Tyler, Texas

Everything Tyler is known for

15 songs mention this city 63 artists from here

Tyler, Texas, known as the "Rose Capital of America," has a notable connection to music, with 63 artists calling it home and 14 songs mentioning the city. The city was designated a Music Friendly Texas Certified Community in January 2024 by the Texas Music Office, highlighting its commitment to fostering music business and economic development.

Among the artists from Tyler are country artist Paul Cauthen and indie band Eisley. The city is also referenced in songs like "Broken Window Serenade" by Whiskey Myers and "City of Roses" by Charley Crockett. Tyler's music scene includes various live music venues and events, contributing to its cultural landscape.

Music in Tyler

Songs About Tyler

Broken Window Serenade
Whiskey Myers
90%
"Now you work down at the Timeout Off 155"
Tyler Song
Ulpu
80%
"Song about Tyler"
Tyler Song
BLUEHEELS
80%
"Song about Tyler"
East Texas Ways
Cottonwood Crows
50%
"Make our way on up to Tyler, Texas"
Forever
Koe Wetzel
49%
"Well down another hour just outside of Tyler"
Thunderstorms & Tyler Roses
Brian Burns
32%
"Thunderstorms and Tyler roses always make me think of you"
Rose Queen
William Clark Green
30%
In the House Tonight
DJ Screw
7%
"Baton, Baton, O O (N.O), Tyler Tyler"
Ida Red Likes the Boogie
Bob Wills
7%
"Johnny Gimble, ah haw, ah you boogie good"
Railroadin’ Some
Henry Thomas
7%
"Tyler, Longview, Jefferson, Marshall, Little Sandy, Big Sandy"
City of Roses
Charley Crockett
7%
"There's a city of roses / Way back in the pines"
Smile
Curtis Grimes
6%
"More tender then a Tyler rose"
Tyler Rose
Justin Slinkard
6%
"Tyler Rose"
On Cum
Say Anything
3%
"I'll always come for Sherri DuPree"
Tobey
Eminem
2%
"John Manziel, odd man out (What?)"

Artists From Tyler

C
Chance Peña
folk Pop: 69
P
Paul Cauthen
country Pop: 60
F
Fit for a King
metal Pop: 57
C
Chance Pena
pop Pop: 52
E
Eisley
indie Pop: 50
I
Ivoryline
rock Pop: 46
B
Brandon Beal
pop Pop: 46
E
Ella Lee
r-n-b Pop: 43
L
Lil' Son Jackson
blues Pop: 42
S
Sugaray Rayford
blues Pop: 42
M
Mouse and the Traps
rock Pop: 42
E
Element Eighty
metal Pop: 38
T
Teron Beal
r-n-b Pop: 37
S
Sucré
pop Pop: 36
G
Gus Johnson
jazz Pop: 36
L
Lil’ Son Jackson
blues Pop: 30
D
Dooley Wilson
jazz Pop: 30
S
Shaun Groves
classical Pop: 29
J
Johnny Williams
blues Pop: 28
P
Perma
indie Pop: 27

Showing top 20 of 63 artists

Rivers & Roads in Song near Tyler

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

Interstate 20 10 songs Sabine River 10 songs

History of Tyler

Tyler, TX RoadyGoat

Tyler, Texas, feels like a place where everyone knows your name, a kind of warmth that settles right into your bones. This East Texas town, named for President John Tyler back in 1846, has seen its share of history. Before any of that, though, the Caddo people called this land home. Then came the oil boom of the 1930s, transforming Tyler almost overnight. You can still feel that energy, that sense of possibility, woven into the streets. It’s a place that grows things, not just roses, though those are certainly a point of pride. Brookshire’s, that regional grocery powerhouse, started right here. But Tyler also grows people.

