Western Swing: February 2007 Archives

An edited version of this column was published in the March 1 - 7, 2007, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Posted April 11, 2024.

Happy Birthday, Bob
By Michael D. Bates

It looked like a typical scene in an American home. I walked into my 10-year-old son's room. He was sitting at his desk with his homework, headphones on and singing along with the CD:

"Well, I woke up this morning, and I looked outdoors.
I could tell my milkcow, I could tell by the way she lows.
If you see my milkcow, ooh, drive her on home.
I ain't had no milk and butter since my cow's been gone."

All right, so it didn't sound like a typical scene in an American home. But like three generations of Bateses before him, my son is a fan of the timeless sound of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, a sound that took shape right here in Tulsa.

As a young man enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1930s Nowata, my grandfather would go hear the Texas Playboys when they played a dance in the area. In the '40s and '50s my dad would come home from school for lunch to listen to the noon broadcasts of Bob Wills and his brother Johnnie Lee Wills over KVOO.

When I was a wee tyke, Dad would sing me the Bob Wills classic "Roly Poly." I rediscovered the music in college, when a rose from San Antonio taught me to two-step to a double album of Texas Playboys hits I'd bought at the Harvard Coop. And a bouncy, defiant song on that album, "I Laugh When I Think How I Cried over You," helped me through my disappointment when things didn't work out with her the way I'd hoped.

On the heels of his Grammy lifetime achievement award, in the midst of our state's centennial year, and with his birthday celebration coming up this weekend, if you don't know much about Bob Wills, it's a good time to learn about his importance to American music and his deep ties to Tulsa. And if you've never sampled his music - your loss if you haven't - this weekend is a great time to amend that deficiency.

Bob Wills and his band landed in Tulsa in 1934, driven here by a vengeful former boss who kept them off the air in Texas and Oklahoma City. They found a radio home on KVOO and made Cain's Dancing Academy the home base for a dance circuit that spanned the Southwest.

They came to the right place. Tulsa was a melting pot of influences, where cowboys and Indians had been joined first by southern farmers, then by Midwesterners and Easterners drawn here by the oil boom. It was the perfect environment for a new style of music to gain a following.

Bob Wills blended frontier fiddle music - the kind he and his dad played at ranch dances in west Texas - with the blues he learned from the African-Americans who were his fellow cotton pickers. He mixed in Dixieland jazz, ragtime, and the smoother swing sounds of the big bands to create a hot and heady brew that became known as western swing.

Wills called his outfit "the most versatile band in America" and for good reason. A typical album included romantic ballads, bluesy laments, old-time fiddle tunes, and swinging big band numbers. At one dance, he might do a song with a fiddle trio taking the lead; the next night, trumpets and saxes would form the front line for the same tune. At any time, Bob might point his bow at any of his musicians and tell them to "take it away" with a fiery improvised chorus.

Even at its bluesiest, western swing is happy music. Take this lyric by Cindy Walker:

As I think of the heart that I've broken
And of the golden chances that have passed me by
And the dreams that I made now are empty,
As empty as the bubbles in my beer.

Pretty depressing, isn't it? But the steady backbeat, the honky-tonk piano, the jazzy fiddle solos, and the tight harmony of electric guitar, mandolin, and steel guitar drain all the self-pity out of the lyric. Your heart may be breaking, but your feet want to dance.

As twenty-something blogger Sarah Dwyer wrote, "Anyone who doesn't want to dance (however badly) while listening to western swing has a heart made of stone."

While his music had rural roots, and you'll find his CDs filed under "country," Wills rejected the country label. His use of horns and drums was considered heretical by the Nashville establishment. Glenn Miller and Louis Armstrong, not the Carter Family, provided inspiration for Wills and his band.

But Bob Wills influenced country, earning him a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

In 1999, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence for their fusion of styles and their groundbreaking use of amplified stringed instruments. Listen to a driving guitar solo, circa 1946, by Eldon Shamblin or Junior Barnard, and you'll hear the roots of rock.

At his peak, Wills's Texas Playboys rivaled the big bands in record sales and dance crowds. In 1940, he had a gold record with "New San Antonio Rose," a song that also was a hit for Bing Crosby. In 1942, Bing and Bob joined forces near the 18th green at Southern Hills to record a special version of the song which was auctioned off for $250,000 in war bonds.

When Bob Wills joined the Army in 1942, he left the KVOO radio show and Cain's Ballroom in the capable hands of his younger brother Johnnie Lee Wills. When Bob got out, not wishing to displace Johnnie Lee, he reestablished his band in southern California.

