Port Arthur, Texas

Everything Port Arthur is known for

120 songs mention this city 6 artists from here

Port Arthur, Texas, located on the Texas-Louisiana border, is recognized as the official Cajun Capital of Texas and boasts a rich musical heritage. The city has been home to influential artists across various genres, including rock legend Janis Joplin and hip-hop pioneers UGK. The Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur celebrates this legacy with its Music Hall of Fame, featuring exhibits on Gulf Coast musicians.

With 103 songs in our collection mentioning Port Arthur and 6 artists calling it home, the city's musical impact is evident. Notable tracks like UGK's "Int'l Players Anthem" and Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart" showcase the diverse talent that emerged from this Gulf Coast community.

Music in Port Arthur

Songs About Port Arthur

Chunk Up the Deuce
Lil Keke
100%
"I'm from Port Arthur, Texas, represent it 'til I'm dead"
Third Coast
Teezo Touchdown
92%
"I call her Port Art, Port Art, Port Arthur, 'cause baby got that water"
PA Nigga
UGK
90%
"This is that underground shit from Port Arthur, Texas"
Int'l Players Anthem
UGK
90%
Port Arthur
Flame Jazz Messengers
83%
"TITLE"
La Blues de Port Arthur
Leo Soileau
81%
"TITLE"
Port Arthur
Brittani Washington
80%
"TITLE"
Port Arthur
Ilsen Mirhaidarov
80%
"TITLE"
The Port Arthur Lament (Rainbow Bridges)
Mayeux & Broussard
79%
"The Port Arthur Lament"
Port Arthur
Mamou Prairie Band
77%
"TITLE"
Port Arthur Waltz
Harry Choates
60%
Short Texas
UGK
60%
"Welcome to the world of S-H-O-R-T Texas"
Blues de Port Arthur
Harry Choates
55%
Pushin
Bun B
54%
"Next stop: Port Arthur, Texas, I work it in the Lones"
Meal Ticket
Master P
54%
"The pope of Port Arthur"
Put It Down
Bun B
53%
"They know I'm in a Port Arthur state of mind"
Ego Rock
Janis Joplin
51%
"Port Arthur is the worst place that I've ever found"
Ridin’ Dirty
UGK
51%
"I use to ride them Port Arthur city streets"
Port Arthur Blues
Dewey Balfa
50%
Flying Crow Blues
Washboard Sam
50%

Showing top 20 of 120 songs

Artists From Port Arthur

B
Bun B
hip-hop Pop: 64
J
Janis Joplin
rock Pop: 61
U
UGK
hip-hop Pop: 60
P
Pimp C
hip-hop Pop: 51
D
DJ DMD
hip-hop Pop: 25
J
Jivin' Gene
r-n-b Pop: 8

Rivers & Roads in Song near Port Arthur

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Port Arthur.

Sabine River 13 songs Interstate 10 32 songs US Route 90 8 songs

Musical Heritage

The Refinery Town That Kept Producing Music RoadyGoat

For a midsize refinery city, Port Arthur has thrown an absurd number of musicians at the world, and from wildly different traditions. Janis Joplin grew up here and went to Thomas Jefferson High School before her blues-soaked voice became a centerpiece of 1960s rock; her relationship with the town was complicated, marked by both early church and blues influences and real bullying and alienation. Pimp C and Bun B formed UGK here and helped invent the slow, blues-tinged sound of Southern rap, and Bun B has been clear that he was raised and schooled in Port Arthur, not Houston. Barbara Lynn, the left-handed guitarist and R&B songwriter, came up here too, as did Clifford Antone, who founded the legendary Antone's blues club in Austin after a Port Arthur childhood steeped in Black blues, Cajun fiddle and Louisiana radio. Add Cajun players like Harry Choates and you get a town where refinery wages, church singing, swamp-pop and dance-hall music all collided. The Museum of the Gulf Coast keeps the whole roster in its music gallery. (Source: Museum of the Gulf Coast.)

History of Port Arthur

Port Arthur, TX RoadyGoat

Port Arthur carries a weight, a palpable sense of resilience you can almost taste in the humid air. It's a place where marsh grasses meet the edge of industry, where alligators lurk in the drainage canals, a constant reminder of the wildness that surrounds us. You can drive down Highway 87 towards Sabine Pass and feel the pull of the Gulf, the same pull that shaped this land and its people. It’s easy to understand why the city is vulnerable, sitting just a few feet above sea level, and the scars of Hurricane Harvey are still visible in places, a testament to the forces we contend with. But Port Arthur isn’t just about struggle. It’s a place that breeds a certain kind of soul, a grit and passion that’s hard to find anywhere else. Think about Janis Joplin, born and raised right here. You can almost imagine her, a young girl absorbing the sounds and the stories of this place, the blues and the bayous mixing in her blood. She left, of course, but something of Port Arthur went with her, that raw, untamed energy that defined her music. And she’s not the only one. This city, named for Arthur Stilwell, has seen its share of characters walk these streets, people who felt the pull of this place and carried a bit of it with them, no matter where they went.

