Deep Ellum

Deep Ellum, on the eastern edge of downtown Dallas, first sprang up as a ramshackle business district and evolved into a place where the black and white worlds of Dallas converged. This book strips illuminates the cultural milieu that spawned such seminal blues and jazz musicians as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Buster Smith, and T-Bone Walker and fostered the growth of western swing. This updated edition offers new research on Deep Ellum’s vital cross-fertilization of white and black musical styles, many additional rare historical photographs, and an updated account of the area in the early years of the twenty-first century.