BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Research Center H.C.R. 24
79R2069 JTR-D By: Kolkhorst (Ogden)
AUTHOR'S/SPONSOR'S STATEMENT OF INTENT
Known throughout the world as an inexhaustible source of every variety of American music, Texas boasts particularly rich reserves of the distinctive musical genre known as the blues.
The community of Navasota exemplifies the Lone Star State's strengths in this area, combining as it does a lively contemporary blues scene with the birthplace of one of the great Texas blues artists.
Blues aficionados are well aware that the beloved singer and guitarist Mance Lipscomb was born near Navasota, and although he was almost 65 years of age before he committed his distinctive performance style to a recording, his wide-ranging repertoire of blues, boogies, ballads, rags, dance tunes, and sacred music is an apt reflection of the breadth of his home state's musical treasures.
Mance Lipscomb's heritage lives on in present-day Navasota, where the heirs to this profound musical legacy have created the Navasota Blues Fest.
The Navasota Blues Fest not only brings together blues musicians for an annual celebration of regional music but also administers the Mance Lipscomb Scholarship Fund, which each year awards a scholarship to a deserving senior at Navasota High School.
Just as Mance Lipscomb personified Texas music in his encyclopedic grasp of a host of musical styles, so the city of Navasota is a fitting representative of the richness, power, and variety of the Texas blues tradition.
RESOLVED
That the 79th Legislature of the State of Texas hereby designate Navasota as the official Blues Capital of Texas.