Houston's Very Best Songs Ever

The up-tempo gospel-drenched rave-up erupts out of the blocks with a trumpet fanfare over drums and Teddy Reynolds's prominent piano riff; seconds later Wayne Bennett's electric guitar interlocks with Reynolds's keyboards and Bland comes swooping in with his alternately scratchy and silken baritone, singing blue words that don't jibe with the joyous abandon of the music: "Without a warnin', you broke my heart, you took it darlin' and you tore it apart."

At about the one-minute mark, all falls away save for the sanctified funky beats of not one but two drummers who pop and crash away as Bland, by now pleading, croons that he gets a little lonely in the middle of the night, and he needs you, darling, to make things all right. An impeccable sax solo leads into Bland's trademark "squall," and he roars, redeemed on the fade-out "I feel alright!" Rarely can two minutes, 40 seconds be better spent. — J.N.L.

5. "La Grange"

ZZ Top

Tres Hombres

1974

Marvin Zindler's passing this summer raises an interesting question about ZZ Top: If the flamboyant newsman's investigation hadn't led to infamous Fayette County brothel the Chicken Ranch's August 1973 closure, would "La Grange" have still appeared on the Lil' Ol' Band from Texas's 1974 album Tres Hombres? Maybe, even probably, not. And then what? No Worldwide Texas tour... no Degüello... no "Legs" video? Though other Tres Hombres songs are better — "Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers" rocks harder, and "Waitin' for the Bus/Jesus Just Left Chicago" is a better blues — "La Grange" was the first domino to fall, the song that made ZZ Top's bones, so to speak. It quickly became a staple of the emerging FM radio format known as Album-­Oriented Rock and reclaimed the blues for American rock bands when Brits like Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones had all but stolen them away. Said to be lifted wholesale from John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun," "La Grange" is in fact unique to ZZ Top, if only for the trio's vacuum tightness and Billy Gibbons's leering vocals. Honestly, it can be worked up by reasonably talented musicians in a couple of hours — which some band out there is probably, hopefully, doing this very moment. — C.G.

4. "Pancho and Lefty"

Townes Van Zandt

Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas

1977 release of a 1972 recording

An enigmatic tale with a more or less clear story arc, Van Zandt's tale of two bandits and their respective demises seems likely to become an American standard. Over a gorgeously simple, achingly sad melody, Van Zandt spins an epic in which just enough detail is omitted to eternally tantalize all who fall under the song's spell. What did Lefty do to Pancho? Why did the Federales let him get away? Why did Lefty go to Cleveland, of all places? Is the song about Pancho Villa and Lefty Frizzell, as I thought as a kid? Van Zandt himself declared often that he knew the answers to none of these questions, save the last. (The answer is no, it is not about either of them.)

A Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard duet took the song to the top of the country charts in 1983, and the song has been recorded by Emmylou Harris and dozens of other artists of lesser fame.

More than that, the song has infiltrated the world's psyche. A few years ago, a Pancho and Lefty's Sports Bar stood on a barrio corner on the near north side, and Rodney Crowell recently told me several hundred Swedes sang along on the chorus when he performed the song there. Van Zandt himself once had a close encounter with his own brainchild on the outskirts of Houston, decades after it was released. Pulled over for speeding near Brookshire by Anglo/Mexican-American highway patrolmen, Van Zandt's ticket was summarily dismissed when his authorship of the song was discovered. Turns out that the two cops were known as "Pancho and Lefty" back at the station house. — J.N.L.

3. "I Can See Clearly Now"

Johnny Nash

I Can See Clearly Now

1972

Big Pharma should bottle this song and sell it; shrinks should prescribe it to all those who have the blues. This is one tune with optimism enough to put Prozac out of business. The pop-reggae gem passes like a giant sigh of relief; it's plain from the hard-won calm obvious in Nash's angelic, Sam Cooke-style tenor that he has indeed been truly delivered from some very dark places.

Native Houstonian Nash has had one of the oddest careers in American pop history. After stints as an actor and a billing as "America's First Black Teen Idol," Nash's career took off after he moved to Jamaica in the late '60s. There he befriended the not-yet-internationally famous Bob Marley and started incorporating rocksteady and early reggae into his gospel-tinged R&B.