75-521: James Robert Wills (March 6, 1905 – May 13, 1975) was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the founder of Western swing, he was known widely as the King of Western Swing (although Spade Cooley self-promoted the moniker "King of Western Swing" from 1942 to 1969). He was also noted for punctuating his music with his trademark "ah-haa" calls. Wills formed several bands and played radio stations around
150-521: A 1949 interview: "Here's the way I figure it. We sure not tryin' to take credit for swingin' it." Still a binge drinker, Wills became increasingly unreliable in the late 1940s, causing a rift with Tommy Duncan (who bore the brunt of audience anger when Wills's binges prevented him from appearing). It ended when he fired Duncan in the fall of 1948. Having lived a lavish lifestyle in California, Wills moved back to Oklahoma City in 1949, then went back on
225-521: A 1973 reunion album, teaming Wills, who spoke with difficulty, with key members of the early band, as well as Haggard. Wills died in Fort Worth of pneumonia on May 13, 1975. Bob Wills was married six times and divorced five times. He was twice married to, and twice divorced from, Mary Helen Brown, the widow of Wills' ex-band member Milton Brown. Wills' style influenced performers Buck Owens , Merle Haggard , and The Strangers and helped to spawn
300-714: A Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys show recorded at the Fairmont Hotel . Many of these recordings survive today as the Tiffany Transcriptions and are available on CD. They show off the band's strengths significantly, in part because the group was not confined to the three-minute limits of 78 RPM discs. On April 3, 1948, Wills and the Texas Playboys appeared for the inaugural broadcast of the Louisiana Hayride on KWKH , broadcasting from
375-399: A barber at Ham's Barber Shop. He alternated barbering and fiddling even when he moved to Fort Worth, Texas, after leaving Hall County in 1929. There he played in minstrel and medicine shows , and, as with other Texas musicians such as Ocie Stockard, continued to earn money as a barber. He wore blackface makeup to appear in comedy routines, something that was common at the time. Wills played
450-677: A country music dance venue that was popular until the 1950s. Bands like Brown and His Musical Brownies played there, interspersing waltzes and ballads with faster songs. A documented instance of a Western swing group adopting the newer, by then mainstream 4 meter swing jazz style, replacing the 4 style, was when producer Art Satherley required it at a September 1936 Light Crust Doughboy recording session. 1938 session rosters for Wills recordings show both lead guitar and electric guitar in addition to guitar and steel guitar. The "front line" of Wills' orchestra consisted of either fiddles or guitars after 1944. Wills recalled
525-659: A documentary film about his life and music, titled Fiddlin' Man: The Life and Music of Bob Wills , was released by VIEW Inc. In 2011, Proper Records released an album by Hot Club of Cowtown titled What Makes Bob Holler: A Tribute to Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and the Texas Legislature adopted a resolution designating western swing as the official State Music of Texas. The Greenville Chamber of Commerce hosts an annual Bob Wills Fiddle Festival and Contest in downtown Greenville, Texas , in November. Bob Wills
600-610: A forgotten figure—even though inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968. A 1969 stroke left his right side paralyzed, ending his active career. He did, however, recover sufficiently to appear in a wheelchair at various Wills tributes held in the early 1970s. A revival of interest in his music, spurred by Merle Haggard 's 1970 album A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World , led to
675-716: A good deal of pop music. Wills continued to appear at the Bostonia Ballroom in San Diego throughout the 1950s. He continued to tour and record through the 1950s into the early 1960s despite the fact that Western Swing's popularity, even in the Southwest, had greatly diminished. Charles R. Townsend described his drop in popularity: Bob could draw "a thousand people on Monday night between 1950 and 1952, but he could not do that by 1956. Entertainment habits had changed." On Wills' return to Tulsa late in 1957, Jim Downing of
750-523: A horn section that expanded the band's sound. Wills favored jazz-like arrangements and the band found national popularity into the 1940s with such hits as " Steel Guitar Rag ", " San Antonio Rose ", " Smoke on the Water ", " Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima ", and " New Spanish Two Step ". Wills and the Texas Playboys recorded with several publishers and companies, including Vocalion , Okeh , Columbia , and MGM . In 1950, Wills had two top 10 hits, "Ida Red likes
