Houston's Very Best Songs Ever

Percy Mayfield, "the poet laureate of the blues," was born in Louisiana and died in California but spent his formative years in Houston. Mayfield penned dozens of great songs — most notably "Hit the Road, Jack" for Ray Charles — but none surpassed "Please Send Me Someone to Love," one of the most-covered blues/R&B songs of all time. Everyone from Count Basie and Etta James to Fiona Apple and Jeff Buckley has taken a crack at it.

In words direct and simple as a child's Christmas prayer, Mayfield begs a higher power to send love to all: "Heaven please send to all mankind, understanding and peace of mind, and if it's not asking too much, please send me someone to love." The melody matches this exquisiteness. While it is resigned enough to lead you to believe that love is in the cards neither for the world nor the singer, a faint glimmer of hope remains on the final stanza: "Show the world how to get along, peace will enter when hate is gone, but if it's not asking too much, please send me someone to love."

Few versions surpass this one by Esther Phillips, a singer who shouldn't need any introduction to modern audiences but probably does.

A native of Galveston who spent much of her too-short life shuttling between her father's house in Houston and her mother's in Los Angeles, Phillips dominated the R&B charts in 1950, when she was all of 15 years old. Her biggest pop hit came after her rediscovery (by Kenny Rogers) 12 years later, when she scored big with her lush, majestic rendition of the country standard "Release Me."

By that time the pint-size dynamo was already grappling with joneses for both heroin and whiskey, twin monkeys that never left her back until her death of liver failure in 1984. But along the way she would leave behind some of the finest recordings of the '60s and early '70s, and stake a strong claim as the greatest female vocalist Houston ever produced.

Philips ran the gamut from gutbucket blues to big band jazz to soul-country to pure pop to British Invasion rock — both the Beatles' "And I Love Her" and the Stones' "As Tears Go By" were in her repertoire. She was at her best when, much like Ray Charles, she combined all that in one song.

And there was that voice. Man, that voice, equally capable of Lady Day vulnerability, Etta James fire, and the sophistication and hard-bitten diction she learned from her heroine Dinah Washington. Like Nina Simone, Phillips had the rare ability to match a nasal, razor-sharp edge with supple, full-throated phrasing, albeit without ever sounding as kittenish as Simone. (There's an echo of that style, albeit a faint one, in Amy Winehouse.)

Atlantic Records honcho Ahmet Ertegun called Phillips a singer of "extreme soul" who "thrilled you no matter what she sang." When Aretha Franklin edged out Phillips for a Grammy in 1972, legend has it the Queen of Soul deemed Phillips the more deserving of the two and handed the statuette over. One day Phillips will be rediscovered — mark our words. — J.N.L.

7. "Mind Playin' Tricks on Me"

The Geto Boys

We Can't Be Stopped

1991

In 1991, in the eyes of then-young Hip-Hop America, rap was still a bicoastal game. Sure, Miami's 2 Live Crew had enjoyed a couple of hits, but those nasty party jams were mere novelty records.

The Dirty South had not yet begun to truly fight. "Mind Playin' Tricks on Me" would change all that. Not only would the song top the Billboard rap charts and crack the top 25 in pop, but it would also demonstrate that Southerners could rap about something other than sex.

Over a melancholy, insistent jazz guitar riff culled from "Hung Up on My Baby," an Isaac Hayes instrumental, the paranoid, borderline psychotic rhymes of Bushwick Bill, Willie D and Scarface set a new standard in true gangsta poetry. Often tabbed by national critics as one of the top rap songs ever, "Mind Playin' Tricks..." surfaces often in the work of other masters. The Notorious B.I.G. would nod to the song in the lyrics of his hit single "One More Chance," while Scarface's "I had a woman down with me..." lines bubble up in the effervescent mix behind Andre 3000 on OutKast's "She Lives in My Lap." — J.N.L.

6. "Turn On Your Love Light"

Bobby "Blue" Bland

Here's the Man!!!

1961

Joe Scott, Duke-Peacock's in-house conductor/arranger /music director, epitomized the word "sublime." There's never so much as a sixteenth-note out of place in his creations, and "Turn on Your Love Light" is a flawless example.