Corsicana, Texas

Everything Corsicana is known for

25 songs mention this city 11 artists from here

Corsicana, Texas, located about 50 miles southeast of Dallas, has a notable connection to the world of music, particularly country and jazz. While known for being the "Birthplace of the Texas Oil Industry" and home to the famous Collin Street Bakery fruitcakes, the city has also fostered musical talent.

Among the artists who call Corsicana home are country music legend Billy Joe Shaver and jazz musician David "Fathead" Newman. The city is also mentioned in songs like "Probably Corsicana" by Max Stalling and "Corsicana Lemonade" by White Denim. The Corsicana Opry, housed in a historic building, hosts live country music shows.

Music in Corsicana

Songs About Corsicana

K.A.N.D., Corsicana, Texas
Billy Joe Shaver
82%
"K.A.N.D., Corsicana, Texas"
Probably Corsicana
Max Stalling
81%
"Probably Corsicana"
Corsicana Lemonade
White Denim
80%
"Corsicana Lemonade"
Probably Corsicana Intro
Max Stalling
77%
"Corsicana, Texas, let's go down to Corsicana"
Baccstreet
Yung Hood
75%
"ARTIST_ORIGIN"
K.A.N.D.; Corsicana; Texas
Billy Joe Shaver
70%
Corsicana Daily Sun
Billy Joe Shaver
60%
"The Corsicana Daily Sun shining on my new straw hat"
Big Sky
Parker McCollum
53%
"I stole a car in Corsicana again"
Wacko From Waco
Billy Joe Shaver
51%
"I was born in Corsicana"
Goodbye Lefty
Merle Haggard
50%
"Goodbye Lefty"
56 Fury
Rodney Crowell
50%
wacko for waco
billy joe shaver
45%
Rivertown
Hayes Carll
23%
"Yeah I am from Corsican', wayward on the storm"
If You've Got The Money I've Got The Time
Willie Nelson
5%
"If you've got the money I've got the time"
Always Late (With Your Kisses)
Willie Nelson
5%
"Always late with your kisses"
I Never Go Around Mirrors
Cody Jinks
5%
"I never go around mirrors"
This Ain't My Town
Randy Rogers & Wade Bowen
5%
"Ain't no room left for Lefty"
Won't Find Me Anymore
The Lowdown Drifters
5%
"Like Billie Joe says, "We'll live forever, but these song we leave for you""
Lefty’s Gone
George Strait
4%
"It's not right, but Lefty's gone"
Handmics Killed Country Music
Sam Bush
3%
"[?] Johnny Cash, and Lefty too"

Showing top 20 of 25 songs

Artists From Corsicana

B
Billy Joe Shaver
country
Y
Yung Hood
hip-hop
S
Shaver & Billy Joe Shaver
country
A
Aaron Copeland
country
B
Bobby Sparks
jazz
D
David "Fathead" Newman
jazz
B
Buck Griffin
rock
M
Marquis of Vaudeville
rock
A
Awkward AF
rock
N
Noe Sanchez
latin
C
Chaser Crouch
country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Corsicana

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Corsicana.

Interstate 45 8 songs Trinity River 11 songs Interstate 35 43 songs Interstate 20 13 songs

Musical Heritage

The Corsicana Kid Who Taught a Computer to Sing RoadyGoat

John Kelly Junior was born in Corsicana in December of nineteen twenty three, and he ended up at Bell Labs, one of the great research labs of the century. In nineteen fifty six he published a formula for how much to bet when you have an edge, now called the Kelly criterion, and gamblers and investors still argue about it. Then, with colleagues Carol Lochbaum and Max Mathews, he made a computer sing. Their recording of a computer voice singing Daisy Bell, the old song about a bicycle built for two, is the earliest known recording of a computer-synthesized voice singing a song. And years later, in the movie Two Thousand and One, A Space Odyssey, as the astronaut shuts down the computer HAL, HAL sings Daisy. The story goes that Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote the story, had heard that demonstration at Bell Labs.

RoadyGoat →

Born in Corsicana, Raised by Birdie RoadyGoat

Billy Joe Shaver, the songwriter behind Waylon Jennings' album Honky Tonk Heroes, was born in Corsicana on the sixteenth of August, nineteen thirty nine. In his autobiography, he says that when there was talk of putting him in a home, his grandmother, Birdie Lee Collins Watson, wouldn't let them, and she raised him herself. The chapter about those years borrows the title of one of his songs: Jesus Was Our Savior and Cotton Was Our King. Shaver went on to write nine of the ten songs on Honky Tonk Heroes, and he spent the rest of his life as one of the most admired songwriters in country music.

