Western Swing: July 2008 Archives
tomhull.com: Old-Time Country / Cowboy / Western Swing
A summary of grades assigned to albums, but without the bullet reviews. Interesting collection includes a lot of western swing and other forms of hot hillbilly music. And here's a broader list which includes outside recommendations.
tomhull.com: January 2002 Notebook
The top entry on this page has two-sentence reviews of about 50 albums, including most of Bob Wills's Tiffany Transcriptions, For the Last Time, and the Longhorn Recordings; the two Billy Jack Wills compilations; Tommy Duncan's solo work; Adolph Hofner; Merle Travis; Jimmie Rogers (the Singing Brakeman); Jimmie Rivers (Brisbane Bop); and old-time fiddler Eck Robertson. This guy doesn't care for obscuring the music patter and chatter -- the sort you find on the Longhorn Recordings and on old radio transcriptions. I find the snippets of talk colorful and fascinating.
Tommy Allsup MyBestYears.com INTERVIEW SPOTLIGHT
The legendary western swing & rock-n-roll guitarist looks back over 60 years in music: the Oklahoma Swingbillies, Johnnie Lee Wills, Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings, the Winter Dance Party Tour and the fateful coin-flip with Ritchie Valens, producing Bob Wills, session work for Kenny Rogers, George Jones, and the Everly Brothers, and leading the ongoing Texas Playboys band.
Pretty Goes with Pretty: My Listening Month: Favorite Downloads of July
"My favorite thing about this song ['That's What I Like about the South,' from For the Last Time] is the fact that there is a hype man on a country tune. Did Flava Flav and Chuck D steal their schtick from Bob Wills?" Yes, but Bob stole it from the medicine shows. (More about "this song" on Dustbury.) (And this is not the first time I've seen Flava Flav compared to Bob Wills.)
Hello Vegetables: Afraid And Shy, I Let My Chance Go By
"This mighty titan of a country song was written by two people who have passed on in the last couple years -- Cindy Walker (who also wrote 'Sugar Moon' with Bob Wills) and Eddy Arnold. Arnold and Jerry Vale both charted with it in 1956, but when Ray Charles covered it in 1962, people wept and threw money at their local record-store clerk."
A brief video explanation of fiddle tabulature -- an alternative notation that shows you which string and finger to use, rather than which note.
Library of Congress: Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection
"Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection presents digital audio files for 184 tunes, 19 pages of searchable fieldnote documentation, and 69 tune-transcription images, all pertaining to West Virginia-born fiddler Henry Reed (1884-1968) and recorded and documented by Alan Jabbour in Glen Lyn, Virginia, in 1966-67."
Seattle Western Swing Music Society: The Roots of Western Swing
"The only sounds that crept in from the outside were from the radio networks and the powerful stations beaming their signals down from Chicago or up from New Orleans. These stations featured the pulsating sounds of jazz: Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, and Jack Teagarden were three of the favorites. This being the only outside influence on Western Swing, Southwestern musicians drew from their own cultures for material and soon, the rich mixture of Blues, Ragtime, Dixieland, Cajun, Mexican, German, Anglo-American, and Cowboy Traditions began to churn and blend. The result was a brand of music that was so all-encompassing, so pervasive throughout the area, that there was no need to distinguish it from any other kind of music. It all became one. The repertoires varied from city to city, but basically? it was the same sound. And when there is only one choice, there is no need for a label to distinguish it from another genre. It was simply music to dance to."
"A Descriptive Index of North American and British Isles Music for the Folk Violin and Other Instruments": An encyclopedia of fiddle tunes and fiddling terms.
