Lubbock, Texas

Everything Lubbock is known for

90 songs mention this city 84 artists from here

Lubbock, Texas, a city etched into the West Texas plains, resonates with a rich and diverse musical heritage. The city's sonic story began in the mid-20th century, and while many genres have found a home here, it is most notably known as the birthplace of rock 'n' roll icon Buddy Holly. Holly's meteoric rise in the late 1950s cemented Lubbock's place in rock history. The genres of country and western also began to flourish in the honky-tonks and dance halls of the era.

The Americana music scene has grown steadily over the years with artists like Ray Wylie Hubbard and Amanda Shires finding their voice here. More recently, Lubbock has become a vital hub for Texas country and Red Dirt music. Bands like Flatland Cavalry, Pecos & The Rooftops, and the Josh Abbott Band have risen to prominence, drawing inspiration from the landscape and culture of the region. While Lubbock’s sonic landscape is vast, it is clear that country and rock have been the most influential genres in the city’s musical evolution.

Music in Lubbock

Songs About Lubbock

Happiness Is Lubbock Texas in My Rearview Mirror
Mac Davis
95%
"Happiness is Lubbock Texas in my rearview mirror"
Llano Estacado
Cooder Graw
92%
"you can still go to the Nat or the Golden Light"
Victory Bells
Josh Abbott Band
85%
"Fight Raiders, fight For the school we love so dearly Long live the Matador"
83%
"Nothing like a little bit of Lubbock to get me high"
Half of Lubbock
Mike Graham
83%
"Half of Lubbock"
Lubbock Woman
Terry Allen
82%
"She's a Lubbock woman, she's a Lubbock woman"
Lubbock in the Springtime
The Beaumonts
82%
"Lubbock in the Springtime"
Lonely Lubbock Lights
Aaron Watson
81%
"Just those lonely Lubbock lights"
Lubbock or Leave It
The Chicks
81%
"Lubbock or Leave It"
Don’t Stop in Lubbock
Conner Stephens
80%
"Don't stop in Lubbock"
Lubbock
Zach Aaron
80%
"Song about Lubbock"
Lubbock (Commentary)
Flatland Cavalry
80%
"Song about Lubbock"
Lubbock
Koe Wetzel
80%
"Song about Lubbock"
Lubbock
Anna Butterss
80%
"Song about Lubbock"
Lubbock Pt. 1
The Beaumonts
80%
"Lubbock Pt. 1"
Lubbock for Love
The Best Westerns
80%
"Lubbock for Love"
79%
Locked Up In Lubbock
Bernie Nelson
79%
"Locked Up In Lubbock"
Whole Lotta Lubbock
William Clark Green
78%
"Still gotta whole lotta Lubbock left in me"
Lubbock for Love
Izaak Opatz
78%
"It said she's moving down to Lubbock, Texas"

Showing top 20 of 90 songs

Musical Heritage

Terry Allen RoadyGoat

Lubbock gave the world Buddy Holly. It also gave the world Terry Allen — and Terry Allen never once let the place off the hook. In 1979 he came home to cut a record with Lubbock players and called it "Lubbock (on everything)." You know his songs even if the name's new to you: "Amarillo Highway" is a Texas country standard, and Little Feat cut his "New Delhi Freight Train" first. He rolls with the Panhandle Mystery Band — his son Bukka, pedal-steel man Lloyd Maines, Charlie Sexton on guitar. He's a Guggenheim fellow and a painter they hang in museums, and if you caught "Killers of the Flower Moon," that was Terry and his wife Jo Harvey up on screen. Texas Tech is putting up a whole center with their names on it. Not bad for a kid who met Elvis one of the six nights the King played Lubbock.

