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Ray Henning's Heart of Texas Music Store

Submitted by clex on Wed, 09/05/2007 - 8:15pm. People | Stores

Ray Henning's HoT Music... a more mystical place may not exist for the Austin music lover. Consider this. Ray has been central to the Austin music scene since well before anyone knew there was one. I know a member of an Austin 50's doo-wop group (The Slades, compadres of Ray Campi) that remembers Ray running HoT music even back then. Ray gave the starving, strugging, Stevie Vaughn a guitar from the "used" bin that SRV went on to make his career upon. HoT music directly supports road shows and all Austin music festivals with equipment rentals, loaners, whatever. Ray help define Austin as a Guitar Town well before the the marketing guys woke up to it.

Musicians have come and gone in this town but one of the men behind the scenes, who made the music possible more than most, was always Ray Henning.


(thanks Rusty!)

Note: Ray doesn't seem to have a website and a lot of folks end up here after searching for him. Here is his information from the phone book:

Heart Of Texas Music
1002 S Lamar Blvd
Austin, TX 78704
(512) 444-9750
(800) 856-1313

Hours of Operation: Mon-Fri 9:30am-6:30pm, Sat 9:30am-6pm
Payment Methods: AMEX, DISCOVER, MASTER CARD and VISA

Ray Henning & Family - A Texas Tradition Since 1961

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Ray is a straight-up guy

Submitted by mstrain on Sat, 04/25/2009 - 10:16am.

Hi, y'all!

Since this is the first thing that came up when I Googled my ex-employer Ray Henning, I just want to say this about Ray:

Ray is a totally straight up guy. That doesn't mean that you don't have to arm-wrestle him on prices, because any business has to make money to stay afloat. But let me put things in perspective.

I first met Ray after working for Hole Sound, the record company that produced a now very collectible W.C. Clark single with Stevie Ray Vaughan on lead guitar, maybe Stevie's first released recording. During that time, I mixed sound for W.C., Stevie, Doug Sahm, Eric Johnson, Lee Roy Parnell, Kinky Friedman, and other Austin musical icons.

And please let me say this about that. I'm not a very good sound mixer guy. My ears were surgically pinned when I was a kid, which has thrown off my internal and external acoustics, and so I realized before too long that this wasn't the business that I was best suited for.

But I also had some electronics experience from my Air Force days, and Ray was enormously helpful to a struggling U.S. military veteran like me in my career progression.

At a time when times were tough, Ray Henning had enough faith to hire me to work on guitar amps, P.A.'s, and other such repairs, while I worked my way through college, trying to find my path.

Nowadays, I have a degree in computer science, and I work as a systems administrator in the electronics industry.

But, Ray, wherever you are, if you are Googling yourself right now:

You rocked my world! Many thanks for helping me to get where I am today.

And everyone else, please do business with Ray when you can, because he helps to fire up the economy in ways that you could never possibly imagine.

Doing business with Ray when you can is a good and responsible thing to do, much like buying Fair Trade Coffee.

Best regards,

Mark

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miss hipple

Submitted by markrr on Mon, 12/03/2007 - 8:44pm.

lived on like 29th street towrads lamar a little past the rome inn you could get your cards read, she had this front window that looked like a terrium . this girl that was a theta told me to go see her

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Was she the one who broke

Submitted by farnham on Fri, 09/05/2008 - 11:01pm.

Was she the one who broke the TCU curse on the football team by having the fans burn purple candles?

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