Port Arthur, TX RoadyGoat

Port Arthur is inextricably linked to oil. You can smell it in the air sometimes, a faint, almost metallic tang mingling with the salty breeze off Sabine Lake. That connection started in the late 19th century, with the vision of Arthur Stilwell, who believed this location could become a major port. But it was the Spindletop gusher, just north of here, that truly cemented Port Arthur's fate. Suddenly, there was a need for refineries, pipelines, and a deep-water port to handle the booming oil trade. The city became a hub, attracting workers from all over. Refineries sprang up along the waterways, transforming the landscape. Marsh grasses still grow in the wetlands, and you might even spot an alligator sunning itself near a drainage canal, but the skyline is dominated by the industrial architecture of the energy industry. Even today, despite the economic ups and downs and the constant threat of hurricanes – Harvey's devastation is still fresh in many minds – the refineries continue to operate, a testament to the enduring, if sometimes uneasy, relationship between Port Arthur and the black gold that flows through its veins.

The Place That Turns Black Goo Into Everything RoadyGoat

Crude oil isn't one substance. It's a thick soup of many different hydrocarbon molecules, all tangled together. A refinery's whole job is to separate that soup and convert it into the things we actually use: gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, asphalt for roads, and the raw feedstocks that become plastics. Port Arthur sits in the Golden Triangle of the Texas Gulf Coast, and the Motiva refinery here is the largest in North America. On a normal day it takes in around 640,000 barrels of crude. That's a river of black goo arriving every single day and leaving as dozens of finished products. The modern oil industry was actually launched nearby, at Spindletop over in Beaumont, back in 1901, about 20 miles from here. But the chemistry of turning crude into everything happens at places like this one. Almost everything you touched today passed through a tower like the ones on this skyline.

Zaharias, Mildred Ella Didrikson [Babe]

1911

Mildred Ella (Babe) Didrikson Zaharias, athlete, Ladies Professional Golf Association founder, and olympian, was born on June 26, 1911, in Port Arthur, Texas, the sixth of seven children of Norwegian immigrants Ole Nickolene and Hannah Marie (Olson) Didriksen. Ole Didriksen was a seaman and carpenter, and his wife was an accomplished skater in Norway. In 1915 the family moved to Beaumont, Texas, where the children, with the encouragement of both parents, became skilled performers on the rustic gymnasium equipment that their father built in the backyard. Mildred Didrikson, who changed the spelling of her surname, acquired her nickname during sandlot baseball games with the neighborhood boys, who thought she batted like Babe Ruth. The nickname also originated from the Norwegian word "baden" meaning baby, an endearing term used by her mother. A talented basketball player in high school, Didrikson was recruited during her senior year in 1930 to do office work at Employers Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas and to spark the company's semiprofessional women's basketball team, the Golden Cyclones. Between 1930 and 1932 she led the team to two finals and a national championship and was voted All-American each season. Her exceptional athletic versatility prompted Employers Casualty to expand its women's sports program beyond basketball. Didrikson represented the company as a one-woman team in eight of ten track and field events at the 1932 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Championships. She placed in seven events, taking first place in five-shot put, javelin and baseball throws, eighty-meter hurdles, and long jump; she tied for first in the high jump and finished fourth in the discus throw. In three hours Didrikson singlehandedly amassed thirty points, eight more than the entire second-place team, and broke four world records. Her performances in the javelin throw, hurdles, and high jump qualified her to enter the 1932 Olympics, where she again broke world records in all three events. She won gold medals for the javelin and hurdles and, despite clearing the same height as the top finisher in the high jump, was awarded the silver medal because she went over the bar head first, a foul at that time. Didrikson received a heroine's welcome on her return to Texas. She had started another basketball season with the Golden Cyclones when the Amateur Athletic Union disqualified her from amateur competition because her name appeared in an automobile advertisement. Her family was badly in need of money, and Didrikson turned professional to earn what she could from her status as a sports celebrity. Never hesitant to capitalize on her own abilities or to turn a profit from showmanship, she spent 1932-34 self-promoting and barnstorming. She did a brief stint in vaudeville playing the harmonica and running on a treadmill and pitched in some major league spring-training games; she also toured with a billiards exhibition, a men's and women's basketball team called Babe Didrikson's All-Americans, and an otherwise all-male, bearded baseball road team called the House of David. Since golf was one of the few sports that accommodated women athletes, Didrikson made up her mind to become a championship player, and between engagements she spent the spring and summer of 1933 in California taking lessons from Stan Kertes. Her first tournament was the Fort Worth Women's Invitational in November 1932; at her second, the Texas Women's Amateur Championship the following April, she captured the title. Complaints from more socially polished members of the Texas Women's Golf Association led the United States Association to rule her ineligible to compete as an amateur, thus disqualifying her from virtually all tournament play. Didrikson resumed the lucrative routine of exhibition tours and endorsements, impressing audiences with smashing drives that regularly exceeded 240 yards. She met George Zaharias, a well-known professional wrestler and sports promoter, when she quali

