This Week in Texas Music History: Robert Shaw
This Week in Texas Music History, we’ll meet a pioneer of barrelhouse piano who started his career underneath the house.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Robert Shaw died on May 16, 1985. Born in Stafford, Texas, on August 9, 1908, Shaw was not allowed to study piano as a child, since his parents thought that was not appropriate for a boy. Undaunted, the young Shaw hid underneath the house and listened while his sister practiced her piano lessons. By the 1920s, Shaw had become an accomplished player of the barrelhouse piano style, also known as boogie-woogie, which combined blues, jazz, and the syncopated rhythms of ragtime.
Robert Shaw toured the country throughout the 1930s, before settling in East Austin, where he operated a grocery store for many years. During the 1960s, he was rediscovered by a younger generation of fans and soon was performing on stages throughout the world. Shaw was a dynamic performer who helped lay the foundation for Austin’s live music scene long before the city was known as the “Live Music Capital of the World.”
Next time on This Week in Texas Music History, we’ll learn about a record label that was a real feather in the cap of the Texas recording industry.
Podcast: Download (2.3MB)