RoadyGoat →

Fathead RoadyGoat

The saxophonist David Newman was born in Corsicana, and he got his nickname from a band teacher. He had the music on his stand upside down, the teacher knew he could barely read it right side up, and he thumped him on the head and called him Fathead. The name stuck for life. In nineteen fifty two, he was driving for Ray Charles in Houston when police stopped them, for no reason they'd give, and, as Charles put it, because they didn't like David's hair. Newman went to jail, Charles bailed him out, and Charles said that night made them soul brothers for life. Fathead Newman became a mainstay of Ray Charles's band, and later a session player for Atlantic Records, including on Aretha Franklin's hit Respect.

RoadyGoat →

Duke Ellington's Trombone From Corsicana RoadyGoat

The jazz trombonist Tyree Glenn was born in Corsicana in nineteen twelve and took his first lessons from a local musician, Snub Mosley. In nineteen forty seven he joined Duke Ellington's orchestra, playing trombone and vibraphone, and later he played in Louis Armstrong's All Stars, from the middle of the nineteen sixties until Armstrong's last years.

RoadyGoat →

History of Corsicana

Wolf Brand Chili: A Nickel Bowl, a Pet Wolf, and the Birth of a Texas Icon RoadyGoat

1895

You're at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Beaton Street in downtown Corsicana, the birthplace of Wolf Brand Chili. In 1895 a Texas ranch cook named Lyman T. Davis (born 1879, not the boy of the brand's marketing legend) parked a chili lunch wagon right here in front of the old Blue Front Saloon and sold bowls for five cents apiece, served with crackers. His early product was 'Lyman's Famous Home Made Chili,' sold in brick form. Around 1921 he started canning it with basic machinery and gave it the name that stuck: Wolf Brand, after his pet gray wolf, Kaiser Bill, whose likeness went on the label. By 1923 he was turning out about two thousand cans a day, but a year later oil came in on his land and he lost interest in chili, selling out in 1924 to two Corsicana businessmen, J. C. West and Fred Slauson. The new owners leaned into showmanship, promoting the brand with trucks built to look like giant chili cans and a live wolf that traveled to the fairs. Quaker Oats bought Wolf Brand in 1957 and carried it nationwide; the Corsicana plant closed in 1985, and ConAgra acquired the brand in 1995. Chili itself became the official State Dish of Texas on May 11, 1977, by House Concurrent Resolution No. 18 under Governor Dolph Briscoe, honoring the 'bowl of red.' In 2018, a bronze statue of Kaiser Bill was unveiled on this very corner, on the footprint of the original wagon; visitors rub his paw for luck. (Sources: Texas State Historical Association Handbook; Corsicana Daily Sun; Visit Corsicana.)

Corsicana, TX RoadyGoat

Corsicana's history is marked by pivotal moments that shaped its destiny. Founded in 1848 by José Antonio Navarro, the city was named after the Mediterranean island of Corsica, the birthplace of Navarro's father. A significant event occurred in 1894 when oil was accidentally discovered by the American Well and Prospecting Company, leading to the first commercial oil well in Texas in 1895. This discovery marked the beginning of Texas's oil industry. During World War II, Corsicana Air Field trained thousands of pilots, further cementing its historical importance. These events have not only defined Corsicana's past but also its present identity as an important agribusiness center.

They Were Drilling for Water and Hit the Future of Texas RoadyGoat

On June 9, 1894, a drilling crew on what is now South 12th Street was doing something completely ordinary. Corsicana had outgrown its water supply, so the city hired the American Well and Prospecting Company to bore deep artesian wells. About 1,027 feet down, the crew got water, but it came up filmed with something darker. They had accidentally tapped the Corsicana oil field, the first in Texas to produce oil and gas in real, commercial quantities. The crew cased off the oil and finished the water job, but the cat was out of the bag. By 1895 the first commercial wells were producing, and in 1898 Pennsylvania oilman Joseph S. Cullinan built the first modern refinery in Texas right here, the first refinery west of the Mississippi. Corsicana became the prototype Texas boomtown years before Spindletop made headlines. The original discovery well is preserved today at Petroleum Park, a six-inch pipe rising from a bricked-over site, marking the exact spot where a search for drinking water cracked open the Texas oil age. (Source: Handbook of Texas; American Oil and Gas Historical Society.)

