Lonn Taylor wanted to be a history professor. That is, until Janis Joplin derailed his career plans.
Now 78 years old, Taylor is an old-fashioned raconteur with a bushy mustache, Stetson Open Road hat, and an assortment of snappy bow ties. He’s also the author of more than half a dozen books and a historian who draws inspiration from his adopted home of the Big Bend.
But in 1962, Taylor was enrolled in a doctoral program in New York studying Southeast Asian history. He came to Austin to attend a summer class and happened to move into a garage apartment next door to the legendary rock singer, whose late-night jam sessions with her “seven or eight” musician roommates proved more compelling than Taylor’s coursework.
“We had to buy a rain gauge because the opening of every conversation in July and August is, ‘How many inches did you get last night?’”
“About the second week, I quit going to class,” he confesses. “I never went back to New York. I never got a Ph.D.”
Instead, Taylor hung around town and stumbled into a gig writing exhibit proposals for San Antonio’s 1968 HemisFair, embarking on a career as a museum curator and director. Upon retiring in 2002 as a historian for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Taylor and his wife, Dedie, settled in Fort Davis, where he writes a weekly column for the Big Bend Sentinel and broadcasts a history program every Friday morning on Marfa Public Radio.
Taylor’s most recent book, Marfa for the Perplexed, was published less than a year ago, but he’s already anticipating his next title this spring. Turning the Pages of Texas aims to bring recognition to the state’s lesser appreciated authors.