Amanda Shires RoadyGoat

Growing up in Lubbock, Amanda Shires watched Bobbie Nelson play piano alongside Willie and the band — and then she went and built her own outlaw résumé the bold way. She climbed onstage uninvited at a Billy Joe Shaver show, fiddle in hand, and played her way right into his band. Seven solo albums followed, Down Fell the Doves and My Piece of Land among them. She won a Grammy for her work in the 400 Unit, the band fronted by her husband Jason Isbell, and the two of them cut the duet "The Problem" in 2020. Back in 2017 she pulled together the Highwomen with Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile, and Natalie Hemby. Lubbock breeds them stubborn. Shires wears it well.

Buddy Holly Center RoadyGoat

Out on the West Texas Walk of Fame in Lubbock, there's a bronze man about your size, a Fender slung across him, frozen mid-song. That's Buddy Holly, cast in metal right where he came up. The center behind him lives in the old Worth and Denver Depot — a train station somebody gutted and rebuilt into a museum, one of the better examples of a depot getting a second life. Inside, the permanent exhibit walks his whole story, start to finish. Not the highlight reel — the life. You come to Lubbock, you can stand eye to eye with the statue, then step inside and meet the man it was cast from. Same town, same streets, same flat sky he grew up under. He never really left it.

Lubbock's Pancho Clos RoadyGoat

In Lubbock, Santa comes in a poncho. They call him Pancho Clos — spelled without the a-u-s, so nobody mixes him up with the other fella. It started back in nineteen seventy-one, when three men, Agustin Medina, Jesse Reyes, and Bidal Aguero, heard a Tucson musician named Lalo Guerrero's Spanglish take on "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and brought the idea to the local American GI Forum, the Hispanic veterans group. Every year, the Sunday before Christmas, Rogers Park filled up and the kids went home with gifts. For close to thirty years, a man named Julian Perez was Pancho Clos — salt-and-pepper beard, sombrero big as a wagon wheel, the brightest poncho you ever saw. He passed in twenty-eighteen. But the beard gets handed down. Somebody puts it on every year.

History of Lubbock

Terry's Texas Rangers and a One-Day Command RoadyGoat

Thomas Saltus Lubbock, the man this county is named for, helped raise one of the most storied cavalry outfits Texas ever put in the saddle. Along with a man named Benjamin Terry, he recruited the Eighth Texas Cavalry, but almost nobody called it that. Everybody knew them as Terry's Texas Rangers. Terry served as the colonel in charge, and Lubbock rode as the lieutenant colonel, second in command. Then came a heartbreak of timing. Colonel Terry was killed in a fight in Kentucky in December of eighteen sixty-one. A few weeks later, on January eighth, eighteen sixty-two, Thomas Lubbock was promoted to full colonel and given command of the whole regiment. There was just one cruel problem. He was already lying sick in a hospital bed in Bowling Green, Kentucky, burning up with typhoid fever. He received command of the regiment on the eighth, and he died the very next day, on January ninth. He held the top command for essentially a single day. So the name on your map belongs to a man who reached the summit of his career and lost his life within twenty-four hours of each other.

Lubbock, TX RoadyGoat

Lubbock rises from the South Plains like a cottonwood after a rain. It's easy to think it just *happened* here, but there's a reason this particular spot became a regional hub. Think about it: endless flat land, perfect for cotton. Once the railroad came through, it was almost inevitable. People needed a place to process and ship their crops, and Lubbock became that place. The funny thing is, even with the agriculture and the university, what really draws people in is something you can't plan. Buddy Holly. He was just a kid from Lubbock who changed music, and his story is woven into the city’s identity. You can visit the Buddy Holly Center, see the glasses he wore, and feel that connection to a legend. That pulls in tourists, sure. But if you ask a local why people really stay, they’ll tell you it's the wide-open spaces, the big sky, and the stubborn West Texas spirit. It's a place where you can still see pronghorn antelope on the horizon, where the wind always blows, and where a prairie dog town might be just around the corner. It gets in your blood, and you can't shake it.

