Happy, Texas

Everything Happy is known for

1 song mention this city 1 artist from here

Music in Happy

Songs About Happy

Happy Is a Happy Texas City!
The Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities & Towns
60%

Artists From Happy

B
Buddy Knox
rock Pop: 22

Rivers & Roads in Song near Happy

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

Highway I 40 20 songs U.S. Route 66 17 songs

Musical Heritage

Canyon RoadyGoat

Head due south out of Amarillo and you'll hit Canyon — fifteen thousand people and the front door to Palo Duro Canyon. It's a West Texas A and M town, ninety-six hundred students who mostly clear out come summer, which is exactly when the canyon fills up. The railroad reached here in 1898. A three-story courthouse with a working clock tower still anchors the downtown square, and every Fourth of July a parade of floats rolls down Fourth Avenue and loops around it. But the real reason to come: out in the Palo Duro amphitheater, the outdoor musical Texas plays nightly all summer long, canyon walls for a backdrop. A small town that knows how to put on a show.

RoadyGoat → · 16.5 mi away

Texas (outdoor musical) RoadyGoat

Six nights a week, June through August, the walls of Palo Duro Canyon turn into a backdrop for a show simply called "Texas." Thirteen hundred seats, open sky, a story set in the 1890s — a cattle baron named McLean, drawn straight from Charles Goodnight, going to war with a farmer over a railroad. There's a love triangle, a hoedown, two fever dreams. But the man to watch rides a white paint horse named Spirit. Benny Tahmahkera plays Quanah Parker, the last Comanche war chief — and Quanah Parker was his own great-great-grandfather. Sixty-two years old, twenty years a United States Marine, retired now to Cache, Oklahoma, and he's summered in Canyon a dozen years to put on that war bonnet. Some roles you don't audition for. They're already in your blood.

RoadyGoat → · 16.5 mi away

History of Happy

Happy, TX RoadyGoat

Happy, Texas, might not be on every map, but it's carved its own little niche into the Panhandle. Seems like everywhere around here has a story etched into the dirt, and Happy's no different.

The Draw That Earned Its Name RoadyGoat

Here's a town whose name is exactly as advertised, and the reason is water. Happy, Texas, up on U.S. Highway eighty-seven in the northern Panhandle, took its name from nearby Happy Draw. A draw, out here, is a shallow dry valley that only runs water after rain. Trail cowboys crossing this arid stretch back in the eighteen eighties were elated, plain and simple, to find reliable water in that draw, and the name stuck to the water first and the town second. Now, you will hear the slogan the town without a frown, and it is charming, but be clear: that is later marketing, not the origin. The name was never about mood. It was about a thirsty cattle drive finding a drink. So when you hear Happy, do not picture a smiley face. Picture a cowboy on a dry high plain, hat pushed back, grinning because his horse and his herd are finally going to get to water.

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Why A Dry Valley Holds Water RoadyGoat

Happy, Texas, sits up on the Southern High Plains, and to understand why finding water here was worth naming a town over, you have to look at the ground. This is a flat tableland resting on top of the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest bodies of groundwater in the world. But that water is underground, sometimes far underground, and the surface is famously dry. What little rain falls tends to pool in playas, shallow round depressions, and in draws like Happy Draw, low channels that carry runoff after a storm. Here is the reality that made those cowboys so glad. On a plain this flat and this parched, a draw that reliably held water was not guaranteed; it was a genuine find. The Ogallala mostly recharges slowly, and today the aquifer is being pumped down faster than it refills, which has already forced some farms back to dryland crops. So the same scarcity that made a little water feel like a miracle in the eighteen eighties is still the central fact of life up here in Happy.

