Frost, Texas · What Endures

Part One of 8

The Song

First posted on the Frost, Texas Facebook Page, 22 May 2026 · on Facebook

There's more to this little town than most people passing through would ever guess. Here are some of the stories these old downtown walls still hold. We'll start with a song.

Did you know Frost, Texas has its own blues song?

On May 6, 1930, an F4 tornado tore through Frost with winds up to 260 mph. In two to three minutes, the entire town was leveled. At least 22 people were killed here, with 41 total along the storm's 35-mile path through Hill, Navarro, and Ellis Counties.

Five weeks later, on June 9, 1930, a blues singer named Alger “Texas” Alexander walked into a studio in San Antonio and recorded a song about it — “Frost Texas Tornado Blues” — with the Mississippi Sheiks behind him. Alexander was one of the most important early blues voices in America. He didn't play an instrument. His power was entirely in his voice, which came straight from the cotton fields and work camps of East Texas.

A kid named Sam Hopkins, who called Alexander his cousin, followed him around — the world would come to know him as Lightnin' Hopkins, one of the greatest blues guitarists who ever lived. Lightnin' learned his craft traveling with Texas Alexander through the house parties and street corners of Texas.

That lineage — from the cotton fields to the recording studio, from Frost to Houston to the world — runs right through this little town.

The entire town was leveled that day. But the steel vault inside the Citizens State Bank held — people actually sheltered inside it during the storm. The town rebuilt around that vault. And the building that stands on Garitty Street today was reconstructed on the same ground, because the people of Frost refused to leave.

The song is still out there. Give it a listen.

Some things are built to endure.