Western Swing: February 2009 Archives

... and the world is silhouetted 'gainst the sky....

Bet you can't listen to that without harmonizing.

("Blue Shadows on the Trail," by Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers.)

My kids listen to CDs at night, usually one CD on infinite repeat, and over and over again for several weeks. Over the Christmas holidays they listened to piano instrumental versions of carols. I introduced them to the soundtrack of A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. We tried Mark Knopfler's soundtrack for Local Hero, but there were a couple of loud songs that interrupted the flow of quieter pieces.

The three-year-old really wanted to listen to a Bob Wills CD, but it was too bouncy in places and tended to make it hard for the kids to get to sleep and stay asleep. So I put together a mix CD of slow, restful western tunes:

1. Goodnight, Little Sweetheart, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
2. Little Cowboy Lullaby, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
3. Texas Sandman, Johnnie Lee Wills & His Boys
4. Just Friends, Hot Club of Cowtown
5. Dedicated to You, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
6. Medley: La Golondrina, Lady of Spain, Cielito Lindo, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
7. No Wonder, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
8. Along the Navajo Trail, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
9. Prairie Lullaby, Sons of the Pioneers
10. Wagon Wheels, Sons of the Pioneers
11. Lonely Yukon Stars, Riders in the Sky
12. My Oklahoma, Riders in the Sky
13. Tumbling Tumbleweeds, Riders in the Sky
14. Don't Fence Me In, Riders in the Sky
15. Streets of Laredo, Riders in the Sky
16. Red River Valley, Riders in the Sky
17. Sleepwalk, Santo and Johnny
18. Moonlight Serenade, Santo and Johnny
19. Song of the Islands, Santo and Johnny
20. Tear Drop, Santo and Johnny
21. Harbor Lights, Santo and Johnny
22. Tenderly, Santo and Johnny
23. Everlasting Hills of Oklahoma, Sons of the Pioneers
24. Goin' Home, Leon McAuliffe and His Cimarron Boys (adapted from the Largo movement of Antonin Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, "From the New World")

I notice that of the Texas Playboys tunes, I tended to choose the sentimental numbers that Bob Wills sang himself. The opening number of the disc is the number that was (and still is) used to close Texas Playboys dances. It opens with some sultry chords by Leon McAuliffe. I made my little girl chuckle last night: After I kissed her goodnight, I said, "Take it away, Leon," then hit the play button.

Two of the songs are songs my mother sang to me at bedtime: "Don't Fence Me In," and "Cielito Lindo" -- we knew it as the Ay-ay-ay-ay song.

One song I didn't have, but wished I did, was "Blue Shadows on the Trail" by Sons of the Pioneers. It's on a Disney Lullabyes videotape, from the movie Pecos Bill. Others I might have included but didn't: "Yearning (Just for You)," "Happy Trails," "In the Arms of My Love."

To explain the inclusion of a couple of New York musicians in a western collection, I'll repeat an anecdote from an earlier entry:

This little detail from the Wikipedia bio of the Farina brothers, Santo and Johnny, made me smile:

When they were very young, their dad was drafted into the Army and stationed in Oklahoma. There (on the radio) he heard this beautiful music. It was the sound of the steel guitar and he wrote home to his wife and said "I'd like the boys to learn to play this instrument."

I like to think Mr. Farina was listening to this guy over KVOO -- from "Steel Guitar Rag" to "Sleepwalk" in one generation.

Specifically, I like to think that Mr. Farina heard Leon McAuliffe playing those opening chords on "Goodnight, Little Sweetheart."

UPDATE 2013/05/24: Added the above graphic, the cover of the sheet music for "Little Cowboy Lullaby" by Bob Wills and Cindy Walker, from the lyrics and sheet music page at BobWills.com. Thanks to the kindness of retired blogpal See-Dubya, I was able to add "Blue Shadows" to a second edition of the CD, to which I added Tommy Duncan's "High Country."

Noel Murray at A.V. Club has reviewed the new Collectors Choice box set of the Tiffany Transcriptions, a selection of recordings made by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys in the mid '40s. It's a great review, with good descriptions of the music and the history behind it, enhanced by a selection of songs: "Texas Playboys Opening Theme," "Fat Boy Rag," "St. Louis Blues (Part 2)," "Frankie Jean," "Ida Red."

Murray captures the distinction between the Texas Playboys' commercial releases on Columbia and MGM on 78 RPM, and these transcriptions, pressed on larger discs for distribution to radio stations:

I've always liked the Wills' 78s I've heard; they're bright, catchy and good-spirited. But the music on The Tiffany Transcriptions has an edge to it, born of the circumstances under which the shows were recorded. As the surviving bandmembers recall, the Tiffany sets were scheduled for the end of the tour, when everyone was anxious to finish up their business and get home to their families. After months on the road, they all knew the songs backward and forward, so they banged out each song in one take, and with added urgency....

On their 78s, Wills and company sound energetic but confined: a group of professional music-makers. On The Tiffany Transcriptions, they sound like human beings: scruffy, sweaty, disheveled and irritable. It's a side of everyday existence that mainstream show business largely tried to screen out in the '40s, but listening to The Tiffany Transcriptions is a way of conjuring up the past the way it actually was. It's like digging beneath a stack of Hollywood fan magazines and finding a cache of family photos.

Murray cautions against O.D.ing on ahhh-hahhhhs:

The best way to tackle The Tiffany Transcriptions is to spend time with each disc individually, admiring the eclectic mix of originals with covers, and of instrumentals with songs that take advantage of smooth-dude lead vocalist Tommy Duncan. Even better: narrow your Playboys appreciation down to one song at a time, until you can hear each individual fiddle and horn and guitar, and imagine what it must've been like to be in a dance hall with so many musicians playing in unison on stage. The beauty of Bob Wills' music was in its vastness, both in terms of sound and subject. Well before the bastard American music form known as rock 'n' roll had a name or a following, The Texas Playboys were stealing liberally from pop, jazz, R&B and country music, taking primarily the parts that made people move.

A comment from an A.V. Club reader is worth requoting:

If hipsters start listening to western swing instead of Weezer, the world will be a much better place.

MORE: Here's the number one Google result for "Tiffany Transcriptions". <grin>

STILL MORE: Here's a video from just before the Tiffany period -- Ida Red -- Bob Wills and Joe Holley on fiddle, Noel Boggs on steel, Cameron Hill and Jimmy Wyble on standard guitar, Millard Kelso on accordion, and Tommy Duncan on vocals. The trumpeter sounds like Alex Brashear, but I thought he had a mustache. Didn't recognize the bass player.

ONE MORE: This sweet YouTube video combines "Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer)" (from For the Last Time) with photos of house dances from the 1930s (in Pie Town, New Mexico, according to a commenter), when they'd roll up the rug, push back the chairs, and stay all night dancing to music played by the fiddler and the rhythm guitarist in the corner.

UPDATED 2025/02/08 to fix an outdated YouTube embed for "Ida Red." Sadly, the Stay All Night video isn't online any more.