The Hometown Kid Who Changed Rock and Roll RoadyGoat

The name Lubbock honors a nineteenth century Ranger, but the modern name that put this city on the world's radar belongs to a bespectacled kid who grew up right here. Buddy Holly was born in Lubbock on September seventh, nineteen thirty-six, and his real name was Charles Hardin Holley, spelled with an extra letter e. The story goes that his last name got shortened to Holly because a recording contract misspelled it, and the shortened version simply stuck. From this flat, windy corner of West Texas, Holly helped invent the sound and the look of rock and roll, thick black glasses, a Fender guitar, and songs that artists have been copying ever since. His life burned fast. He was gone at just twenty-two, killed in a plane crash in Iowa in the winter of nineteen fifty-nine on the night people would later call the day the music died. Back home in Lubbock, they honored him with an eight and a half foot bronze statue downtown and a West Texas Walk of Fame, where more than a hundred musicians and artists have been recognized. So this Ranger's town gave the world one of its greatest musicians.

Buddy Holly

1936

Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holley was born in Lubbock on September 7, 1936, to Ella Pauline (Drake) and Lawrence Odell “L.O.” Holley. The youngest of four children, Buddy grew up in a musical household, with his mother and siblings singing and playing instruments. Buddy showed musical aptitude, taking violin, piano and steel guitar lessons. He took up the acoustic guitar after his brother, Travis, bought a $15 harmony model. Buddy, with other young Lubbock “pickers,” formed several country groups. In 1955, he saw Elvis Presley in concert and was impressed by Presley’s rhythm and performance style. Buddy and his friends were opening for big country acts at the Fair Park Coliseum when Eddie Crandall, an agent and manager, saw a performance and helped Buddy broker a Decca Recording Contract. Buddy’s last name was misspelled on the contract: “Holley” became “Holly.” Buddy’s relationship with Decca was short-lived as his early recording sessions failed to produce a hit. In 1957, Buddy and his new band, The Crickets, began working with producer Norman Petty in Clovis, New Mexico. On February 25, 1957, they recorded “That’ll Be the Day,” the first of several hits on the Brunswick Label. Their success led the band to tour widely in the United States and Canada. In 1958, Buddy Holly and The Crickets toured England. The group had a profound influence on Rock and Roll in England — from their sound to Buddy’s distinct look. On February 3, 1959, during a three-week tour of the Midwestern United States, Buddy’s chartered plane crashed after takeoff due to bad weather. There were no survivors. Buddy Holly was 22 years old.

Holley, Charles Hardin [Buddy Holly]