Tsha Handbook → · 3.0 mi away

Babe Didrikson Zaharias

1911

(June 26, 1911 - September 27, 1956) One of seven children, Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson was the daughter of Norwegian immigrants Hannah Marie (d. 1945) and Ole Didrikson (d. 1943). For the first several years of her life, the family occupied a frame house at this location. Later they moved to Beaumont. The Didriksons encouraged their children to develop their natural athletic abilities. Called "Baby" by her family, Mildred was later nicknamed "Babe" for baseball star Babe Ruth. Babe first demonstrated her athletic skill as a high school basketball star. After training in track and field events, she won two gold medals at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. An exceptionally versatile athlete, Babe excelled in baseball, bowling, tennis, and other sports. Eventually she concentrated her efforts on golf and won many tournaments as both an amateur and a professional. The Associated Press named her the "Woman Athlete of the First Half of the 20th Century." In 1938 Babe married George Zaharias. Popular with sports fans for her skill and personality, she won further admiration during a long and courageous battle against cancer. She died in Galveston and was buried in Beaumont.

Historical Marker →

Janis Lyn Joplin

1943

(January 19, 1943 - October 4, 1970) A native of Port Arthur, famed blues and rock and roll singer Janis Joplin lived here with her family. She graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in 1960 and attended Port Arthur College and Lamar State College of Technology (Lamar University) in Beaumont. A liberal and outspoken free spirit, Janis rebelled against the conservatism of her hometown, and in 1962 she moved to Austin to study art at the University of Texas. She connected to the burgeoning Austin music scene and began singing in clubs around town, most notably at Threadgill's, a bar operated by Texas country singer and yodeler Kenneth Threadgill. With her raw and raspy singing style exhibiting the blues, jazz, country, cajun, gospel and soul music influences of east Texas and Louisiana, she was a popular local performer. Searching for wider acceptance, Joplin moved to San Francisco in 1963 and quickly became part of the growing folk music and counter-culture movement of the 1960s. Her performances at the 1967 International Pop and Jazz Festivals in Monterey brought her widespread recognition. Her first album, Cheap Thrills, with the band Big Brother and the Holding Company, was a wild success even as her personal life became marred with alcohol and drug abuse. Later recording with the Kosmic Blues Band and the Full-Tilt Boogie Band, she was an international sensation by the end of the decade. In August 1970, at the height of her fame, Joplin returned to Port Arthur for her ten-year high school reunion. Just two months later, she died of an accidental overdose of heroin and alcohol; her ashes were spread along the coast of northern California. Her final album, Pearl, released after her death, earned a gold record. (2007)

Historical Marker →

Butler, Chad Lamont [Pimp C]

