Recently in Western Swing Category
Men My Mother Dated (and Other Mostly True Tales) by Brett Leveridge: Bob Wills
Funny, plausible anecdote: "It wasn't long before Dad felt a tap-tap-tap upon his shoulder, signifying that someone was seeking to cut in, to take a turn around the floor with Mom. By now you must surely have guessed that it was Wills. Dad graciously stepped aside and Mom found herself firmly in Wills' clutches.
"Mom felt there was little she could do but make the best of the situation, grit her teeth, and behave in gracious fashion until song's end...."
Village Voice: New York Music - The Playboy Mansion
"Western-swing hype man-icon invents, uh, everything." From Anthony Mariani's review of the 2006 box set: "A four-disc box set of 105 remastered tracks, Legends of Country Music: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, casts doubt on the notion that several allegedly original pop music developments emerged only in the past 50 years; Bob was an early originator in disciplines including but not limited to hollering, waxing ironic, and rocking out. As a fiddler, he leaves the singing to pros, but he verbally encourages his orchestra almost to a compulsive degree."
Roy Thackerson, the Fingerless Fiddler
We saw Roy play at the Texas Cowboy Reunion a couple of years ago. Amazing. (Via Deke Dickerson's Wonderful World of Weirdness.)
Deke Dickerson @ Mercury Lounge, Saturday
Jennifer Chancellor describes Deke Dickerson as "Retro-fantastic guitarslinging and woe-eyed tales mix rockabilly, surf rock and jazz." What's not to like? His "Misshapen Hillbilly Gal" is a Hank Thompson-style western swing number with some nice twin-guitar work.
APRIL HONKY TONK/SWING SALE! | Bloodshot Records
In honor of an upcoming release by Wayne Hancock, Bloodshot Records is offering special deals on western swing and honky tonk CDs, including the Pine Valley Cosmonauts Salute the Majesty of Bob Wills ($6.75) and Crazy Rhythm, a collection of Hank Penny transcriptions from the 1950s ($5.75). (Via @michelet on Twitter.)
Dallas - DC9 At Night - Echoes And Reverberations: The Ghosts Of The Longhorn Ballroom
Bob Wills, Merle Haggard, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, the Sex Pistols -- they all played the Longhorn.
DEWEY GROOM & THE LONGHORN BALLROOM « Paula's Back-Log
"Dewey Groom: From the Mabank Flash To Big Daddy of Country Music" from the July 1971 edition of the Country Music Reporter.
WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Twistin' The Country Classics (MP3s)
A 1963 recording by a Liberty Records studio band featuring legendary guitarist Tommy Allsup: "The album, released at the peak of the nation's raging case of twist fever, combined familiar standards with more contemporary country tunes and re-interpreted them as hard-driving twist tempo instrumentals." Includes Wabash Cannonball, Ida Red, and San Antonio Rose.
HackLawyer.net: Don Helms, last surviving sideman for Hank Williams, dead at 81
"His steel guitar provided an aching, visceral tone of grief to Williams' music and hence, its very identity.... As a boy, he fell in love with the music of our own Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys and in particular, with the steel guitar music of Leon McAuliffe. He got his first steel guitar from his grandmother when he was 15 and at the tender age of 18, began to play with Williams around the joints in Alabama. After Williams' death, Helms joined the Ray Price band and was a key part of that singer's success in the 1950s."
The story of the Ernie Ball family and their guitars, interwoven with the story of the southern California music scene and names like the Beach Boys, Leo Fender, and Albert Lee. (Ernie Ball played steel guitar for Tommy Duncan's band.) "One of the great things we did back then was drive to the northern border of the San Fernando Valley and go to a place called the Sundance Saloon. They had a Tuesday night Jam hosted by Don Everly. The band was Buddy Emmons, Byron Berline, and just about every legend at the time even Glen Campbell..everyone. I wasnt old enough but sometimes I would sit out front and sometimes they would let me in. I remember sitting outside one night and the kid next to me was a guitar from Oklahoma named Vince....Vince Gill."
