Songwriters from Texas

David "Buck" Wheat (March 19, 1922 – June 15, 1985) was an American folk and jazz musician. The Texas-born Wheat was a guitarist and bass player with the dance bands of the era, playing at the Chicago Playboy Jazz Festival 1959 in The Playboy Jazz All Stars and the Chet Baker Trio. In the winter of 1957, he was a jazz guitarist with Baker's Trio. Though most of Baker's material was recorded in Los Angeles, "Embraceable You", "There's a Lull in My Life" and "My Funny Valentine" are rare examples of Baker recording in New York. The format is also unusual for him, just Baker's vocals (no trumpet) accompanied by only Wheat on nylon string acoustic guitar and bassist Russ Savakus.
Wheat wrote music with his partner, lyricist Bill Loughborough. Their composition "Better Than Anything" is part of the live acts of Lena Horne, Phylicia Rashad, Irene Kral, Bob Dorough, Tuck and Patti and Al Jarreau. Their next song, "Coo Coo U", was recorded both by The Kingston Trio and by The Manhattan Transfer. Wheat embraced George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization for improvization; he would sing scales while playing a guitar accompaniment based on the theory.

Jessie Mae Robinson (née Booker, October 1, 1918 – October 26, 1966) was an American musician and songwriter, whose compositions included many R&B and pop hits of the 1940s and 1950s, including "Black Night", "I Went To Your Wedding", and "Let's Have a Party".

Benjamin Franklin "Tex" Logan, Jr. (June 6, 1927 – April 24, 2015) was an American electrical engineer and bluegrass music fiddler.
Born in Coahoma, Texas, Logan earned a B.Sc. in electrical engineering at Texas Tech University, then Texas Technological College, in Lubbock, Texas, studied for a B.Sc. in engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1946–51), and completed a M.Sc. (1956). He then moved to New Jersey where he joined Bell Labs (1956) and started his doctoral studies at Columbia University. There he earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering with his dissertation "Properties of High-Pass Signals" (1965). Logan joined the communication theory department at Bell Labs (1956) where he and others demonstrated the use of computer simulation in the study of reverberation in digital audio, and did joint work with Manfred R. Schroeder who later pioneered MP3 audio (1961). He was with the mathematics center (1963–93) where he contributed to the theory of signals.
As was his father Frank, Logan was a fiddler. He played with Mike Seeger in the late 1950s, with The Lilly Brothers & Don Stover and Bill Monroe in the 1960s, and with Peter Rowan in the 1980s. He performed on several records and international tours, and had minor roles in movies as well. Logan wrote "Christmas Time's A-Coming", a song made popular by Bill Monroe that has been recorded by many performers, including Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Sammy Kershaw, Rhonda Vincent, and Patty Loveless, among others; and "Diamond Joe" recorded by Bob Dylan. In 1969, Logan played fiddle on the Bee Gees' 1969 song "Give Your Best", released on the band's sixth album Odessa.
Logan died April 24, 2015, in Morristown, New Jersey, by the side of his daughter, Jody.

Robert Daniel Ealey (December 6, 1925 – March 8, 2001) was an American electric blues singer, who performed Texas blues. Among other releases, he recorded a couple of albums for Black Top Records in the 1990s, having earlier formed a duo with U.P. Wilson. Ealey also worked with Tone Sommer, Mike Buck, and Mike Morgan.Ealey's best-known work includes "One Love One Kiss" and "Turn Out the Lights". He variously worked with the Boogie Chillun Boys, the Juke Jumpers and the Five Careless Lovers.

Joe Marion Allison (October 3, 1924 – August 2, 2002) was an American songwriter, radio and television personality, record producer, and country music business executive. Allison won five BMI performance awards for hit singles he wrote and a 2 million performance award for writing "He'll Have to Go". He co-founded the Country Music Association. CMT called him "one of the most influential figures in the rise of modern country music."

Óscar “El Gallo Copeton” Martínez (born January 3, 1934, in Corpus Christi, Texas) is an American musician and songwriter of Mexican descent who performs Tejano, slow rock, polkas, cumbias and English tunes. Known to Tejano Music devotees as "El Tejano Enamorado", after the title of his song which was a hit for Isidro Lopez in 1954.

Joe Melson (born May 11, 1935) is an American singer and a BMI Award-winning songwriter best known for his collaborations with Roy Orbison, including "Only the Lonely" and "Crying", which are both in the Grammy Hall of Fame and have both been included in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Melson was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.

Frank Conley Slay Jr. (July 8, 1930 – September 30, 2017) was an American songwriter, A&R director, record producer, and record label owner. He wrote with Bob Crewe in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the partnership's most successful songs including "Silhouettes", a hit for several artists including The Rays and Herman's Hermits, "Daddy Cool", and "Tallahassee Lassie". As a producer, his biggest hit was "Incense and Peppermints" by the Strawberry Alarm Clock.

Buddy Wayne Knox (July 20, 1933 – February 14, 1999) was an American singer-songwriter, best known for his 1957 rock & roll hit song, "Party Doll".

Michael Brown (December 14, 1920 – June 11, 2014) was an American composer, lyricist, writer, director, producer, and performer. He was born in Mexia, Texas. His musical career began in New York cabaret, performing first at Le Ruban Bleu. In the 1960s, he was a producer of industrial musicals for major American corporations such as J.C. Penney and DuPont. For the DuPont pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair, Brown wrote and produced a musical revue, The Wonderful World of Chemistry staged 48 times a day by two simultaneous casts in adjacent theaters. For years, he maintained a reunion directory of the cast and crew, which included Robert Downey, Sr. as a stage manager. 2005 mailing: “After all, it was a remarkable time in all of our lives. We can be fairly certain nothing like it will be seen again. Love all round, Mike.” Several of his songs have entered the American repertoire, including "Lizzie Borden" and "The John Birch Society," which were popularized by the Chad Mitchell Trio.
Children know him best as the author of three Christmas books about Santa's helper, Santa Mouse.