This week in Texas music history: 13th Floor Elevators at the Jade Room

On Dec. 8, 1965, psychedelic rock pioneers the 13th Floor Elevators first performed at the Jade Room in Austin.

The new group, a collaboration between members of the groups the Lingsmen and the Spades, was a jolt to the capital’s teen scene. The Jade Room was a curious spot to debut, billed as “Austin’s finest cocktail lounge” and adorned with a large papier-mâché dragon.

The newly-formed ensemble featured frontman Roky Erickson, whose howling twang echoed Buddy Holly and Little Richard but with a psychedelic urgency that listeners hear echoed in Janis Joplin and Robert Plant.

Roky’s band the Spades had a Jade Room residency for much of 1965, where he’d already debuted a hit single he’d bring to the Elevators, “You’re Gonna Miss Me.”

If Erickson delivered the Elevators’ lead vocals, its spiritual leader was Tommy Hall, who lent lyrical philosophy and electrically-amplified jug. Stacy Sutherland anchored on lead guitar, his echoplex issuing forth mesmerizing reverberations. The rhythm section of Benny Thurman on bass and John Ike Walton on drums solidified an ensemble that became a beacon of the rock underground.

Despite crosstown competition that evening from Roy Head and Stan Getz concerts, The Elevators’ Jade Room debut drew a healthy crowd, and their midweek residency remained a club fixture. The Elevators then migrated to Austin venues the New Orleans Club and the Vulcan Gas Company before a San Francisco move that strained the group’s cohesion.

That was all in the future, though, as these brash experimentalists stepped on the modest Jade Room stage in 1965. The seeds were sown for the band’s enduring influence.

Sources

Michael Corcoran. Austin Music is a Scene Not a Sound: An Illustrated History of the First 100 Years. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2024.

Paul Drummond. Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound. Los Angeles: Process Media, 2007.

Paul Drummond. The Thirteenth Floor Elevators: A Visual History. New York: Anthology Editions, 2020.

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