By Jeff Stevens
What do Muddy Waters, Cheech and Chong, and Bruce Springsteen have in common? This diverse group of artists all performed in Austin, Texas, and all of them are pictured in a new book by photographer Burton Wilson.
As most music fans know, Austin has one of the most vibrant music scenes in the United States. As a resident of the city, music fan and photographer, Wilson was in the right place to chronicle the early days of the city's live music scene.
The book, "The Austin Music Scene: Through the Lens of Burton Wilson" (Eakin Press), is a who's who of American music during the last part of the 20th century. In addition to Muddy Waters, a sizable number of great blues artists are featured, including Sleepy John Estes, Otis Spann, Big Joe Williams, Jimmy Reed, Big Mama Thornton, James Cotton, Freddie King, Lightnin' Hopkins, Lowell Fulson and John Lee Hooker.
Wilson, a veteran of World War II and a sculptor whose work has been displayed at the New York Museum of Modern Art, didn't set out to chronicle the Austin music scene. As a music fan, he started shooting blues legends at the Austin club, the Vulcan Gas Company, in the late 1960s. That club eventually faded away and another club, the Armadillo World Headquarters, took its place.
Wilson became the club's resident photographer once he was granted backstage access by owner Eddie Wilson. The club also booked blues, but it also was able to pull in larger shows by the likes of Fats Domino, Willie Nelson and Steve Miller.
Eddie Wilson recalls: "During the hippie heyday at the Armadillo, he made it cool to be polite and precise, and he taught some of us perspective by example. He recorded the rest of us as we scurried about overwrought, overworked and worried that we would go to hell if we turned a nickel too much profit. We were wrong, of course, about everything by the burning desire to do right; Burton truly loved us just as we were, and that knowledge gradually made us very proud."
Through his contact with the many musicians that he photographed in Austin, Burton Wilson's reputation grew, leading to a cover shoot for a Johnny Winter album for Imperial Records. That was followed by cover shots for Capitol, Liberty and Jazzman Records.
Given Wilson's access to Austin's great musicians over the years, it made sense to publish some of his collection. Overall, the soft-cover book contains more than 200 black-and-white photographs taken by Wilson from 1965 to 1994.
The book has a mixture of performance and candid, backstage shots. Each photo includes Wilson's recollections about the artist and photo. His narrative is a compilation of his newsletters, sent to friends and family over the years to describe his photo adventures.
Texas music enthusiast Jack Ortman also played an important role. First, he was the prime mover in simultaneously persuading publisher Eakin Press and Burton Wilson to "do" the book. Second, he helped identify many of the side musicians found in the photographs, thus contributing to the completeness of the index.
The 190-page book, which is in its second printing, has a list price of $26.95.
Pictured above, Big Joe Williams at the Victory Grill in East Austin, Aug. 14, 1968, by photographer Burton Wilson.
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