Tyler, TX RoadyGoat

Tyler's story began long before the city itself. The Caddo people knew this land well, their lives interwoven with the forests and waterways long before settlers arrived. Then, in 1846, the town was founded, taking its name from President John Tyler, a nod to the nation's leadership. For years, it was a quiet East Texas community, slowly building its identity. But everything changed with the discovery of oil in the 1930s. The black gold boom transformed Tyler almost overnight. Suddenly, the town was awash in new faces, new money, and new opportunities. That boom left its mark, shaping the city’s economy and trajectory. Even after the oil boom faded, Tyler didn’t revert to its former self. Rose cultivation blossomed, turning the area into a horticultural hub, famous for its fragrant blooms. And today, healthcare has become a major force, providing jobs and shaping the community.

Tyler, TX RoadyGoat

Tyler, Texas, feels like a happy accident of geography and industry. Situated in the Piney Woods of East Texas, the area was home to the Caddo people long before it became a namesake of President Tyler back in 1846. But what truly set Tyler apart was the soil itself. This wasn't just any dirt; it was perfect for growing roses. By the early 20th century, Tyler had blossomed into the "Rose Capital of America," shipping blooms far and wide. That horticultural prowess is still celebrated today; the Rose Garden is a beautiful draw, and the annual Rose Festival is a huge event. Then came oil. In the 1930s, black gold gushed from the ground, transforming the town almost overnight. While the oil boom eventually subsided, its impact on Tyler's economy was undeniable. Even today, though, if you ask locals why Tyler thrives, they’ll point to something less tangible than roses or oil. They'll talk about community. Brookshire's, a grocery chain that feels like family to folks across the region, started right here. Healthcare is a major employer, too, suggesting a commitment to caring for one another. It's that blend of Southern hospitality, entrepreneurial spirit, and genuine neighborliness that keeps Tyler blooming.

Wilson, Arthur [Dooley]

1942

Dooley Wilson, actor and musician, was born Arthur Wilson in Tyler, Texas, on April 3, 1886. Some sources list 1894 as the year of his birth, but Wilson's gravestone gives 1886. Wilson's career spanned more than forty years. He began at age twelve with performances in vaudeville as a minstrel player. Around 1908 he performed in black theater in Chicago and New York. It was during this time that he got his nickname, "Dooley," as a performer in Pekin Theatre in Chicago. The name was taken from "Mr. Dooley," Wilson's signature song at the time. During the 1920s he led his own band—the Red Devils—in which he performed as a singing drummer on a nightclub tour of Paris and London. He returned to the United States in 1930 and gave up his drums for an acting career. He performed with Orson Welles and John Houseman in Federal Theater productions and then landed a Broadway role in the musical Cabin in the Sky . Wilson made his film debut in 1939. Although his roles were primarily supporting ones, he made film history as Sam, the pianist–singer in Casablanca who performs "As Time Goes By." Director Hal Wallis wanted a woman for the role but chose Wilson instead, although Wilson "couldn't...play piano." The director allowed Wilson to sing, but the piano playing was dubbed. Wilson was under contract to Paramount and on loan to MGM. His film credits include Keep Punching (1939); My Favorite Blonde , Night in New Orleans , Take a Letter Darling , Cairo , and Casablanca (1942); Two Tickets to London , Stormy Weather , and Higher and Higher (1943); Seven Days Ashore (1944); Triple Threat and Racing Luck (1948); Free for All and Come to the Stable (1949); and Passage West (1951). In 1945 Wilson had a prominent role in the New York musical Bloomer Girl . He also acted in Beulah , one of the first television series starring black actors, in 1951. He was on the board of directors of the Negro Actors Guild of America. He died in Los Angeles on May 30, 1953, shortly after his retirement, and was buried in Angelus Rosedale Cemetery. He was survived by his wife, Estelle.