RoadyGoat →

Jose Antonio Navarro

1821

Lover of liberty. Foe of despotism. Born in San Antonio, Texas, February 27, 1795. Died January 13, 1871 and buried there. Member of the Legislature of Coahuila and Texas, 1821; land commissioner of De Witt's colony 1831 and of Bexar District, 1834-1835; signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836; member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas, 1838-1839; a commissioner of the Santa Fe Expedition, 1841; member of the Constitutional Convention of 1845; senator in the Legislature of Texas, 1846-1849. Navarro County gratefully bears his name. Corsicana was named by him for the isle of his father's birth - Corsica. Erected by the State of Texas 1936 with funds appropriated by the federal government to commemorate one hundred years of Texas Independence.

Historical Marker →

Corsicana Oilfield

1894

Corsicana field is an elliptical-shaped oil and gas producing area located in and around Corsicana in central Navarro County. It is significant because it was the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities. American Well and Prospecting Company, a water-well contractor, discovered it accidentally on June 9, 1894, while seeking a new water source for the city of Corsicana. The field produces from a pinch-out trap in an Upper Cretaceous sandstone reservoir at an average depth of 1,050 feet. The source of its primary recovery was a combined gas-cap and water drive. Its secondary recovery is the result of a number of saltwater flood projects initiated in the 1950s. Between 1896 and January 1, 1993, the field produced nearly 44 million barrels of oil. From 1900 through 1909 gas from the early field supplied fuel for domestic and industrial uses in Corsicana and other Texas cities. In 1893 civic leaders of Corsicana needed a dependable water supply to promote commercial development. They contracted with American Well and Prospecting Company, operated by H. G. Johnston, Elmer Akins, and Charles Rittersbacher, to drill three water wells for the city. On June 9, 1894, the drillers took the first well to a depth of 1,027 feet, where they encountered oil. Although the producing formation was cased off, oil continued to rise to the surface outside the casing. When residents learned of the oil in the water well, interest in prospecting for oil in the area grew. On September 6, Ralph Beaton and H. G. Damon, local citizens, joined with an experienced Pennsylvania oilman, John Davidson, to organize the Corsicana Oil Development Company. The company took a twelve-year mineral lease from A. and Bertha Bunert and entered an agreement with John H. Galey of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, on September 14, 1894. Galey agreed to drill five wells for the company at his own expense in exchange for an undivided one-half interest in all oil and gas leases owned by Corsicana Oil Development. The first well was staked 200 feet south of the water well drilled by American Well and Prospecting and was completed on October 15, 1895. It had an initial flow of 2½ barrels of oil a day. The second well was a dry hole. The third well was staked at Fourth and Collins streets in town and was completed in May 1896 with an initial yield of twenty-two barrels of oil a day. Three additional wells were producing by the end of 1896, when annual production of 1,450 barrels of oil was reported. By 1897 it was evident that commercial quantities of oil could be produced in the area, and development of the field moved to the east, northeast, and southeast of the original site. Although the early wells were small producers, prospectors sank so many wells that Corsicana oil flooded an already-limited Texas market, where the demand was only for use in local field development and for shipment to Austin and Dallas for making gas. With the only refinery in Texas located at Sour Lake, Corsicana operators at times found no market for their crude. At those times, they poured surplus oil on the ground. Waste in the field resulted in the passage on March 29, 1899, of the first Texas statutory regulation of the drilling, casing, plugging, and abandoning of oil and gas wells to end irresponsible producing and dumping. By the time dumping of crude was outlawed in Texas, Corsicana had found a dependable outlet for its oil. In 1897 Mayor James E. Whitesell and town leaders invited Joseph S. Cullinan , a successful Pennsylvania oilman, to come to Corsicana to advise in the development of the field. Cullinan was so interested in the oil potential of the area that he became a participant in its development. He contracted with several operators to buy 150,000 barrels of oil for fifty cents a barrel. He agreed to lay gathering lines, construct storage tanks, build a refinery, and find a market for Corsicana oil. He began the process of fulfilling his agreement, but those who

Tsha Handbook →

Corsicana - Fruitcakes and First Oil

1894

Home of Collin Street Bakery, shipping DeLuxe Fruitcakes worldwide since 1896. Also the site of the first significant oil discovery in Texas in 1894.

