*** This Week in Texas Music History is brought to you by Brane Audio ***

By Jason Mellard from the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University .

On September 18, 1940, psychedelic rock pioneer Powell St. John was born in Houston, and he grew up along the border in Laredo.

In the late 1950s, St. John enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. He embraced and was embraced by the campus folk revival there as the best harmonica player in town. At Kenneth Threadgill’s bar on North Lamar, he played as part of the Waller Creek Boys trio with friends Lanny Wiggins and Janis Joplin. When Janis left for San Francisco, St. John filed the info away, and Joplin remembered Powell when she got her big break. It was his song “Bye, Bye, Baby” that led off Big Brother and the Hol

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