Album Notes

Ezra Charles is one of Texas\' most popular piano players, winning the Houston Press Readers\' Poll for Best Keyboardist seven times, and listed in Dallas\' Buddy magazine\'s Texas Tornadoes of the Keyboard as a charter member of the Hall of Fame. Growing up in Beaumont, Texas, the first band he played in consisted of himself, Johnny Winter, Edgar WInter and a drummer. Moving to Houston, he organized Thursday\'s Children, now widely regarded among the most influential Texas bands of the Sixties. He spent most of the Seventies preparing for his career as a Blues master, personally being mentored by Leon Russell, playing with Lightnin\' Hopkins, and becoming the last protege of the late Professor Longhair in New Orleans.

His present band began in 1983 as a rockabilly trio, but two years later he added a horn section, and the lineup was born that has survived to this day as Ezra Charles and The Works. He has spent the last twenty-five years writing a body of work that chronicles his life and the Texas Gulf Coast atmosphere that permeates his music. As the band\'s horn arranger as well as songwriter, he has drawn from both the heritage of the \"Blue-Eyed Soul\" horn bands of the Beaumont-Port Arthur-Louisiana region as well as the rich sound of Houston\'s Duke-Peacock stable that recorded behind Bobby \"Blue\" Bland and Gatemouth Brown. A true \"keeper of the flame,\" he stands as a valuable link between the past and the future of Texas regional music.