825-481: A lot of different names in my time. It's the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. The rhythm's what's important." The use of amplified guitars accentuates Wills's claim; some Bob Wills recordings from the 1930s and 1940s sound similar to rock and roll records of the 1950s. Even a 1958 return to KVOO, where his younger brother Johnnie Lee Wills had maintained
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#1732794476580900-535: A strong backbeat, expanded instrumentation, a heavy backbeat superimposed over a polka or waltz beat, and jazz/blues solo styles. In 2011, the Texas Legislature adopted a resolution designating western swing as the official "State Music of Texas" . Roy, New Mexico Roy is a village in Harding County , New Mexico , United States. The population was 192 in the 2020 census . Roy
975-540: A style of music now known as the Bakersfield Sound . (Bakersfield, California, was one of Wills' regular stops in his heyday). A 1970 tribute album by Haggard, A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World (or, My Salute to Bob Wills) directed a wider audience to Wills's music, as did the appearance of younger "revival" bands like Asleep at the Wheel and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen plus
1050-557: A trumpet. Wills's then-drummer was Monte Mountjoy, who played in the Dixieland style. Wills battled Opry officials and refused to perform without his drummer. An attempt to compromise by keeping Mountjoy behind a curtain collapsed when Wills had his drums placed front and center onstage at the last minute. In 1945, Wills' dances were drawing larger crowds than dances put on by Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. That year, he lived in both Santa Monica and Fresno, California. In 1947, he opened
1125-619: Is nothing more than a group of talented country boys, unschooled in music, but playing the music they feel, beating a solid two-four rhythm to the harmonies that buzz around their brains. When it escapes in all its musical glory, my friend, you have Western swing." Western swing began in the dance halls of small towns throughout the lower Great Plains in the late 1920s and early 1930s, growing from house parties and ranch dances where fiddlers and guitarists played for dancers. During its early development, scores of groups from San Antonio to Shreveport to Oklahoma City played different songs with
1200-530: The Grand Ole Opry on December 30, 1944. According to Opry policy, drums and horns were considered pop instruments, inappropriate to country music. The Opry had two western swing bands on its roster, led by Pee Wee King and Paul Howard . Neither were allowed to use their drummers at the Opry. Wills' band at the time consisted of two fiddlers, two bass fiddles, two electric guitars, electric steel guitar, and
1275-763: The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category along with the Texas Playboys in 1999, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007. From 1974 until his 2002 death, Waylon Jennings performed a song he had written called " Bob Wills Is Still the King ". Released as the B-side of a single that was a double-sided hit, it went to number one on
1350-486: The Tulsa Tribune wrote an article headlined "Wills Brothers Together Again: Bob Back with Heavy Beat". The article quotes Wills as saying "Rock and roll? Why, man, that's the same kind of music we've been playin' since 1928! ... We didn't call it rock and roll back when we introduced it as our style back in 1928, and we don't call it rock and roll the way we play it now. But it's just basic rhythm and has gone by
1425-602: The steel guitar , gave the music its distinctive sound. As early as 1934 or 1935 Bob Dunn electrified a Martin O-series acoustic guitar while playing with Milton Brown's Brownies, an idea he may have picked up from a Black guitarist he met while working at Coney Island in New York. By the mid-1930s, Fort Worth was a hub for Western swing, particularly at the Crystal Springs Dance Pavilion,
1500-420: The 1928 version of the song. He described his love of Bessie Smith's music with an anecdote: "I rode horseback from the place between the rivers to Childress to see Bessie Smith... She was about the greatest thing I had ever heard. In fact, there was no doubt about it. She was the greatest thing I ever heard." In Fort Worth, Wills met Herman Arnspiger and formed The Wills Fiddle Band. In 1930 Milton Brown joined
1575-450: The 1930s and 1940s until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre's decline. The movement was an outgrowth of jazz . The music is an amalgamation of rural , cowboy , polka , old-time , Dixieland jazz , and blues blended with swing ; and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar . The electrically amplified stringed instruments, especially
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#17327944765801650-563: The 1940s, the Light Crust Doughboys' shows were featured on 170 radio stations in the region. From 1934 to 1943, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys played nightly at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa. 50,000-watt radio station KVOO broadcast daily programs. Regular shows continued until 1958 with Johnnie Lee Wills as the bandleader. Phillips developed a circuit of dance halls and bands to play for them. Among these halls in 1942 were