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Knox, Buddy Wayne

1956

Musician, songwriter, and early rock-and-roll singer Buddy Wayne Knox was born on a wheat farm northeast of Happy, Texas, on July 20, 1933. He was the son of Lester and Gladys Knox. Buddy and his younger sister, Verdi Ann, grew up during the Great Depression and World War II years with relatives who enjoyed singing and playing country , folk , and gospel music . At a young age Buddy showed his own knack for music, and in his teens bought his first guitar with money he had saved from a summer job with a surveying crew in New Mexico. After graduating in 1951 from Happy High School, at which he lettered in football, Knox enrolled at West Texas State College (now West Texas A&M University) at Canyon. There he was active as a cheerleader and rodeo clown, took part in college drama productions, and in his senior year was elected vice president of his class. In addition, Knox and several of his college buddies began serenading the girls' dorms during after-curfew hours; soon Knox and his "Serenaders" received requests from adoring coeds to perform at dances and other campus functions. Although he was working on a master's degree in accounting and already had prospects of a steady job with a major oil company, Knox's appetite for the music business was further whetted when he and Dumas natives Jimmy Bowen and Donald Lanier formed a three-man band, which later numbered four with the addition of Dave Alldred on drums. Calling themselves the Orchids after the color of their matching shirts, the combo played area clubs and fraternity dances to help defray their education costs. When Elvis Presley performed in Amarillo during his path-breaking 1955 tour, Knox attended the concert and afterward met the upcoming "king of rock" backstage. Presley further encouraged the group to do some recording, declaring prophetically that rock-and-roll was "fixing to happen." From another aspiring young West Texas musician, Roy Orbison , Knox and the Orchids learned of Norman Petty 's recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico. In 1956, after scraping together sixty dollars, the group arranged with Petty to make their first studio recordings there. With Alldred drumming on a cotton-stuffed cardboard box, Knox on lead vocals, and his sister Verdi and three other WTSC coeds as backup singers, the Orchids launched their session with "Party Doll," a song Knox had written at age fifteen in 1948. He later recalled that they did the song "at least fifty-seven times before we got it right," but the effort paid off. The song was first issued locally on the Triple-D label, which was formed by Knox and his publisher, Chester Oliver, and named after KDDD Radio in Dumas. "Party Doll" subsequently became the first release on Roulette, a new record company formed by New York nightclub owner Maurice Levy. Knox's band became the Rhythm Orchids after executives of Gee Records in Harlem mistakenly assumed that the group was black. At any rate, Levy and Roulette Records signed up the hot new act from Texas, and in 1957 "Party Doll" soared to the top of the charts in the United States. At that same first session in Clovis, Jimmy Bowen had recorded another Knox composition, "I'm Stickin' With You," which rose to Number 14 on the charts, and Knox's Rhythm Orchids were among the guest performers invited to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show on April 7, 1957. With his light tenor voice skimming over the insistent rhythms, Buddy Knox thus became the first in a line of young West Texas-born rock singers that included Orbison and Buddy Holly . It was Knox who reportedly coined the term "rockabilly" for his new sound, similar to straight rock-and-roll but with less instrumentation. In 1957-58 Knox and his Rhythm Orchids placed a total of eight songs on the charts that they recorded on the Roulette label, including "Rock Your Little Baby to Sleep," "Hula Love" (a Top 10 hit), and "Somebody Touched Me." Knox appeared in the 1957 movie Disc Jockey Jamboree , along with other top rock stars of th

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Harmon-Toles Elevator

1945

Holland E. Toles (1894-1941) opened a grain elevator in this area in 1926, and was joined by Vernon Harman in 1938. After Toles' death, Harman formed a new partnership with John F. and Holl Ed Toles. World War II, increased irrigation, and a federal grain program created a need for larger storage facilities. On March 1, 1945, construction was begun on this six-unit concrete elevator. Labor was provided by the U.S. government, utilizing 50 Italian prisoners of war from a camp near Hereford, under Geneva Convention provisions. The project was completed on July 10, 1945. (1974)

Historical Marker →

Happy - The Cowboys Who Found Water

1880

Small town between Amarillo and Tulia on the Llano Estacado. The name comes from Happy Draw, a creek where 1880s cowboys driving cattle across the dry Panhandle finally found water. Town founded in 1906 when the railroad arrived.