But Bob never forgot Tulsa. He returned often to perform here. He moved back for a couple of stints, joining forces with Johnnie Lee's band from 1957 to 1959 and returning again from 1961 to 1963. In Fresno, Sacramento, Dallas, and Amarillo, he tried time and again to recreate the stable home base he had enjoyed here, but he never succeeded. Although he lived his final years in Fort Worth, it was his wish to be buried in Tulsa.

So what should Tulsa do to remember Bob Wills?

First of all, there needs to be a place where western swing fans can make contact with history, and thankfully there is. The Rodgers family has done a wonderful job of restoring Cain's Ballroom, Bob's old stomping grounds, into an immensely successful concert venue while maintaining its historic character.

They tell me that nearly every day a Bob Wills fan from out of state or overseas knocks on the door of Cain's, asking for a look around. There are plans to make a self-guided audio tour of Cain's available for visitors. And outside there's already a Walk of Fame honoring Wills, his brothers, and many of their outstanding sidemen.

On April 13, Cain's will be the site of the inaugural gala for the National Fiddler Hall of Fame. Already at their website (www.nfhof.org) they're soliciting memories and artifacts of Bob Wills. I won't be surprised if the man Merle Haggard called "the best damn fiddle player in the world" is one of the first inductees.

(Why Bob Wills and Eldon Shamblin aren't already in the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame is a mystery to me.)

Books are another great way to encounter Bob Wills's life and legacy: Charles R. Townsend wrote the definitive biography, San Antonio Rose. And in 1938, Tulsan Ruth Sheldon wrote a fan's biography called Hubbin' It, which captured the hard times that his music helped to relieve. Both books are in print.

But you need to hear the music.

Western swing is hard to find on the radio, but John Wooley plays an hour's worth of music by Bob Wills and many other bands every Saturday night at 7 on KWGS 89.5.
There's plenty of good material on CD. A new four-disc box set from Sony, Legends of Country Music, spans Wills's entire four-decade career. The Essential Bob Wills, 1935-1947, surveys his recordings for Columbia, and Boot Heel Drag: The MGM Years offers 50 great selections from 1947 to 1954.

If you can only buy a single CD, pick up Tiffany Transcriptions Vol. 2. This disc has the band's biggest hits, as recorded for radio in the mid-1940s. The Tiffany discs (and they're all wonderful) come closest to capturing the uninhibited sound of a Texas Playboys dance.

And a Texas Playboys dance is by far the best way to experience western swing music.

Although Bob is long gone, Bob Wills's Texas Playboys swing on, under the leadership of vocalist Leon Rausch and guitarist Tommy Allsup. They'll be headlining the annual Bob Wills Birthday Celebration this Friday and Saturday night, March 2-3, at Cain's.

Rausch and Allsup each played for both Bob and Johnnie Lee Wills in the '50s and '60s. Rausch was lead vocalist on Wills's final album, For the Last Time, and fronted the Original Texas Playboys band that toured for 10 years after Wills's death. Allsup produced For the Last Time and several other Wills albums. Rock fans will know him as a guitarist for Buddy Holly in '58 and '59.

There bringing a 12-piece band with them for a fat, full, swinging sound: Steel guitarist Bobby Koefer, fiddlers Curly Lewis, Bob Boatright, and Jimmy Young, Curly Hollingsworth on piano, Ronnie Ellis on bass, Tony Ramsey on drums, Mike Bennett on trumpet, and Steve Ham on trombone. Koefer, in particular, is a joy to watch, with his boundless energy and enthusiasm and one-of-a-kind style.

Rausch says that "these boys are the very best western swing musicians in the business," and I'll vouch for that. You can tell the difference between competent players who reproduce great improvisations from the past, and those who really are creating in the moment. Their playing at last year's celebration was inspired, drawing energy from the music, from the audience, and from each other.

The Round-Up Boys, a local band, open for the Playboys on both nights. Eddie McAlvain and the Mavericks from Wichita Falls will perform Friday, and Bobby Flores Band from Blanco, Tex., will perform Saturday.

So grab your partner and truck on down to 423 N. Main. Let's celebrate Bob's 102nd birthday with a two-step around Cain's spring-loaded curly maple dance floor.

Because I'm tired and burned out on serious stuff (the Republican County Convention was today), here's a bebop version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Bobby Troup, performed by legendary steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe (singing, not steeling, in this one) and his band. Take it away, Leon....

The baby bear's part cracks me up.

"Hey-bob-a-re-bear,"
said the little wee bear,
"there's the chick that busted my chair!"

In case you missed it, here is Carrie Underwood performing "San Antonio Rose" with Johnny Gimble, Ray Benson, Dick Gimble, introduced by Reba McEntire.

