Blues Specialist

Erbie Bowser 1918-1995On January 24, 1991 Austin’s-own Erbie Bowser of the Blues Specialists described how he got started, his gig at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. and about the Austin jazz scene in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The now deceased piano player explains how he relied on his ear to play and how his wife helped him read music. The interview was part of the research for the Austin Blues Family Tree Project by Harold McMillan.QUESTION: Tell us something about how you got your start? I first was living in East Texas in a place they call Palestine, which was Anderson County. I was reared there, but I was born in Davila, Texas…During my junior year, we had a junior/senior prom and there was a band came there and somehow they didn't have their piano player, so they asked me to help (them) to finish. They were the Sunset Royal Entertainers out of Tyler, Texas…They asked me to make a two-week tour with them. The first one was in Louisiana, Alabama, back to Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma. When we came back, well, I went on to finish high school…I didn't get a chance to go to college then. During that time they got me in the service, shortly after I finished high school. I laid off for a couple of years and so I went in the service and I covered (the) European district, which was England, Africa, Sicily and Italy. And then came back. And after that I started just normal work. I was a brick mason. I did that for a while and I decided that I would try to better the condition. So there is a little school, which they call Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, Texas. By having the little opportunity with…government help, I went on down there, had a couple of years at Jarvis Christian College. Unfortunately I lost my parents. I got out and was contemplating on going back, but I never did. So, I married a little girl from down there at Greenville, Texas. She was in school where I was down at Jarvis…That was in ‘48. We moved and went back to my home there in Palestine. We stayed there for a good while. It was during that time, in ‘49- ‘50, there was a big oil boom up in Midland and Odessa. So we decided we would go up there and see what we could do up there. It was fast money, as they said. We went up there and I went to work with Midwestern Drilling Company and she went to work in the hospital there…During that time, that's when I was playing at different places…That's where I met T.D. Bell. He was there. He was working with Johnny Holmes. He had his band at that time. (T.D. Bell and the Cadillacs) They needed a piano player also, and that's when I joined them in the early ‘50s and we played together there in Odessa, Midland, Hobbs (New Mexico) and the territory around in that vicinity.And for about a year and a half or two years we was together. So my wife decided she wanted to better her education, so she liked Huston-Tillotson (College). So we decided to come to Austin…I went to work for National Cash Register Company, which was the first part of the ‘60s…I worked for NCR for 20 years.Question: How would you categorize your style? I play, my favorite type of music, blues, but I figured that if I learned the blues then I could get into the ballads...And after meeting my wife, well quite naturally by she being a musician and read and what have you. See, I depended on her a lot whenever I played for a group or played for a dance or something. If they had music, then I would have to bring it to her to let her show me my changes and flairs and what have you. And when I'd pick that up and go back they'd think I was a professional.Those are the things that kept me going. That's why I think one reason I've got her for 42 years, cause she's always been a help to me. I like the blues and I always did like big band type music. But when you like music you like it all. I still like jazz. But I keep myself sort of from a blues to some sort of a jazz. Those are the types that I try to follow most of all.QUESTION: How do you know that the audience is enjoying your music? ...I'll say all right, come on see me, get on down with it. You know when I get off the bandstand, I go to every table and say, “I'm sorry to interrupt and excuse me, how do you like it?” TYLER "T.D" BELL , Born December 22, 1922, outside of Dimebox, Texas, Bell first made his mark as a bluesman in the clubs around Rockdale, packing the house in town and in the surrounding communities of Elgin, Bryan, and Temple. In 1949, Victory Grill proprietor Johnny Adams lured him to Austin with the promise of three shows a week at the Victory; Bell promptly quit his job at Rockdale's aluminum plant to play music full time. Bell was an instant hit in Austin, playing a savvy, uptown blues in a town that had scarcely seen an electric guitar."To come here was a real thrill for me," Bell recalled in an interview this summer. "When I came [to the Victory], people would be standing in line out on the sidewalk."Adams limited his star attraction to three songs a night. "'That's it,' he'd say. 'Don't give 'em too much,'" chuckled Bell.Called "Little T-Bone" for his take on T-Bone Walker's jazz-tinged guitar style, Bell remained a staple on Austin's Eastside for 20 years, fronting his own band the Cadillacs and sitting in with such touring guit-slingers as B.B. King, Gatemouth Brown, Albert Collins, Bobby Bland, Freddie King, Lowell Fulson, and the big T-Bone himself.When the Eastside entertainment district faded out in the early Seventies, victim of desegregation, destabilization, and the politics of poverty, Bell laid down his guitar and went into the trucking business, eventually building a small fleet of his own. When local folklorist Tary Owens organized a Victory Reunion in 1987, he pulled Eastside heroes like Bell, Erbie Bowser, and Grey Ghost out of retirement, prompting local audiences to get reacquainted with a few of Austin's living legends.Shortly thereafter, Bell formed the Blues Specialists with pianoman and longtime bandmate Bowser, and the two settled into a popular Friday happy hour residency at the Continental Club. In 1991, Bell and Bowser released It's About Time on Owens' Spindletop Records; a sharp, satisfying collection of old-time Texas blues, it garnered the pair a W.C. Handy nomination for "Best Traditional Blues Album," followed by concerts at the Smithsonian and Carnegie Hall.