Still the king

Happy 104th birthday to the King of Western Swing! Ah, gather 'round friends! Why hurry? Let's all stay a little longer:

That's from the movie Blazing the Western Trail, with Charles Starrett as the Durango Kid, with the Texas Playboys' 1945 lineup: Tommy Duncan on vocals, Bob Wills and Joe Holley on fiddle, Jimmy Wyble on lead guitar, Cameron Hill on rhythm guitar, Noel Boggs on steel guitar (very cool double-necked lap steel there), Alex Brashear on trumpet, Monte Mountjoy on drums, Teddy Adams on bass, and Millard Kelso, usually the piano player, is on the squeezebox in this clip.

More clips from the same movie:

Ida Red
Goodbye Liza Jane
Time Changes Everything

That last clip has some nice twin guitar work by Jimmy Wyble and Cameron Hill, and that's Wyble playing the solo on "Stay a Little Longer."

Jimmy Wyble is still around at age 86, teaching contrapuntal jazz guitar on Thursdays this month at Musicians Institute in Los Angeles. According to this, he plays at the Chado Tea Room in Pasadena on Tuesdays and in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo on Sundays. This interview covers the breadth and length of his career, which also included a stint with Benny Goodman. (Here's video of him talking guitar and playing at Chado in 2007.)

(Via Tyson Wynn, who also has George Jones singing "Take Me Back to Tulsa" on his Bob Wills tribute album from the '60s, and the Rolling Stones paying tribute during their Austin, Texas, performance.)

DON'T FORGET: The Texas Playboys, with Leon Rausch, Tommy Allsup, and Bobby Koefer, perform at Bob Wills' Birthday Party at Cain's Ballroom tomorrow night, Saturday, March 7. Doors open at 6:30. Opening acts are the Round-Up Boys and Oklahoma Stomp.

UPDATED 2024/04/12 to redirect dead links to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and to replace YouTube Shockwave Flash embed code with working video.

• David Oakes's Jimmy Wyble tribute page
• David Oakes's YouTube channel featuring Jimmy Wyble and Oakes playing Wyble's compositions
• Jimmy Wyble interview (27 page PDF) by Jim Carlton
• Jimmy Wyble's book The Art of Two-Line Improvisation, reviewed by Serge Pierro
• Thomas Scott Mackenzie's posthumous tribute to Jimmy Wyble in Premier Guitar, with notated fingerings for Wyble's song "Jigsaw"
• Jimmy Wyble's lost etudes, with a recording and sheet music