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Marsh, Colonel Bryan

1861

(Star and Wreath) School named for Texas Confederate. Alabama native, came to Tyler, 1854. 1861 was captain Co. C, 17th Texas Cavalry. In 1863 Confederate campaigns to prevent split of South along Mississippi River. He was one of 4,500 C. S. A. men attacked by 30,000 Federals at Arkansas post in Jan. 1863. Taken prisoner there, he was exchanged in May. Put into Bragg's army in Tennessee. Later, in Atlanta fighting lost right arm. Returned to fight until Lee surrendered. In 1880s was captain of Co. B., Frontier Battn., Texas Rangers. Quelled riot between town and soldiers at Fort Concho. Ended gunplay in railroad construction towns. Fought Indians. Was Smith County sheriff for 20 years.

Historical Marker →

Bonner, Thomas R., Colonel

1849

(Star and Wreath) (1836-1891) Born in Mississippi. Came to Texas 1849. In Texas militia at start of Civil War. Elected captain Co. C, 18th Tex. Infantry, C. S. A., 1862. Commanded 18th as Colonel, 1863-65. Gallantly led unit in battles at Bourbeau, Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, La. and Jenkins' Ferry, Ark., all being vital actions to prevent Federal invasions of Texas. After the war, admitted to bar and practiced law in Tyler. Served in 11-15th Texas Legislatures and as speaker of the house in 1876. Founded the first bank in Tyler. Leader in building Tyler Tap Railroad. Established an insurance company. Trustee East Texas University. Grand Master of Masons in Texas, 1875. Texas made an all-out effort for the Confederacy after a 3 to 1 popular vote for secession. 90,000 troops, famed for mobility and daring, fought on every battlefront. A 2,000-mile frontier and coast were successfully defended from Union troop invasion and savage Indians. Texas was the storehouse of Western Confederacy. Wagon trains laden with cotton - life blood of the South - crossed the state to Mexico to trade for medical supplies, clothing, military supplies. State and private industry produced guns, ammunition, wagons, pots, kettles, leather goods, salt, hospital supplies. Wives, sons, daughters, slaves provided corn, cotton, cloth, cattle, hogs, cured meats to the army, giving much, keeping little for themselves.

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Smith County Rose Industry and the Tyler Rose Garden

1870

A combination of sandy soil, year-round rainfall, and a long growing season make the Tyler area ideal for rose propagation. First known commercial production began here in the 1870s when industry pioneers such as G. A. McKee and Mathew Shamburger (1827-88) sold rose bushes along with other nursery stock. Business expanded in the 1920s as more nurserymen began growing roses. Production was increased by new growing methods such as irrigation, introduced in 1924 by A. F. Watkins. The Texas Rose Festival was started in Oct. 1933 to publicize the industry. Scientific plant research, begun in the 1930s by J. C. Ratsek, Dr. E. W. Lyle, and others from the Tyler substation of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, was implemented by organization of the Texas Rose Foundation, Inc., in 1945. The Tyler Rose Garden, a 22-acre municipal park, was created in 1952. Nurseries donate the many varieties of plants, which are cared for by the city. Today the rose industry is vital to the economy of Smith County. In 1973 the value of bushes and flowers shipped around the world by local nurseries totaled $9,000,000. One-half of the rose bushes produced each year in the United States come from the Tyler area.