1957

Buddy Holly, rock-and-roll pioneer, was born Charles Hardin Holley on September 7, 1936, in Lubbock, Texas. He was the youngest of four children of Lawrence and Ella (Drake) Holley. His father worked as a tailor and salesman in a Lubbock clothing store, and though Lawrence Holley did not play an instrument himself, he and his wife encouraged the musical talents of their children. Buddy made his debut at the age of five, when he appeared with his brothers in a talent show in nearby County Line and won five dollars for his rendition of "Down the River of Memories." At eleven he took piano lessons and proved to be an apt pupil, but quit after only nine months. After briefly studying the steel guitar, he picked up the acoustic guitar and taught himself to play. At Hutchinson Junior High School he befriended Bob Montgomery; the two formed a duo that performed country and what eventually was called rock-and-roll music. In fall 1953 Holly, Montgomery, and bass player Larry Welborn earned a regular spot on Lubbock radio station KDAV's Sunday Party program. While attending Lubbock High School, Holly studied printing and drafting and worked part-time at Panhandle Steel Products. He apparently never doubted, however, that he would become a professional musician. In 1954 and 1955 he, Montgomery, and Welborn made a few demonstration recordings in Wichita Falls and hoped to land a recording contract, but in 1956 Decca offered Holly a solo contract. Decca was well-known as a country-and-western label and tried unsuccessfully to fit Holly into the country mold. After releasing two unsuccessful singles the company terminated Holly's contract. Buddy returned to Lubbock and was still determined to make it big in the music business. In February 1957 he, Welborn (who was soon replaced by Joe B. Mauldin), drummer Jerry Allison, and guitarist Niki Sullivan went to independent producer Norman Petty 's studio in Clovis, New Mexico, and adopted the name the Crickets . From this point Holly's career took off. Brunswick Records signed the Crickets, while Holly signed a solo contract with Brunswick's Coral subsidiary. The records put out under the Crickets' name had backing vocals, while those put out under Holly's name, with the exception of "Rave On," did not. The arrangement made no difference in their recording technique. All of the records included Holly's unmistakable vocal style, which incorporated hiccups, nonsense syllables, a wide range, and abrupt changes of pitch, and was described by one critic as playfully ironic and childlike. The first Crickets single, "That'll Be the Day," backed with "I'm Looking for Someone to Love," was released on Brunswick Records on May 27, 1957. The record eventually reached Number 3 on the pop charts and Number 2 on the rhythm-and-blues charts. At first many listeners assumed that Holly and his band were black. In July 1957, when the Crickets flew east, they discovered that they had been booked on various package tours with black artists at such theaters as the Apollo in New York and the Howard in Washington, D.C. Their reception at the Apollo was chilly, until they launched the third day's show with a wild version of "Bo Diddley." The next few months were busy ones for Holly and his band. They appeared on television on American Bandstand , The Arthur Murray Dance Party , and The Ed Sullivan Show and on a number of package tours and concert bills with some of the most famous rock-and-rollers of the day. In late December, Holly's second solo single, "Peggy Sue," backed with "Everyday," reached Number 3 on the pop and R&B charts. The Crickets' second single, "Oh Boy!," backed with "Not Fade Away," was released in October 1957 and sold close to a million copies. Niki Sullivan quit the band, and over the next few months the Crickets toured Australia, Florida, and Great Britain as a trio before Holly asked Tommy Allsup to join as lead guitarist of the group. Their third single, "Maybe Baby," backed with "Tell Me How,"

Buddy Holly Center

1936

Lubbock native Charles Hardin Holley (Buddy Holly) pioneered rock and roll before dying in a plane crash at age 22.

The 1970 Lubbock Tornado

1970

The major tornado that struck Lubbock on May 11, 1970 was one of the most destructive in American history. That evening there was an outbreak of thunderstorms with strong winds and hail. An initial tornado touched down East of Mackenzie Park at 8:15 p.m., traveling northeast through a sparsely populated part of the city. A second tornado formed at 9:35 p.m., near Texas Tech University, tracking northeast with a path of destruction nearly two miles wide. The central business district, industrial areas and downtown residential areas, including the Guadalupe neighborhood, were the most heavily damaged. The funnel continued north-northeast to the Lubbock County Club and airport where it also caused damage before lifting back into the storm at approximately 10:10 p.m. 
 The twisters caused more than $250 million in damage (more than $1.6 billion in today’s dollars), affecting 25% of the city. It destroyed 1,100 homes and damaged 8,000 others. Hundreds of businesses were destroyed or severely damaged. Twenty-six people died and 1,755 people were injured. Cleanup and relief efforts commenced immediately. A state of emergency was declared, bottled water was shipped in, and the Lubbock Municipal Coliseum became a makeshift shelter. 
 Many important advancements resulted from the tragic event. The city was given $59 million in federal relief, and a $13.6 million bond package helped fund the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center, George and Helen Mahon Library, city parks and the beginnings of the Canyon Lakes system. Dr. T.T. Fujita compiled data used to develop the Fujita Scale, which measures tornadic intensity by wind speed and resulting damage. Shortly after, Texas Tech University founded the institute for disaster research (now the National Wind Institute). While the 1970 Lubbock tornado was devastating, the response demonstrated the resilience of the city and its people. (2020)