Old Happy

1891

The Hugh Currie family home, "Happy Hollow" (built 1891, near this site), was for many years only house on Amarillo-Tulia freight and stage lines. Settlers got mail and freight here. The U.S. Postal Department cut name to "Happy" for the post office. The town moved (2 miles west) to Santa Fe Line, 1906. (1973)

Historical Marker →

Tulia Drug Bust of 1999

1999

The Tulia drug bust of 1999 was a major drug sting that occurred in the town of Tulia, the county seat of Swisher County, and subsequently caught national attention and criticism for convictions and harsh sentences based on scant evidence and questionable undercover work. The mass arrests, ensuing court cases, and public outcry were illustrative of the impact of federal drug enforcement funding on a Texas town worried about illegal drugs in a situation fueled by racial division. Tulia, located south of Amarillo, had a population of about 5,000, including less than 400 Black residents, at the time of the drug bust. Historically, the town's Black population came to work cotton fields and other agricultural labor in the 1940s and 1950s. Subsequently, "The Flats" neighborhood became a social center for African Americans in the Panhandle/South Plains region, a circumstance that changed when highway development effectively desegregated the community. The town's declining agricultural economic prospects beginning in the 1980s led to a general dearth of economic opportunity and to a degree of entrenched poverty. Early in the morning on July 23, 1999, the Panhandle Regional Narcotics Trafficking Task Force, based in Amarillo and cooperating with local authorities, executed a drug sting. Ultimately, authorities arrested forty-seven individuals on charges of drug distribution, of whom the vast majority (author Nate Blakeslee reported thirty-eight) were Black, constituting approximately 10 percent or more of the town's Black population. The remaining accused were Hispanic and White, most of whom had close connections to the Black community. In the July 23 arrests, authorities found no drugs, drug paraphernalia, weapons, or significant amounts of cash. Those arrested were paraded, many disheveled and half-clothed, before regional news media cameras. Tulia newspaper reports, including comments from law enforcement officers, painted those arrested in negative terms that seemed to presuppose guilt. The headline in the Tulia Sentinel after the raid was "Tulia's Streets Cleared of Garbage." Other regional papers took a similar tone. Many of those arrested did have criminal records, including drug convictions. Some were crack cocaine addicts and small-time dealers. Others, however, had no criminal records and were not involved with drugs. The roundup resulted from the police work of Tom Coleman, son of a Texas Ranger . Coleman was hired by Sheriff Larry Stewart of Swisher County in 1998 with federal Byrne Grant drug war funds. Using the alias T. J. Dawson, Coleman spent eighteen months undercover in Tulia where he claimed to have made more than 100 drug buys, primarily of powder cocaine, rather than the crack cocaine typical of such a scenario. He subsequently was awarded Outstanding Officer of the Year by the Texas Department of Public Safety . In the course of the trials that followed, prosecuted by Swisher County District Attorney Terry McEachern before Judge Ed Self, Tulia authorities became aware of an arrest warrant for Coleman on the charge of theft from Cochran County. Stewart, McEachern, and Self kept this and other troubling details of Coleman's background in Cochran and Pecos counties suppressed at trial. The defendants, generally unable to afford bond, awaited trial in the Swisher County or other nearby jails. Almost all received court-appointed counsel. Defendants initially pled innocent and at trial appeared before almost all-White juries. The only evidence against them was the testimony of Coleman, who, during his sting operation, produced no video or audio surveillance and had no corroborating witnesses. The first defendant, Joe Moore, who had prior convictions, was given a ninety-year sentence. Another, William Cash Love (a White defendant who had a Black wife), received 361 years. Some with absolutely no record, like Freddie Brookins, Jr., received twenty or twenty-five years. Many penalties were "enhanced" due to alleged crimi

Tsha Handbook → · 15.1 mi away

Things to Do in Happy

nature 14.8 mi away
Palo Duro Canyon

Second-largest canyon in the US. The Grand Canyon of Texas with stunning red rock walls.
nature 17.2 mi away
Lighthouse Rock

Lighthouse Rock is the signature hoodoo of Palo Duro Canyon -- a three-hundred-foot pillar of red sandstone with a harder caprock balanced on top. The caprock…
quirky 17.5 mi away
Palo Duro Canyon

The second-largest canyon in the United States cuts straight through the flat Texas Panhandle like somebody took a knife to a pancake. A hundred and twenty…

Everything Near Happy

110 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

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