Center for Texas Music History programs win national awards

By Ann Friou
University News Service
October 1, 2009

Two programs sponsored by the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University-San Marcos have won prestigious national awards.

The PBS television series Texas Music Café won a Bronze Telly Award for the show’s very first episode, aired in 2008. The episode, “Cheatham Street Warehouse Class of ’87,” took viewers inside San Marcos’ Cheatham Street Warehouse, a true Texas honky-tonk where owner Kent Finlay has given dozens of well-known singer-songwriters, including George Strait, their start. The episode featured the artists James McMurtry, Bruce Robison, Terri Hendrix, Lloyd Mains, Todd Snider, John Arthur Martinez, Hal Ketchum, Big John Mills and Finlay himself.

The New York-based Telly Awards, in their 30th year, are presented for excellence in non-commercial television programming. The awards program received 14,000 entries this year from around the world. Texas Music Café is broadcast on dozens of PBS affiliates throughout North America. More information about the program is available at www.texasmusiccafe.com.

Also, the second book in the Center’s John & Robin Dickson Series in Texas Music, Alan Govenar’s Texas Blues: The Rise of a Contemporary Sound, won an Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. Texas Blues is the most comprehensive history available of blues music in the Lone Star State. The Dickson Series, a collaborative effort between the Center for Texas Music History and Texas A&M University press, publishes approximately one book each year on Texas music history.