1973

Pimp C, rap artist, was born Chad Lamont Butler in Port Arthur, Texas, on December 29, 1973. He was the son of Weslyn and Charleston Butler. Pimp C is best-known as cofounder and one-half of the Houston rap duo UGK (Underground Kingz) , whose soulful, blues-based version of “Dirty South” hip-hop helped put Texas rap music in the national spotlight. He, along with his UGK partner Bernard Freeman (aka Bun B), helped to define Southern rap. The son of a trumpet player who at one time performed with Solomon Burke, Butler grew up in a home filled with jazz , blues , and soul music. He cited his early influences as B. B. King, Ray Charles, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Marvin Gaye, and many other jazz and blues artists. His parents divorced when he was about six, and his mother married Norwood Monroe. Butler’s stepfather was a band teacher who taught him to read music and later influenced him to incorporate more musical instruments into his sound. Butler first became interested in rap when a friend loaned him an early Run DMC album in 1983. After hearing the record, he began exploring rap’s origins in an effort to learn more about the music that so captivated his imagination. Although his interest in rap music was growing, he also pursued more traditional musical interests. In high school, he studied classical music and received a Division I rating on a tenor solo at a University Interscholastic League choir competition. While still in high school, Pimp C worked with fellow musicians Mitchell Queen, Bernard “Bun B” Freeman, and Jalon Jackson before eventually settling into a rap collaboration with Bun B to form the group UGK. They released a cassette, The Southern Way , on the small Houston label Bigtyme Recordz in 1988. They landed a deal with Jive Records in 1992. During that same year, the duo released its first major label debut, Too Hard to Swallow . It featured the single “Tell Me Something Good,” a laid-back track that contained a sample of Rufus and Chaka Khan’s tune of the same name. Another song from the album, “Pocket Full of Stones,” was featured on the soundtrack to the movie Menace II Society (1993), helping earn the group some national exposure. The song “Pocket Full of Stones” is emblematic of the rise in “gangsta rap” that came to dominate the hip-hop landscape in the early 1990s. In 1994 UGK released Super Tight ; Pimp C produced all the tracks. He also produced most of the songs on UGK’s next release in 1996, Ridin’ Dirty , which reached Number 2 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, proving that the group was much more than a regional act and could sell records on a national scale. Following their success with Ridin’ Dirty , UGK made a number of guest appearances, one on a hit single by Jay-Z entitled “Big Pimpin’” in 1999. This song merged Jay-Z’s Brooklyn-based braggadocio with UGK’s southern slang. The second guest appearance was on a record with the Tennessee-based rap group, Three 6 Mafia, called “Sippin’ on Some Sizzurp,” released in 2000. These recordings boosted the group’s national appeal and proved once again that their fan base extended far beyond the confines of Texas. In 2001 UGK released its fourth album, Dirty Money . It featured several songs that included sexual content and blatant misogyny, such as “Like a Pimp,” “Pimpin’ Ain’t No Illusion,” and “Money, Hoes, and Power.” The album peaked at Number 2 on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. The year 2002 brought the release of Side Hustles , the duo’s fifth album. It did not sell as well as previous releases, and UGK suffered further setbacks when Pimp C was arrested and jailed on an aggravated assault charge. After violating probation because he ignored a community service sentence, he spent the next three years in prison. During his imprisonment hip-hop fans and rappers, spearheaded by Bun B, launched a grassroots “Free Pimp C” campaign. While Pimp C was incarcerated, his label Rap-A-Lot Records released his solo record Sweet James Jones

Tsha Handbook → · 3.0 mi away

Joplin, Janis Lyn

1943

Janis Lyn Joplin, blues and rock singer, daughter of Seth Ward and Dorothy (East) Joplin, was born on January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas. She grew up in a respectable middle-class home; her father was an engineer and her mother a Sunday school teacher. The future queen of nonconformity is remembered as a bright, pretty, and artistic little girl. Signs of rebellion, however, against the religious, sexual, and racial conservatism of her environment were evident in junior high school, and by the time Janis graduated from Jefferson High School in Port Arthur in 1960, her vocabulary of four letter words, her outrageous clothes, and her reputation for sexual promiscuity and drunkenness (signs of alcoholism were already apparent) caused her classmates to call her derogatory names. Bereft of friends, without dates for school dances, ashamed of her acned face and overweight figure, Janis responded with contempt and insults to cover the rejection that scarred her for the rest of her life. In her junior year she found acceptance in a small group of Jefferson High beatniks who read Jack Kerouac and roamed the nightspots from Port Arthur to New Orleans, thus mining one of the motherlodes of American ethnic music. There were Anglo, African American, Cajun, Mexican, and Caribbean sounds. There were the lyrics and rhythms of country , gospel , jazz , soul, and the blues. Janis did not read music, but at the roadhouses or at home listening to records of Odetta, Bessie Smith, or Willie Mae Thornton , she had an uncanny ability to imitate the sounds she heard. Out of imitation there slowly developed the timing, phrasing, inflections, and talent at evoking changing moods that were the Joplin trademarks. She found Lamar State College of Technology at Beaumont no improvement over Port Arthur; she was characterized as a rebel in both places. She fled to the University of Texas in Austin in the summer of 1962 to study art. Indifferent to classwork, she found soulmates at the Ghetto, a counterculture enclave, and got gigs around Austin, most importantly at Threadgill's, a converted filling station and late night hangout for lovers of music and nonstop partying. The proprietor, country singer Kenneth Threadgill , offered Janis encouragement and lifelong friendship. Janis craved such acceptance, but her nonconforming behavior often provoked rejection, as when university fraternity pranksters nominated her as their candidate in the annual Ugliest Man on Campus contest. Characteristically, she laughed to cover the hurt, and dreamed of San Francisco, where Beats and Hippies were not outsiders. She spent 1963 to 1965 in the Bay area and won attention from local audiences, until drugs became more important than singing and reduced her to an emaciated eighty-eight pounds. Her friends passed the hat and gave her a bus ticket home. Parental care restored her health, and fear of relapse produced a period of sobriety. Business suits and bouffant hairdos announced conversion to the Port Arthur ethos. But Janis's mind was torn: Port Arthur was safe but dull. San Francisco offered both excitement and potential self destruction. She made her decision after receiving an offer to audition for a new rock band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and headed west in May 1966, toward four years of meteoric fame-and death at age twenty-seven. "Imagine a White girl singing the blues like that!" they said of Big Brother's lead singer. And Joplin's belting of rock gathered huge swaying, clapping, shouting, and dancing audiences. For Janis a good audience was an audience in motion, and her body joined her voice in pleading for audience participation. She stopped the show at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 with "Ball and Chain." That triumph and the album Cheap Thrills (1968) elevated her to national stardom. A new manager, Albert Grossman, whose stable of stars included Peter, Paul and Mary and Bob Dylan, urged Janis to dump Big Brother for more versatile and discipline