1725-777: The Army in 1943, Wills moved to Hollywood and began to reorganize the Texas Playboys. He became an enormous draw in Los Angeles, where many of his fans had relocated during the Great Depression and World War II in search of jobs. Monday through Friday, the band played the noon hour timeslot over KMTR-AM (now KLAC) in Los Angeles. They also played regularly at the Mission Beach Ballroom in San Diego. He commanded enormous fees playing dances there, and began to make more creative use of electric guitars to replace
1800-548: The Boogie" and " Faded Love ", which were his last hits for a decade. Throughout the 1950s, he struggled with poor health and tenuous finances. He continued to perform frequently despite a decline in the popularity of his earlier hit songs, and the growing popularity of rock and roll. Wills had a heart attack in 1962, and a second one the next year, which forced him to disband the Texas Playboys. Wills continued to perform solo. The Country Music Hall of Fame inducted Wills in 1968 and
1875-469: The Boogie" and " Faded Love ". After 1950, radio stations began to increasingly specialize in one form or another of commercially popular music. Although usually labelled "country and western", Wills did not fit into the style played on popular country and western stations, which typically played music in the Nashville sound . Neither did he fit into the conventional sound of pop stations, although he played
1950-594: The Breakfast Club." On June 10, 1944, the same magazine wrote: "...what with the trend to Western music in this section, Cooley's Western swing band is a natural." A more widely-known "first use" was an October 1944 Billboard item mentioning a forthcoming songbook by Cooley titled Western Swing . After that, the style became known as Western swing. Western swing influenced honky-tonk, rockabilly, and country rock music, popularizing electrically amplified instruments in country music, along with drums reinforcing
2025-660: The Jefferson Hotel in Dallas, Texas under the name The Fort Worth Doughboys. Derwood Brown played guitar and Johnson played tenor guitar. Both "Sunbonnet Sue" and "Nancy Jane" were recorded that day. The group was credited as "Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies". When Brown left the Doughboys later in 1932, he took his brother to play rhythm guitar in what became The Musical Brownies. In January 1933, fiddler Cecil Brower , playing harmony, joined Jesse Ashlock to create
2100-673: The Lindy Hop with a few Western twirls added for good measure. By 1937 the jitterbug hit big in the West and allowed much greater freedom of movement. But the jitterbug was different in the West. It wasn't all out boogie woogie; it was 'swingier'—more smooth and subdued." In 1944, with the United States' continuing involvement in World War II , a 30% federal excise tax was levied against night clubs that featured dancing. Although
2175-581: The Los Angeles Country Barn Dance at the Venice Pier for three nights shortly before he broke up his band to join the U.S. Army during World War II, the attendance was above 15,000. Fearing the dance floor would collapse, police stopped ticket sales at 11 p.m. The line outside at that time was ten deep and stretched into Venice. Another source states Wills attracted 8,600 fans. In 1950, Hank Penny and Armand Gautier opened
2250-1059: The Los Angeles County Barn Dance at the Venice Pier Ballroom, the Town Hall Ballroom in Compton, the Plantation in Culver City, the Baldwin Park Ballroom, and the Riverside Rancho. These Western dances were a huge success. One group which played at the Venice Pier Ballroom was led by Jimmy Wakely with Spade Cooley, his successor as bandleader, on fiddle. Several thousand dancers would turn out on Saturday nights. When Bob Wills played
2325-632: The Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana. Wills and the Texas Playboys played dances throughout the West to more than 10,000 people every week. They held dance attendance records at Jantzen Beach in Portland, Oregon ; Santa Monica, California; Klamath Falls, Oregon ; and at California's Oakland Auditorium, where they drew 19,000 people over two nights. Wills recalled the early days of what became known as Western swing music in
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2400-513: The New Orleans symphony and had directed the governor's band in Austin. Stover, thinking he had been hired as a trumpeter, began playing with the band, and Wills never stopped him. Although Wills initially disapproved of it, young saxophonist Zeb McNally was eventually hired. Wills hired the young, "modern-style musician" Smoky Dacus as a drummer to balance out the horns. He continued to expand