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Gardner, Carl Edward

1954

Carl Edward Gardner, lead singer of the Coasters, was born in Tyler, Texas, on April 29, 1928. He was the son of Robert and Rebecca Gardner. His father was a hotel bellman who, according to Gardner's autobiography, Yakety Yak I Fought Back: My Life With the Coasters, ran a side business in bootleg liquor. His mother, a Comanche Indian , had a fine singing voice and was the source of his own vocal talent. A music teacher, a German classical pianist, instructed Gardner in singing and also trained his sister, Carol, who would later become an opera singer. As a young man, Gardner sang at parties for a living in Tyler. He attended Emmett Scott High School and sang and played drums with the territorial band of Lasalle Gunter. He spent a year in the United States Army. In 1952 he married Ladessa Richards, and they had a daughter. Eventually he moved to California in the early 1950s to pursue a career in the music business and left his wife and daughter behind in Tyler. In 1954 he joined the Robins, a rhythm-and-blues and doo-wop group, as a replacement for a singer who was in jail. Gardner stayed on and recorded with the group on the Spark label in 1954 and 1955. His first major career success came with the Robins, with the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller song, "Smokey Joe's Café," the first hit to feature Gardner on vocals. It attracted the attention of Atlantic Records, and the company made arrangements for the Robins and Leiber and Stoller to relocate to New York, but when three members of the group chose to stay in Los Angeles, Gardner and bassist Bobby Nunn recruited new members and the new band was dubbed the Coasters. Subsequently, Atlantic Records signed the group. They were one of the first major Black groups of the rock-and-roll era and specialized in humorous songs featuring characters who often reflected the problems facing teenagers at the time; their music appealed to both Black and White audiences. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller wrote much of the group's material, and the Coasters made their debut recording, "Down in Mexico," in 1956. A Latin-tinged, bluesy song, it featured Gardner's clear-voiced and plaintive style. The Coasters' first big hits, "Searchin'" and "Young Blood" (the B-side of "Searchin'") were released in 1957. The Coasters went on to record enduring classics of 1950s rock-and-roll, including "Yakety Yak," "Charlie Brown," and "Poison Ivy." With these recordings their work took a lighter turn and reflected youthful problems in an adult world. "Yakety Yak," was a warning to obey parental wishes; "Charlie Brown" painted the portrait of a class clown; while "Poison Ivy" dealt with the first hormonal stirrings in a young man. The Coasters communicated with 1950s teenagers through these "playlets," as Jerry Leiber called them. Texas-born sax player King Curtis was often heard on their recordings, and he contributed the tenor solo on "Yakety Yak." From 1956 to 1961 the Coasters enjoyed enormous popularity in America and England. Their popularity began to wane, however, and sales of singles such as "Little Egypt" and "Run, Red, Run" were way below those of previous releases. Eventually the "British Invasion" displaced groups such as the Coasters. The original Coasters were Carl Gardner, Bobby Nunn, Leon Hughes, and Billy Guy. Personnel changes occurred over the years, but during the group's heyday, from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, the lineup included Gardner, Guy, Cornel Gunter and Will Jones. These four members were inducted as the Coasters into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. They had the distinction of being the first vocal group to be inducted. The Coasters continued touring with a lineup fronted by Gardner and including Ronnie Bright, Jimmy Norman, and guitarist Thomas "Curley" Palmer, from El Paso, Texas. Their major album releases included The Coasters (1957), The Coasters' Greatest Hits (1959), The Coasters One By One (1960), Coast Along with The Coasters (1962), That Is Rock & Roll (1965),

