Texas Jazz Archive 2025: HPL

Houston and the Gulf Coast have long had a vibrant jazz scene, but it wasn’t always well-documented. In 1986, saxophonist Arnett Cobb and his daughter Lizette Cobb created the Jazz Heritage Society of Texas as a non-profit education, literary, and cultural arts organization. In 1987, the Jazz Heritage Society of Texas partnered with the Houston History Research Center to document the under-represented jazz scene of Texas by establishing the Texas Jazz Archive.

The inaugural set of inductees were musicians Arnett Cobb, Jewel Brown, Sammy Price, and I.H. Smalley, though the collection would eventually grow to include 22 artists.