Like a lot of kids in the late 50s and early 60s, Art Burton grew up watching Gunsmoke and Rawhide and reading books about the western frontier.
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His background has made him more sensitive than most to the issue. Though Burton was raised in south suburban Phoenix, his mother was born in Oklahoma, where he often visited as a boy, riding horses and attending black rodeos.
For a long time western lore took a backseat in Burton’s life while he concentrated on music. He started playing the conga drum and bongos when he was ten and later attended Governors State University on a talent scholarship, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in ethnic and cultural studies. For 12 years he wrote a music column for the Standard, a south suburban newspaper, and in 1973 he joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.
Burton laments the fact that most black-history scholars concentrate on subjects related to areas east of the Mississippi, such as slavery and black migration to the north. He says there are many topics related to the black experience on the western frontier–military service, entrepreneurship, black towns, black cowboys, black pioneers–that should be explored in depth.
