Texas Writer Ed Ward Championed Rock Music Before It Was Hip

DALLAS —To Texas author and journalist Ed Ward, it was only rock and roll. But he liked it.

Ward, who's 1969 so-what review of the Beatles swan song Abbey Road, put him on the map of rock journalism as a critic at Rolling Stone, has died in Austin. Not only was he an early champion of the blues-rock talents of Dallas brothers Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan's Fabulous Thunderbirds, he became a familiar voice beyond the borders of Texas as a music historian for NPR's radio show, "Fresh Air."

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He grew up in Eastchester, New York and attended but never graduated from Antioch College. Instead, he made his way west and found himself immersed in music just as rock 'n' roll was transforming into what critics termed simply "rock." Surfboards and cars were out, drugs, mysticism and virtuosity were in, and Ward met the music head-on, first at Crawdaddy magazine, and then at Rolling Stone, where his tenure ended in an altercation with founder Jann Wenner in which one of them chased the other out of the office with a broom.

It's a story neither one has ever repeated by either the same way twice.

By 1980, Ward was ensconced at The Austin American-Statesman, where he alternately elevated and eviscerated acts from around the state, including Houston's ZZ Top and Lubbock's Joe Ely. He always gravitated towards the raw and the immediate, so his appreciation of the Vaughan brothers deep devotion to blues traditions made perfect sense.

Ward was also an inveterate foodie, and could cook like a master, as well as identify dozens of ingredients in a molé after a single taste. Under the pseudonym Petaluma Pete, he documented his culinary adventures for years in the alt-weekly Austin Chronicle.

Shortly after completing the '60s rock history tome that returned him to Rolling Stone as an author, Ward left on an ex-pat's exploration of Western Europe that was to last more than a dozen years.

While he was away, he began a stint at NPR as a music commentator in 1986. He returned often to Austin, where he help steady and guide the city's South By Southwest music festival through its early and shaky infancy.

After his time abroad in Berlin, Germany and Montpellier, France, Ward resettled in the Texas Capital, and continued to chronicle music past and present until his death on Monday. The cause of death remains pending.

Everyone who writes about contemporary music owes him a debt, and while he never made much money (a contestant grouse of his), he leaves the journalism world far richer for his contributions.

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(Photo License Info: Michael C. Berch, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons)