Willard “The Texas Kid” Watson was born on June 17, 1921, on a plantation in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. He was the son of L. T. and Mary Liza (Frazier) Watson and grew up in a large family. His paternal grandparents were once slaves in Louisiana, while his maternal relations came to Louisiana via Mississippi after their emancipation from slavery in Virginia. Watson’s ancestry is a blend of African, Choctaw, French, and Cajun. The Watson family were sharecroppers. The sharecropping system immediately replaced agricultural slavery and far too often trapped workers in a cycle of debt and hard labor. Watson once stated that slavery had ended only in name. His older brothers previously had escaped the sharecropping plantation. The oldest brother moved to Dallas, and by 1928 the rest of the family joined him.
In Dallas, Watson attended the B. F. Darrell School until he was fourteen, when he began to contribute to the family income. As he became a young man, he frequented Elm Street’s east end, an area coined “Deep Ellum,” a major center of African American activity where blues musicians busked on street corners and played late into the night in the clubs. The atmosphere was experimental and quite dangerous. Watson was nearly shot and stabbed multiple times, but he was no stranger to rowdy behavior himself and engaged in drinking and fighting. He was married seven times and once said, “When your wife starts shooting at you, turn sideways and you’ll cut her target in half.”
In 1942, during World War II, Watson served in the United States Army and was stationed in the southwestern Pacific. He was discharged as a disabled veteran (with severe headaches) in 1944. He worked a number of jobs including positions as carpenter, plumber, mechanic, and tailor. On April 1, 1967, he married his last wife, Elnora, and they remained married for nearly twenty-eight years (until his death) and operated small businesses like a fix-it shop and upholstery. Out of this union he became more settled in his behavior and took a commitment to the Baptist Church. His persona as the “Texas Kid” developed about 1968. While visiting relatives in Louisiana and Oklahoma, the couple went on camping and fishing trips. They regularly attended Frontier Days, an annual event in Oklahoma that required all guests to wear traditional Western gear. Watson stated of the event, “I would make a new outfit every year for us to wear; I’d sew them myself. They would be really showy and attention-getting; when I’d walk up, Elnora’s people would shout: ‘Here comes the Kid from Texas.’”
Watson was a folk artist whose memory, dreams, spirituality, and life circumstances provided the inspiration for his crafting, collecting, and art making. He was not formally trained and used objects and materials sourced directly from his daily life. As a small child, he carved figures from pieces of wood that he collected, and he began to create art in his teens. He continued exploring that creative impulse as time passed. He learned to sew from his mother and had a history of customizing clothing and domestic textiles into one-of-a-kind fashions. He produced pencil and marker drawings and paintings on paper, and the vivid tableaus with accompanying text became his form of storytelling. He also reimagined natural forms like wood pieces and rocks into sculpture. (From Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), "Watson, Willard [The Texas Kid]".)