2475-599: The Northwest Mounted (1943), Saddles and Sagebrush (1943), The Vigilantes Ride (1943), The Last Horseman (1944), Rhythm Round-Up (1945), Blazing the Western Trail (1945), and Lawless Empire (1945). In December 1942, after several band members had left the group, and as World War II raged, Wills joined the Army at the age of 37, but received a medical discharge in 1943. After leaving
2550-800: The Palomino in North Hollywood, which became a major venue for country fans in Hollywood. "Western jazz" brought it its initial popularity. Western swing bandleader Hank Thompson , who was stationed in San Pedro during World War II, said it was not uncommon to see "ten thousand people at the pier" at Redondo Beach. Fred "Poppa" Calhoun, piano player for Milton Brown, vividly remembered how people in Texas and Oklahoma danced when Bob Wills played. "They were pretty simple couples dances, two steps and
2625-583: The Playboys: "I dig them. The Grand Ole Opry used to come on, and I used to watch that. They used to have some pretty heavy cats, some heavy guitar players." In fact, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys only performed on the Opry twice: in 1944 and 1948. Hendrix almost surely referred to Nashville guitarists. Wills ranked #27 in CMT's 40 Greatest Men in Country Music in 2003. Wills' upbeat 1938 song Ida Red
2700-635: The Santa Monica Ballroom, grossing $ 220,000. In 1955, Decca Records, in what Billboard called "an ambitious project", issued seven albums of "country dance music" featuring "swingy arrangements of your customers 'c&w' dance favorites". Milton Brown and His Brownies, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, Spade Cooley and His Buckle-Busters, Adolph Hofner and His San Antonians, Tex Williams and His String Band, Grady Martin and His Winging Strings, and Billy Gray and His Western Okies all had their own albums. In November, Billboard reported Decca
2775-468: The Seventies (1981), Robert Christgau wrote: "This double-LP doesn't represent the band at its peak. But though earlier recordings of most of these classic tunes are at least marginally sharper, it certainly captures the relaxed, playful, eclectic Western swing groove that Wills invited in the '30s." In addition to being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968, Wills was inducted into
2850-551: The South and West until he formed the Texas Playboys in 1934 with Wills on fiddle, Tommy Duncan on piano and vocals, rhythm guitarist June Whalin, tenor banjoist Johnnie Lee Wills, and Kermit Whalin who played steel guitar and bass. Oklahoma guitar player Eldon Shamblin joined the band in 1937 bringing jazzy influence and arrangements. The band played regularly on Tulsa, Oklahoma, radio station KVOO and added Leon McAuliffe on steel guitar, pianist Al Stricklin, drummer Smokey Dacus, and
2925-701: The Texas Playboys in 1999. He was born on a cotton farm in Kosse, Texas , to Emma Lee Foley and John Tompkins Wills. His parents were both of primarily English ancestry but had distant Irish ancestry as well. The entire Wills family was musically inclined. His father was a statewide champion fiddle player, and several of his siblings played musical instruments. The family frequently held country dances in their home, and while living in Hall County, Texas , they also played at "ranch dances", which were popular throughout west Texas. In this environment, Wills learned to play
3000-684: The Texas State Legislature honored him for his contribution to American music. In 1972, Wills accepted a citation from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in Nashville. He recorded an album with fan Merle Haggard in 1973. Wills suffered two strokes that left him partially paralyzed, and unable to communicate. He was comatose the last two months of his life, and died in a Fort Worth nursing home in 1975. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Wills and
3075-513: The Wheel have honored Wills' music since the band's inception, mostly notably with their continuing performances of the musical drama A Ride with Bob , which debuted in Austin in March 2005 to coincide with celebrations of Wills' 100th birthday. The Bob Wills Birthday Celebration is held every year in March at the Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with a Western swing concert and dance. In 2004,
Bob Wills - Misplaced Pages Continue
3150-693: The Wills Point nightclub in Sacramento, California, and continued touring the Southwest and Pacific Northwest from Texas to Washington State. In Sacramento , he broadcast shows over KFBK , a station whose reach encompassed much of the American West. Wills was in such high demand that venues would book him even on weeknights, because they knew the show would still be a draw. During the postwar period, KGO radio in San Francisco syndicated
3225-424: The age of 18 living with them, 45.3% were married couples living together, 10.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 41.3% were non-families. 38.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 24.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.03 and the average family size was 2.67. In the village, the population was spread out, with 17.8% under