Cotton Club

1938

The Cotton Club was a ballroom, concert arena, and dance hall in Lubbock, Texas. It was a venue for big bands, country and western performers, rock-and-roll artists, and all musicians who fell in between. Beyond being the venue for the popular artists of the time, the club interacted with the local community in various ways—from hosting the Junior Welfare League’s Charity Ball in 1946 to being Lubbock’s first, and for many years only, integrated dance hall. With such a diverse level of community involvement, the Cotton Club engaged and influenced both the Lubbock community and the larger South Plains region. The Lubbock Cotton Club, which had no connection to a more famous Harlem version in New York City, took its name from the region’s chief agricultural output. The original club, located on 50th Street and Railroad Avenue (present-day Southeast Drive) in a renovated Army Quonset hut, opened on November, 11, 1938. The first performers were Adelle Kastle and Frank “Deacon” Murino and his Men about Town. The club, established to appeal to Lubbock’s “high society” by hosting well-known orchestras and big bands, flourished. By the mid-1940s the club owners began booking country and western acts. According to former Cotton Club owner, Tommy Hancock, the change in musicians was due to the lack of enough “classy” people in Lubbock to support a 1,400-capacity club. Thus the owners began booking other artists. Owners knew they could bring in more cowboys to see Hank Williams rather than Jack Teagarden or Al Donahue. Ray Terry and his Pioneer Playboys, Tex Ritter , and the Maddox Brothers with Rose were some of the other headlining performers. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were Friday night regulars at the club from 1953 through 1955. In the mid-1950s the Cotton Club became a hub for rock-and-roll music . Elvis Presley performed at the Cotton Club on numerous occasions in 1955. In attendance at Presley’s performances was a local Lubbock musician, Buddy Holly , who met with Presley and was influenced by his style of music. Other rock-and-roll musicians played through the 1950s, including Little Richard, Fats Domino and Roy Orbison . In 1962 the club burned. Owner Ralph Lowe chose not to rebuild. Tommy Hancock and wife, Charlene Condray Hancock, both well-known musicians in the Lubbock area, asked Ralph Lowe for the club’s sign and for permission to start a new Cotton Club. The Hancocks built a new Cotton Club along the Slaton Highway (U.S. Highway 84), about fourteen miles from downtown Lubbock. The Hancocks reopened the Cotton Club in 1965, but like its predecessor, it became victim in 1966 to fire. In 1967, after the new building was complete, the Hancocks reopened the famous dance hall. The new Cotton Club was located on the site of the second incarnation. The late 1960s started a new trend at the Cotton Club. The “hippie generation” emerged in Lubbock and frequented the club. The cowboys, however, also continued to go to the club because Hancock and his band continued to play classic country and western dance music. Surprisingly the cowboys and the alternative crowd got along well, and few fights broke out between the two groups which was very unusual for the usually rough club. Johnny Hughes, along with many others, credits the peaceful union to Tommy Hancock and the atmosphere he created at the club. “The hippies and bikers and the Unitarians and the college students could coexist and there was no fighting. It was all because of Tommy Hancock. He was doing the thing Willie got known for in Austin—peaceful coexistence.” The 1970s saw a continual trend away from country and western music to a more alternative sound. Artists such as Waylon Jennings and the Maines Brothers replaced Bob Wills and Hank Thompson . By 1978 the Hancocks had grown tired of the club business and chose to sell the club to Joe Ely and C.B. Stubblefield . Ely and Stubblefield did not own the club for long, but they were able to book rising artists of the era

Stubblefield, Christopher B., Sr.

