Leon Bridges, Kelly Clarkson and more: Fort Worth’s music legacy | Opinion
Fort Worth will honor Leon Bridges with street signs in South Main Village, and that’s a good start.
Now, can we remember Kelly Clarkson’s time in Fort Worth?
Or from another generation, country troubadour Townes Van Zandt? Or jazz trendsetter Ornette Coleman?
Or, from yet another generation, dancer Ginger Rogers, Broadway’s Mary Martin and her son Larry Hagman, aka “J.R. Ewing”?
They’re all from Fort Worth. Or they grew up here, along with dozens of other music and movie stars.
They walked our streets, went to our schools and lived in our neighborhoods, and Fort Worthians today don’t even know.
Who knew that Clarkson spent her childhood years on Llano Avenue in Ridglea West, or that she went to both South Hi Mount Elementary and Luella Merrett Elementary before her family moved to Burleson?
Who knew that Cook Children’s Medical Center replaced the girlhood home of Ginger (McMath) Rogers? Or that Coleman grew up on East Second Street and also on Elm Street, both just east of Sundance Square?
Meet a few musical Fort Worthians:
• Singer John Denver came from a military family. He lived on Phoenix Drive in Western Hills one block north of Camp Bowie Boulevard West, and he graduated from Arlington Heights High School.
A plaque on the school auditorium remembers his Hall of Fame career of hit songs such as ”Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
• Broadway star Betty Buckley also came from a military family and lived in River Oaks, first on Brook Hollow Drive and then on Yale Street. When she graduated from Arlington Heights, she lived on Santa Fe Trail in Western Hills.
• That was not long after Delbert McClinton had transferred from Heights to what is now Trimble Tech High School.
Early in his 60-year career, he played harmonica on the timeless 1961 hit song “Hey! Baby,” recorded in a studio at 1705 W. Seventh St.
• Townes Van Zandt, credited with launching country music’s singer-songwriter era, was a west side child in the same 1950s.
Van Zandt lived on Washington Terrace in west Fort Worth and went to Arlington Heights Elementary, now Boulevard Heights School.
• Also from that era, musician and producer T-Bone Burnett is already honored with street sign toppers on St. Louis Avenue outside Record Town. That’s the legacy vinyl record shop he loved as a youth living first on Norfolk Road, then on Boyd Avenue and on Westcliff Road South, and at Paschal High School.
• In 1961, lead guitarist Trey Anastasio of Phish was born in Fort Worth. His family lived on Kent Street, now part of the TCU campus.
• Then there’s Willie.
He’s from Hill County. But if you added street signs everywhere Willie lived or played in two 1950s and 1960s stints in Fort Worth, they’d be all over town.
I can think of two notable landmarks. Nelson hosted a radio show at KCUL/1540 AM, in an apartment tower at 605 W. First St. And he first smoked marijuana at a fellow musician’s home northeast of downtown on Akers Avenue.
• Coleman’s incredible jazz career began when he was a child in Fort Worth, sneaking onto the roof of the old Fort Worth Press newspaper (now a police station), 501 Jones St., to hear bands at the Jim Hotel next door.
At I.M. Terrell High School, now a STEM and arts academy east of downtown, he played in one of the most heralded high school bands of all time alongside future stars Dewey Redman and “King Curtis” Ousley.
• Gospel superstar Kirk Franklin grew up in the Riverside neighborhood with an aunt, Gertrude Franklin.
• Nearly 100 years ago, bandleader Milton Brown, another Arlington Heights High School kid, originated Western swing music with fiddle player Bob Wills at the Crystal Springs Dance Pavilion, 5336 White Settlement Road. Wills later retired here.
• Ernest Tubb is also among the many early country music stars who lived here and played in the Stockyards.
• Rogers and Martin became famous as dancers, and Martin as a Broadway star. But their fame began when Rogers, a girl from Cooper Street off Eighth Avenue on what is now the Cook hospital campus, won a 1925 Charleston dance contest at the old Majestic Theater downtown.
The runner-up was Martin, a Weatherford girl. Later, she was married to lawyer Ben Hagman and living on El Campo Avenue in west Fort Worth when her son, Larry, was born.
He went on to become TV’s “J.R. Ewing.”
But Fort Worth’s movie and TV stars are for another day.
This story was originally published October 2, 2025 at 11:43 AM.