3300-463: The age of 18, 5.3% from 18 to 24, 15.1% from 25 to 44, 27.3% from 45 to 64, and 34.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 52 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 98.4 males. The median income for a household in the village was $ 21,111, and the median income for a family was $ 41,667. Males had a median income of $ 31,250 versus $ 20,179 for females. The per capita income for
3375-527: The album to be titled For the Last Time . Wills, speaking or attempting to holler, appeared on a couple tracks from the first day's session but suffered a stroke overnight. He had a more severe one a few days later. The musicians completed the album without him. Wills by then was comatose. He lingered until his death on May 13, 1975. Reviewing For the Last Time in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of
3450-492: The bandstand, a tendency he picked up from family, local cowboys, and the style of Black musicians he had heard growing up. While in Fort Worth, Wills added the "rowdy city blues" of Bessie Smith and Emmett Miller , whom he idolized, to a repertoire of mainly waltzes and breakdowns he had learned from his father, and patterned his vocal style after that of Miller and other performers such as Al Bernard . His 1935 version of " St. Louis Blues " replicates Al Bernard 's patter from
3525-735: The big horn sections the Tulsa band had boasted. For a very brief period in 1944, the Wills band included 23 members, and around mid-year he toured Northern California and the Pacific Northwest with 21 pieces in the orchestra. Billboard reported that Wills out-grossed Harry James , Benny Goodman , " both Dorsey brothers bands , et al." at Civic Auditorium in Oakland, California, in January 1944. Wills and His Texas Playboys began their first cross-country tour in November 1944, and appeared at
3600-399: The country charts. The song has become a staple of classic country radio station formats. In addition, The Rolling Stones performed this song live in Austin, Texas, at Zilker Park on their A Bigger Bang Tour , a shout-out to Wills. This performance was included on their subsequent DVD The Biggest Bang . In a 1968 issue of Guitar Player , rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix said of Wills and
3675-492: The early days of Western swing music in a 1949 interview. Speaking of Milton Brown and himself—working with popular songs done by Jimmie Davis , the Skillet Lickers , Jimmie Rodgers , songs he had learned from his father and others—Wills said, "We'd...pull these tunes down an set 'em in a dance category. ...They wouldn't be a runaway...and just lay a real beat behind it an' the people would began to really like it. ...It
3750-525: The family's presence, did not produce the success he hoped. He appeared twice on ABC-TV's Jubilee USA and kept the band on the road into the 1960s. After two heart attacks, in 1965 he dissolved the Texas Playboys (who briefly continued as an independent unit) to perform solo with house bands. While he did well in Las Vegas and other areas, and made records for the Kapp Records label, he was largely
3825-422: The fiddle and the mandolin early. Wills not only learned traditional music from his family, but he also learned some blues songs directly from African American families who worked in the cotton fields near Lakeview, Texas . As a child, he mainly interacted with African American children, learning their musical styles and dances such as jigs. Aside from his own family, he knew few other white children until he
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#17327944765803900-735: The first example of harmonizing twin fiddles in a western swing recording. Brower, a classically trained violinist, was the first to master Joe Venuti 's double shuffle and his improvisational style was a major contribution to the genre. In late 1933, Wills organized the Texas Playboys in Waco, Texas . Recording rosters show that beginning in September 1935, Wills utilized two fiddles, two guitars, and Leon McAuliffe playing steel guitar, banjo, drums and other instruments during recording sessions. The amplified stringed instruments, especially
3975-414: The group as lead vocalist and brought a sense of innovation and experimentation to the band, which became known as the Aladdin Laddies and then soon renamed itself the Light Crust Doughboys because of radio sponsorship by the makers of Light Crust Flour. Brown left the band in 1932 to form the Musical Brownies, the first true Western swing band. Brown added twin fiddles, tenor banjo and slap bass, pointing
4050-413: The growing popularity of longtime Wills disciple and fan Willie Nelson . By 1971, Wills recovered sufficiently to travel occasionally and appear at tribute concerts. In 1973, he participated in a final reunion session with members of some of the Texas Playboys from the 1930s to the 1960s. Merle Haggard was invited to play at this reunion. The session, scheduled for two days, took place in December 1973, with
