Texas All the Way

In Houston's gloomy old municipal auditorium one night last week, Texans plumped into their seats for a go at a favorite pastime: admiring the work of a native son. This time, the son was Composer and Folksong-Arranger (Home on the Range) David Wendel Fentress Guion, 56, a short (5 ft. 5 in.) sober-faced man with a pince-nez, who now lives in Pennsylvania. Guion's latest composition: a symphonic suite called Texas, commissioned for the Houston Symphony Society.

The society suggested Texas history as a theme, but Guion preferred to stick to folk patterns and impressions of Texas sights & sounds. Prairie Dusk, Part One of his 14-part suite, had more than just impressions; Composer Guion even worked in recordings of a Texas cricket singing, a mockingbird calling and a coyote howling. Among the other 13 parts were such plaintive songs as Buffalo Bayou Song and Wild Geese Over Palestine, Texas, an item entitled Ride, Cowboy, Ride!, with staccato hoofbeats, and for a climax, a low-down blues piece called High Steppin' Lula Belle May Ida Brown of Lyons Avenue Steps Out!

Conductor Efrem Kurtz, his Houston Symphony and two vocalists gave the suite the full ten-gallon-hat treatment. If it seemed a bit long (50 minutes) and repetitive, few in the audience minded much; it was Texas spirit all the way. Composer Guion, who attended the performance with the symphony society's President Ima Hogg,* stood up to receive an ovation with Kurtz & Co.

Composer Guion hopes that out-of-state audiences will want to hear Texas too. "Folk music is folk music, wherever it is, and people love it." But the most enthusiastic audiences will be those between El Paso and Nacogdoches.

* Daughter of Texas Governor James Stephen Hogg (1851-1906), named for the heroine of a poem (The Fate of Marvin) written by her uncle, Thomas E. Hogg.

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