Singer Marcia Ball Finds Her True Voice in Austin

There are not many places in America where a singer could start off as a country act and end up as a piano-playing R&B; shouter, as Marcia Ball did, but there is one city where that would seem a natural course of events: Austin, Tex.

Listen to her today, and her sound is pure New Orleans R&B;, from her bluesy vocals, which recall the likes of Irma Thomas, to her two-fisted, Professor Longhair-style piano playing. A dozen years ago, though, she sang straight country, even releasing an album of traditional country songs in 1978.

That may seem quite a pendulum swing, but in truth, it simply reflects shifts in Austin’s musical history. Back in the ‘70s, Austin was the home of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and a host of outlaw country singers. Ten years later, though, the big noise was from blues, and acts like Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Fabulous Thunderbirds and Lou Ann Barton were the ones getting the “Austin sound” ink.

And through it all, Ball was in the process of finding her own sound. After growing up in Louisiana, she ended up in Austin pretty much by accident--”We were actually on our way to San Francisco,” she said in a telephone interview from her Austin home, “but we just stopped here and never left”--and made her recording debut as a country singer through a similar set of circumstances.

“My first band that got any attention, got popular at all, was a country band here in Austin,” she said. “That’s what led us to shop Nashville (for a recording contract) in the first place.”

Even so, she says, Austin’s music scene was not quite as pure country as outsiders imagined it. “People would always ask about that,” she said. “But even at the time--this would be in the late ‘70s--the Thunderbirds and Stevie (Ray Vaughan) were emerging hard. In interviews, if people asked me about the country scene, I’d say, ‘It’s great and everything’s happening, but what is about to happen is really something else.’ While progressive country music was getting all the press, they were playing the clubs, honing their style.”

It was not long before Ball was joining them. “After that one country band I was in ran its course, I started my own band and that was more influenced by my roots, rhythm and blues,” she said. “I grew up with that, with soul music and R&B; and Fats Domino and Professor Longhair and Irma Thomas.

“By ’78 . . . I had already moved in this direction. The show I was doing had moved definitely into the R&B; thing. But in 1980, I just decided that I was going to write R&B; and I was going to find some of those guys who were playing R&B; all that time, and learn from them.”

Part of what led Ball to make the switch was her interest in piano. “I started playing piano in the country band I was in when I first moved to Austin,” she said. “There are not a lot of renowned pianists in country music, once you get past Floyd Cramer and Ronnie Milsap. That about said it. But New Orleans blues, and rhythm and blues, is full of piano players.”

Still, mastering that piano style was not easy, particularly for such an autodidact as Ball. “It’s not a matter of basic ability,” she said. “When you listen to ‘Fess (Professor Longhair), so much of what he does is so simple.

“But it’s the syncopation of what he does. When I was learning how to play ‘Big Chief,’ the left hand and right hand are completely disconnected. I got so I could play it pretty well, and someone said, ‘I heard he recorded it one hand at a time.’

“Don’t tell me now!” she said, laughing. She added, “Of course, it wasn’t true.”