1968

Christopher B. Stubblefield, Sr., Lubbock restaurateur and music patron, was born in Navasota, Texas, on March 7, 1931. He was the son of Christopher Columbus and Mary Stubblefield. Stubblefield, known as "C.B.," "Stubb," or "Stubbs," loved music and people. He also loved to cook. "I want to feed the world" was one of his favorite lines. When he opened Stubb's Bar-B-Q in Lubbock in 1968, his special blend of barbecue, music, and charisma attracted local and major musicians, and his rickety barbecue shack became the center of Lubbock's live music scene. Stubb's father was a Baptist preacher. After the family moved to Lubbock in the 1930s, Stubb spent his youth picking cotton and working in local hotels and restaurants. In 1947 he married Cleola Ruth Harris; the couple had three children. Stubb spent several years in the United States Army. As a gunner in the all-black Ninety-sixth Field Artillery during the Korean War (1950-53), he was wounded twice. His army career also foreshadowed his later life: he cooked, played music over the field radio to entertain his buddies in the trenches, and supervised food preparation for thousands of soldiers. After being discharged, Stubb returned to Lubbock and bought a small, dilapidated building at 108 East Broadway. He hung signs reading "There Will Be No Bad Talk or Loud Talk in this Place" and loaded the corner jukebox with his favorite music, the blues . He made his own special sauce and, clad in overalls and a cowboy hat, tied a white apron around his 6½-foot frame and smoked chicken, ribs, beef brisket, and sausage in a hickory pit outside the back door. When guitarist Jesse Taylor recognized the potential for a music venue in Stubb's quaint establishment, he talked Stubb into letting him build a stage. To the stage the young West Texas talent came: Taylor, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Terry Allen, Butch Hancock, and others. Many played their first gigs at Stubb's. Although Stubb couldn't pay them (they played for tips), he nurtured them with kindness and encouragement, along with heaping plates of barbecue and sides and sometimes a bed for the night. Stubb's Bar-B-Q became a musicians' hangout where Sunday night jam sessions became a tradition. The well-known to the unknown, performers of blues, rock , country or folk -all were welcome on Stubb's tiny stage, and all were touched by the generous barbecue chef who espoused love and happiness. Soon, pictures of Stubb and his friends in the music industry decorated the walls. Legend has it that Stevie Ray Vaughan drew inspiration from Stubb's jukebox and later recorded many of the songs he heard there. A pool game in Stubb's back room, in which Tom T. Hall and Joe Ely used a white onion for a cue ball, stimulated Hall to write his song "The Great East Broadway Onion Championship of 1978." Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, George Thorogood, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris were among myriad others who performed at Stubb's. Stubb himself took the microphone occasionally to volunteer his rendition of "Summertime." Stubb's Bar-B-Q drew a diverse crowd until the mid-1980s, when the restaurateur ran into financial problems, shut down his East Broadway location, and followed his West Texas friends to Austin. There he served barbecue at the blues club, Antone 's before opening his own barbecue and live music place at 4001 Interstate 35 North in 1986. In 1989 Stubb closed the Austin location. Later, with business partners, he started to market his sauce and other products, which are now sold nationwide through Stubb's Legendary Kitchen in Austin. On May 27, 1995, the day of his death, Stubb's partners bought the historic building at 801 Red River Street in Austin to continue his barbecue and live music tradition. Stubb died of congestive heart failure and related problems. In 1996 Stubb, who always described himself as "just a cook," became one of the first two inductees into Lubbock's Buddy Holly Terrace, which

Things to Do in Lubbock

Sports in Lubbock

🏆 STATE CHAMPIONS Class 5A · Girls Basketball · 2025

Monterey — 2025 UIL 5A Division 2 Girls Basketball State Champions

Most recent: 2025 5A Division 2

Lubbock, Texas, is a city known for its vibrant community and strong high school athletics. Among its respected institutions, Monterey High School stands out for its achievements in girls' basketball. The Lady Plainsmen, competing in Class 5A, have brought significant recognition to their school with a state championship title.

The 2025 5A Division 2 State Championship represents a pinnacle of success for Monterey High School's girls' basketball program. This achievement underscores the dedication and hard work fostered within the team and across the Lubbock sports scene.

State titles
2025
Most recent
2025
Class
5A
The moment

The Monterey High School Lady Plainsmen secured the 2025 5A Division 2 state championship, marking a significant moment in their basketball history.

Everything Near Lubbock

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

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