Tsha Handbook → · 3.0 mi away

Spindletop to Port Arthur Oil Pipeline Corridor

1901

On January 10, 1901, the landscape of Texas changed forever. On that day, the Lucas Gusher came through at the Spindletop oilfield, discovered on a salt dome formation near Beaumont. Flowing at an estimated 100,000 barrels a day, the Lucas Gusher marked the beginning of a Texas oil boom that would last for decades. Many of the nation's biggest oil companies, including the Texas Company (Texaco), Gulf Oil Corporation, Sun Oil Corporation, Magnolia Petroleum Company and Humble (Exxon company), began at Spindletop. Capitalizing on the vast new oilfield, the Port Arthur Townsite and Land Company, which had been creating infrastructure for a railroad and shipping terminal city, deeded an oil pipeline right-of-way to James M. Guffey and John H. Galey. The line transported oil from the Spindletop oilfield to Guffey's refinery, which became the Gulf Refining Company of Texas. Within three years, more than 500 miles of oil pipelines had been constructed in southeast Texas. Further expansion by Guffey's company linked Port Arthur to oilfields in Oklahoma, and his refinery became one of the largest in the United States. Area oil pipelines boosted both the Texas and U.S. economies with new businesses, technology and other advances. The pipelines enabled companies to collect and refine Texas oil reserves, and Port Arthur's location allowed product to be delivered quickly around the country. The Texas petroleum industry played a large role in U.S. involvement in both world wars and helped establish the nation as a 20th-century superpower. 										(2004)

Historical Marker → · 3.9 mi away

Things to Do in Port Arthur

historical 14.6 mi away
Spindletop

On January 10 1901 a well south of Beaumont blew its crown block clean off the derrick and started gushing oil a hundred and fifty feet in the air at nine…
day trip
Day Trip to Port Arthur ⛴ (FULL EPISODE) S11 E6

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

Sports in Port Arthur

🏆 STATE CHAMPIONS Class 5A · Boys Basketball · 2018

Memorial — 2018 UIL 5A Boys Basketball State Champions

Most recent: 2018 5A

Down in Port Arthur, where the air carries a hint of the Gulf, Memorial High School stands as a proud institution in Class 5A basketball. The boys' basketball program has reached the pinnacle of Texas high school sports, securing a UIL State Championship. This significant achievement reflects the dedication and hard work within the program, bringing a state title back to the community.

The 2018 5A State Championship represents a high point for Memorial High School basketball. This victory is a source of considerable pride for the school and the city of Port Arthur, marking their place among the top teams in the state. The accomplishment is a testament to the consistent effort and spirit present in the Titans' athletic endeavors.

State titles
2018
Most recent
2018
Class
5A
The moment

The Memorial High School boys' basketball team claimed the 5A State Championship in 2018.

Sources: Wikipedia · UIL State Championship Archives

Everything Near Port Arthur

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

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