Smith, Thomas Ingles

1812

(1800-1848) Thomas Ingles Smith was born in 1800 in Virginia and was a soldier in the War of 1812 in a company commanded by his father, General Bird B. Smith. Smith arrived in Texas late in 1836, and soon enlisted in the Republic of Texas army under Gen Felix Huston. He was wounded in the Battle of the Salado in September 1842. In December of that year President Sam Houston sent a small group of Rangers under the command of Smith and Eli Chandler to move the archives of the Republic to Washington-on-the-Brazos. The citizens of Austin, in a show of force, prevented the move in what became known as the Archive War. By 1843 Smith was living along Chambers Creek in present Ellis County, and in 1844 was a Texas Ranger and Indian Scout. He commanded the Robertson County Rangers along the frontier in 1845. As commissioner to negotiate with the Indians, he signed the last treaty made by the Republic of Texas. Fort Smith, one of a line of fortifications from the Colorado to Red River, was established in 1846 and named for Thomas I. Smith. Along with two partners, he gave land for the townsite of Corsicana, and was a member of the commission to locate the Navarro County seat in 1848. He died in Austin in March 1848. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Historical Marker →

American Well and Prospecting Company

1894

In Kansas in 1890 Charles Rittersbacher and Horace Greeley Johnston organized a water-well-drilling business that they named the American Well and Prospecting Company. In 1894 they contracted with the Corsicana Water Development Company for three water wells in Corsicana, Texas. Work began on the first well in June at a site on South Twelfth Street, a few blocks from the business district. At a depth of 1,035 feet they struck oil and thus opened the state's first commercial oilfield. By 1900 the Corsicana oilfield was producing more than 800,000 barrels of crude annually and had the first refinery west of the Mississippi River. Although they continued drilling some wells, Rittersbacher and Johnston soon concentrated primarily on repairing drilling rigs and other equipment. They had opened a small shop in Corsicana to repair their own equipment, but meeting demands for repairs from other drillers became a full-time endeavor. About 1900 Rittersbacher and Johnston purchased patent rights for hydraulic rotary drilling equipment from M. C. and C. E. Baker, brothers who had pioneered in that field. From that time the American Well and Prospecting Company began manufacturing and distributing oilfield equipment under the trade name Gumbo Buster. A rig manufactured by American Well and Prospecting and operated by the Hamill brothers of Corsicana was used to drill the A. F. Lucas well at Spindletop in 1901, thus ushering in the petroleum industry on the Texas Gulf Coast ( see SPINDLETOP OILFIELD ). Eventually Gumbo Buster equipment was used in every major oilfield in the world. With the outbreak of World War II , American Well and Prospecting, like many other industries, converted its operations to the production of war-related materials. Among the items manufactured by the company were 1,000-pound semi-armor-piercing bombs and 240-millimeter shells. The plant operated around the clock and employed 1,000 people during peak wartime production. American Well and Prospecting was a family-controlled operation for the first several decades of its existence. Johnston served as president until his death in 1930. Rittersbacher died in 1919, but his sons, Elmer and Edgar, held management positions in the company, as did Eliot Johnston and Lowell Estes, son and son-in-law of Johnston. On June 30, 1944, Bethlehem Steel of Pennsylvania purchased all the outstanding stock and assets of American Well and Prospecting Company. At the conclusion of the war Bethlehem resumed production of oilfield equipment at the Corsicana plant. Increased competition in the business of manufacturing oilfield equipment and hard times in the petroleum industry forced Bethlehem to close the plant in 1959.

Tsha Handbook →

Things to Do in Corsicana

food 0.4 mi away
Collin Street Bakery

August Weidmann arrived in Corsicana from Bavaria in 1896 and opened a little bakery on Collin Street. His DeLuxe Fruitcake packed with pecans cherries and…
food 0.3 mi away
Wolf Brand Chili Origin Corner

Lyman T. Davis parked his lunch wagon at this corner of Beaton Street and 5th Avenue in 1895, ladling out five-cent bowls of chili in front of the Blue Front…
day trip
Day Trip to Corsicana 📣 (FULL EPISODE) S13 E4

Featured on The Daytripper — a full-episode local travel guide.

Everything Near Corsicana

423 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Corsicana on the Map
All music from Texas → · Browse more cities