Interview with Dave Oliphant


Download the mp3 here

The music at the end this interview is “I’m an Old Cow Hand” composed by Johnny Mercer and recorded by Fairfield,Texas-born (1924) Kenny Durham on January 10, 1960. For a unique “discography” of Durham’s work, see Oliphant’s biography-poem KD: A Jazz Biography


Books by Dave Oliphant

Book: Texan Jazz


Book: Jazz Mavericks of the Lone State State


Book: KD: A Jazz Biography


Documentary about Dave Oliphant by Kanya Lyons

A documentary short about Native Texas Poet Dave Oliphant. This documentary was filmed, edited, produced and directed by Kanya Lyons in 2018.

Oliphant was born in Fort Worth in 1939. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from Lamar University and the University of Texas, respectively, and his Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University. His primary reading and writing interest has always been poetry, but he has also written four books on jazz (primarily by Texas musicians).

He has translated poetry from Spanish and was a winner of the Texas Institute of Letters book translation award in 2011. In addition to fourteen collections of his own poetry, among them The Pilgrimage: Selected Poems 1962-2012, he has edited three anthologies of Texas poetry and one of Chilean poetry. For forty years he contributed essays on and reviews of Texas poetry to various state literary magazines, and 55 of those pieces were collected in 2015 in his Generations of Texas Poets.

He retired from the University of Texas at Austin after serving for 30 years in various capacities, from assistant professor to editor of a scholarly journal, senior lecturer, and coordinator of the Freshman Seminars Program. He lives in Cedar Park, Texas with his wife and muse, Maria.


Click hear to listen to Dave Oliphant reading his poetry


– Ken McCarthy
Jazz on the Tube

Music credits:

The Jazz on the Tube podcast theme song is “Mambo Inferno” performed by The Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria from the CD ¡Que Viva Harlem!

At the end of today’s interview, we featured “I’m an Old Cow Hand”, written by Johnny Mercer and performed by Kenny Dorham (Xanadu Records, The Kenny Dorham Memorial Album) recorded January 10, 1960 (4:12)

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