In 1963, shortly after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, Bill Wittliff and his wife, Sally, founded the Encino Press on the kitchen table of their Dallas apartment. The press focused on regional material about Texas and the Southwest, taking advantage of Bill’s editing, book design, photography, and illustration skills to produce finely …
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The Rogers & Hammerhead Show aired from 1996-1997 on the Austin Music Network on cable access TV. Freddy Powers and Bill McDavid created the show to shine a spotlight on songwriters who developed country music in Texas—and whose songs made various country musicians famous. Powers is a legend in his own right, penning hits …
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Making sense of the hard luck and career of forgotten “Laredo Rose” songwriter Rich Minus isn’t easy. There are lots of gaps in the story of the enigmatic San Antonio native who for a time ran with hard-scrabble singer-songwriters Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Blaze Foley, figures known as much for their drinking and …
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Joel Salcido recently donated several of his photographs from his 2002 Roma, Texas series, Entre Fantasmas. Roma is a small town on the Texas-Mexico border and was the location of the filming of the 1951 Viva Zapata movie, which starred Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn. Joel’s photographs are an homage to this town and …
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Are you ready to celebrate Austin Film Festival’s silver anniversary? We at The Wittliff are looking forward to yet another festival full of fun, interesting, and inspiring film screenings and discussion panels. In fact, the Wittliff, in collaboration with AFF staff, is putting select panel recordings from past festivals online. Hear Ed Solomon, who also …
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San Marcos, TX – As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month, The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University have acquired one of the largest known collections of Tejano Music materials and memorabilia in existence from renowned musicologist and collector Ramón Hernández. “Hernández is universally respected in the Tejano music community,” said Wittliff Collections director Dr. David …
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Forty-one issues of the indie music newspaper It’s Only Rock ’N’ Roll have been digitally preserved by The Wittlliff Collections at Texas State University. You can view the inventory here. Published in San Antonio by music journalist Ron Young, the preserved issues cover the period from March 1978 to April 1982. It’s Only Rock ’N’ …
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It’s been nearly 50 years since the birth of the outlaw country music scene in Texas. At the beginning of the 1970s, it was known as progressive country, redneck rock and cosmic cowboy music. Its earliest proponents were Michael Martin Murphey, B.W. Stevenson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Doug Sahm, Freda & the Firedogs with singer Marcia Ball …
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We are honored to feature Keith Carter’s retrospective exhibition, which opened at The Wittliff on August 27. With over 140 photographs on view, the exhibit features work from every phase of his career. Like the powerful photograph of a Mexican boy on a windowsill, taken in 1968 or the 2017 portrait of his neighbor, Mr. …
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(by Katie Salzmann) We never know who might request to use material from our archives, and earlier this summer the folks at the television show “OBJECTified” reached out to us for images of Willie Nelson to complement their hour-long interview with him. We provided 33 photos of Willie throughout his career, and we are curious …
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