Biography
Born in Dallas, Texas, Bell launched his career as a country performer in the early 1970s, though widespread acknowledgment arrived only in recent years. During childhood he lived in South America while his father handled oil-production duties, then moved back to Houston upon reaching school age. There he took piano instruction from his mother, performed on cornet throughout high school, later adopted guitar, and started the Tradewinds. Post-graduation he landed opening slots at Houston’s Sand House Coffee House; steady regional work followed after years of gradual effort, frequently fronting a four-piece ensemble across Texas venues. In 1980 he supplied co-composed scores for Space Dance Theatre’s Houston staging of The Bermuda Triangle and joined jazz-rock outfit Passenger onstage, a group that would record Hi-Res with Joe Ely four years afterward. On 21 December 1982 a drunk driver struck his vehicle immediately after he exited the studio where his debut album was taking shape alongside Steve Ray Vaughan and Eric Johnson, resulting in severe head trauma, broken ribs, and extensive right-arm injuries that halted momentum. While recuperating he completed a graphic-design degree at Austin Community College, booked campus events, and staged the two-act play The Sun And Moon And Stars, which incorporated eighteen previously unrecorded originals. An album bearing the same title appeared in 1989; afterward Bell returned to Houston to assist in his father’s enterprise. Nanci Griffith placed “Sun & Moon & Stars” on her 1991 release Late Night Grande Hotel, then featured “Woman Of The Phoenix” on the Grammy-winning Other Voices, Other Rooms. Bell’s follow-up, Phoenix, emerged on the Texas independent Watermelon before he toured Europe with the Jayhawks. Texas Plates, initially offered online together with his memoir One Man’s Music, revisited the song “All Through My Days,” whose recording session for the abandoned debut album had been underway the night of the crash; the set’s most engaging cut proved to be the country waltz “Last Dance At The Last Chance.”
Albums