One of the YouTube commenters wrote, "If country music was regularly performed this well, I would listen to country music. That was awesome."

I've been reading San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills, Charles R. Townsend's definitive biography. At the back of the book is what looks to be a comprehensive discography -- every studio recording Bob Wills ever made, including a couple he cut in 1929 with Herman Arnspiger on guitar (the duo billed as the Wills Fiddle Band), a couple more in 1932 with the Light Crust Doughboys, and his post-Texas Playboys work in the late '60s on Kapp Records.

The final entry is, of course, For the Last Time, the double reunion album recorded in Dallas in December 1973. But right before that was a tantalizing entry about a September 1971 recording session for Capitol Records at Merle Haggard's home in Bakersfield, Calif. Twenty tracks were recorded, but never issued. It was an all-star lineup: Eldon Shamblin, Tiny Moore, Leon McAuliffe, Joe Holley, Johnnie Lee Wills, Luke Wills, Al Stricklin, Johnny Gimble, Alex Brashear, Smokey Dacus, and Glynn Duncan, there in place of his late brother Tommy Duncan. Merle Haggard played fiddle, and he sang "Misery." Bob Wills couldn't play the fiddle -- a stroke had left his bow hand paralyzed -- but he could still lead the band.

So where is this missing album?

It finally has been released, but it's not an easy thing to come by. It's only available as Disc 13 of Faded Love, Bear Family Records' massive 13 CD + 1 DVD box set, a comprehensive collection of Bob Wills recordings from 1947 to 1973. The price of the set is a mere $360. (1932-1947 are covered by San Antonio Rose, an 11 disc + 1 DVD box set that sells for $316.49 on Amazon.)

It would be exciting to hear more tracks from this great ensemble captured with modern recording techniques.

I learned about this on the website of an Australian record store. The same page quotes Bob Pinson, the definitive discographer of Bob Wills, as saying that Bear Family was likely to issue a box set of all the Tiffany Transcriptions, not just the 10 albums' worth of material that were released by Kaleidoscope on LP and by Rhino on CD. (And several of the CDs are now out of production.)

The Tiffany material isn't included in either of the two Bear Family box sets that have been released, as it was recorded for distribution to radio stations, not for commercial sale. I can't get enough of the Tiffany sound -- the freer feel to the music, the unique take on pop standards, Junior Barnard's amazing guitar solos, and the jazzy trios of Tiny Moore on mandolin, Eldon Shamblin on standard guitar, and Herb Remington on steel guitar. I'd love to hear even more. One estimate says the complete Tiffany Transcriptions, including tracks that were never released to radio stations, would fill 18-20 CDs.

(This review of Merle Haggard's A Tribute To The Best Damn Fiddle Player In The World mentions the 1971 Bakersfield session in passing.)

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned listening to a Johnnie Lee Wills transcription and hearing the announcer call out "Coyote Blues," by Lewis Meyer, best known to Tulsans for his bookstore and weekly book review show on TV.

Tomorrow night (Saturday), John Wooley will be playing two versions of "Coyote Blues" on Swing on This, his weekly hour of western swing, at 7 p.m. on KWGS 89.5 (and streaming on kwgs.com), and he's been kind enough to dedicate them to me and to Mike Ransom, webmaster of Tulsa TV Memories. Here's John's planned playlist, from his website:

1. “Texas Drummer Boy,” Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys
2. “Coyote Blues,” Dave Stuckey and the Rhythm Gang
(for MICHAEL BATES)
3. “Coyote Blues,” Johnnie Lee Wills and All the Boys
(for MIKE RANSOM)
4. “Land of Dreams,” Herb Remington
5. “Don’t Be Ashamed of Your Age,” Johnny Gimble and the Texas Swing Pioneers
6. “Maiden’s Prayer,” Asleep at the Wheel w/Squirrel Nut Zippers
7. “I Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None O’ This Jelly Roll,” Cliff Bruner’s Texas Wanderers
8. “In the Jailhouse Now,” Hank Thompson
9. “Let’s Ride with Bob,” Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys
10. “Am I Blue,” Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies
11. “Back Home Again in Indiana,” Nashville Swing Band
12. “My Window Faces the South,” Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
(for CONNIE and CLYDE MASON)
13. “Sweet Georgia Brown,” Billy Jack Wills and His Western Swing Band
14. “Mean Woman with Green Eyes,” Tom Morrell and His Time-Warp Tophands
15. “I Had Someone Else Before I Had You,” “Easy” Adams and His Texas Top Hands
16. “Oklahoma Hills,” Jack Guthrie

Should be a great