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Parsons, Albert Richard

1867

Albert Richard Parsons, radical labor organizer, was born in Montgomery, Alabama, on June 24, 1848, the youngest child of Samuel and Elizabeth (Tompkins) Parsons. Both parents died before he was five, and Albert was sent to Tyler, Texas, to live with his brother William Henry Parsons . From 1855 until 1859 the family ranched in Johnson County, Texas, and from there they moved to Waco. In 1860 Albert Parsons was apprenticed to Willard Richardson on the Galveston Daily News . When the Civil War began, Parsons joined the Lone Star Grays, a Confederate volunteer company. Later he served as powder monkey for an artillery unit at Sabine Pass. In the final years of the war he was a scout for Parsons's Brigade . Following the war Parsons returned to Waco, where he received his only formal education, studying political economy and moral philosophy for six months at Waco University (now Baylor University). In 1867 he began to publish the Spectator , in which he advocated civil rights for Blacks and acceptance of the terms of surrender. He became a Radical Republican and traveled throughout Central Texas registering freed slaves to vote. The Republicans appointed him to a position in the district clerk's office in Waco in 1870; he was also appointed assistant assessor of United States revenue and was elected a secretary of the Texas Senate in 1871. When Reconstruction came to an end in Texas, Parsons was hated as a miscegenationist, a scalawag, a traitor, and a revenue man. He had been shot in the leg, thrown downstairs, beaten, and threatened with lynching for his efforts to register Black voters. That year, he moved to Chicago with his wife Lucy E. Parsons , a woman of mixed racial heritage, whom he had married in Austin in 1872. They had two children. In March 1876 Parsons became a member of the Social Democratic party of North America, and on July 4, 1876, he joined the Knights of Labor . He became a leading agitator for social change in Chicago, and the railroad strikes of July 1877 brought him into the limelight. He was taken to City Hall to face members of the powerful Citizens' Association, and he was fired from his job as a typesetter at the Chicago Times and blacklisted. The police chief warned him that his life was in danger and advised him to leave Chicago at once. After a series of defeats as a candidate for public office between 1877 and 1882, Parsons rejected electoral politics and joined radical trade unionists who advocated industrial struggle and believed unions to be the embryo of a postrevolutionary society. Parsons began to call himself an anarchist, although he used the terms anarchist and socialist interchangeably. Though his rhetoric was visionary and even violent at times, he remained committed to improved living conditions for all. To that end he helped to organize the Chicago Trades and Labor Council and threw himself into agitation for the eight-hour working day. In October 1884 he became editor of the Alarm , published by the International Working People's Association. May 1, 1886, the date set for the inauguration of the eight-hour day, passed smoothly and with great optimism; Lucy and Albert Parsons led a march of 80,000 strikers and supporters up Michigan Avenue. However, violence erupted two days later at the McCormick Reaper plant, and the anarchists called a meeting for the night of May 4 in Haymarket Square to protest police brutality. Parsons spoke, then left the meeting with Lucy and the two children; they were nearby in Zepf's Hall when nearly 200 policemen marched into the square; an unknown person threw a bomb, and police began shooting wildly. Most of the seven police officers and seven members of the crowd who died apparently sustained wounds from police revolvers. Albert Parsons left the city that night; in the aftermath of the bloodshed known radicals were jailed. Parsons returned to Chicago voluntarily and presented himself to the court, declaring his innocence and expecting to be exonerated.

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Things to Do in Tyler

food 13.2 mi away
LaCascio's Scratch Italian

Italian fine dining in tiny Lindale at 75 Miranda Lambert Way — named for the town's famous daughter. Scratch kitchen, fresh-baked bread, upscale-casual…
historical 25.0 mi away
Kilgore, Texas (c. 1939, Russell Lee)

Sports in Tyler

⭐ HOMETOWN LEGENDS Class 5A · Football

Tyler Lions — Tyler — a college & pro athletic pipeline

6 alumni who reached major-college or pro sports

Tyler High School has a proud tradition of developing athletes who excel beyond their high school years. Several former Lions have gone on to compete at major college programs and even professionally. These alumni represent various sports, showcasing the diverse athletic talent nurtured within the school's programs.

Among the notable athletes are Aqua Franklin, a women's basketball player for Texas A&M and later with the Sacramento Monarchs in the WNBA. The school also saw Daniel Hernández become a former MLS soccer player. On the gridiron, Ronnie Lee and Quincy Stewart both played in the NFL, with Stewart also a member of the Edmonton Eskimos team of the CFL. Derrick McFall was a college football running back for the SMU Mustangs, and Teddy Williams was an NFL player after his time at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Pro/D1 alumni
6
Class
5A
Key Players
  • Aqua Franklin — , Texas A&M women's basketball 2004–2008, WNBA drafted 38th pick Sacramento Monarchs, assi
  • Daniel Hernández — , former MLS soccer player
  • Ronnie Lee — , former NFL player
  • Derrick McFall — , college football running back for the SMU Mustangs
  • Quincy Stewart — , former NFL player and a member of the Edmonton Eskimos team of the CFL that won the Grey
  • Teddy Williams — , four-time NCAA track and fieldAll-American at the University of Texas at San Antonio; NF
The moment

Aqua Franklin was an assistant coach with Stephen F. Austin.

Sources: Wikipedia · SI High School (ScoreBook Live)

Everything Near Tyler

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

Explore Tyler on the Map
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