collection of materials for those who come after us and just might be interested in reading, for instance, our transcript of Erbie Bowser's oral history interview. Maybe someone else will be interested in seeing and hearing, from our video archive, guitarist Clarence Pierce's (with the Eastside Band) only Antone's performance. Maybe someone will be interested in knowing just how some of these cats feel about blues moving out of the 'hood and into the Westside's clubs.

And when you consider that Erbie, and Ural Dewitty, and Grey Ghost, and Whimp Caldwell, and James Clay and others have all died since we started this documentary project, maybe you'll understand why our booking decisions focus first on the guys who were directly connected to the Eastside scene of the past.

Believe me, black music in Austin did exist before it had to move to the Westside to find a gig. All we are trying to do is document some of those folks while we still have the opportunity to do so.