4125-554: The lineup through the mid to late 1930s. The addition of steel guitar whiz Leon McAuliffe in March 1935 added not only a formidable instrumentalist, but also a second engaging vocalist. Wills and the Texas Playboys did their first recordings on September 23–25, 1935, in Dallas. Session rosters from 1938 show both lead guitar and electric guitar in addition to guitar and steel guitar in the Texas Playboys recordings. About this time, Wills purchased and performed with an antique Guadagnini violin. The instrument, worth an estimated $ 7,600 at
4200-449: The most votes, besting favorites Benny Goodman and Harry James , Jarvis declared Cooley to be the King of Western Swing. Around 1942, Cooley's promoter, disc jockey "Foreman" Phillips , began using "Western swing" to advertise his client. By 1944, the term had become solidified. On May 6, 1944, Billboard magazine contained the following: "Spade Cooley, who moved in with his Western swing boys several months ago, has released
4275-425: The music in the direction of swing, which they played on local radio and at dancehalls. After forming a new band, The Playboys, and relocating to Waco, Texas, Wills found enough popularity there to decide on a bigger market. They left Waco in January 1934 for Oklahoma City. Wills soon settled the renamed Texas Playboys in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and began broadcasting noon shows over the 50,000-watt KVOO radio station, from
4350-411: The road to maintain his payroll and Wills Point. He opened a second club, the Bob Wills Ranch House in Dallas, Texas. Turning the club over to managers, later revealed to be dishonest, left Wills in desperate financial straits with heavy debts to the IRS for back taxes. This caused him to sell many assets, including the rights to "New San Antonio Rose". In 1950, Wills had two top 10 hits, "Ida Red Likes
4425-429: The same basic sound. Prince Albert Hunt 's Texas Ramblers out of Terrell in East Texas, and the East Texas Serenaders in Lindale, Texas both added jazz elements to traditional music in the later half of the 1920s through the early 1930s. Fred "Papa" Calhoun played in a band in Decatur, Texas that played swing music in the style of the Louisiana Five . In the early 1930s, Bob Wills and Milton Brown co-founded
4500-479: The stage of Cain's Ballroom . They also played dances in the evenings. Wills largely sang blues and sentimental ballads. "One Star Rag", "Rat Cheese Under the Hill", " Take Me Back to Tulsa ", " Basin Street Blues ", " Steel Guitar Rag ", and " Trouble in Mind " were some of the songs in the extensive repertory played by Wills and the Playboys. Wills added a trumpet to the band inadvertently when he hired Everet Stover as an announcer, not knowing that he had played with
4575-565: The steel guitar, give the music a distinctive sound. Later incarnations have also included overtones of bebop . Western swing differs in several ways from the music played by the nationally popular horn-driven big swing bands of the same era. In Western bands, even fully orchestrated bands, vocals, and other instruments followed the fiddle's lead, though like popular horn-led bands that arranged and scored their music, most Western bands improvised freely, either by soloists or collectively. According to country singer Merle Travis , "Western swing
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#17327944765804650-403: The strain that would eventually be known as "Western" swing— hillbilly , old-time music , novelty hot dance, hot string band, and even Texas swing for music coming out of Texas and Louisiana. Most of the big Western dance bandleaders simply referred to themselves as Western bands and their music as Western dance music, many adamantly refusing the hillbilly label. Bob Wills and others believed
4725-471: The string band that became the Light Crust Doughboys , the first professional western swing band. The group, with Fred "Papa" Calhoun on piano, played dance halls and was heard on radio. Photographs of the Light Crust Doughboys taken as early as 1931 show two guitars along with fiddle player Wills, although by 1933 they had three guitarists. On February 9, 1932, Brown, his brother Derwood, Bob Wills, and C.G. "Sleepy" Johnson were recorded by Victor Records at
4800-524: The tax was later reduced to 20%, "No Dancing Allowed" signs went up all over the country. It has been argued that this tax had a significant role in the decline of public dancing as a recreational activity in the United States. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys remained popular after the war, and could not provide enough new recordings to fill demand. In 1947 Columbia reissued 70 of their older recordings. In January 1953 Billboard reported Spade Cooley played to 192,000 payees over 52 Saturday night dates at
4875-473: The term Western swing was first used for his music while he and his band were still in Tulsa, Oklahoma between 1939 and 1942. The Los Angeles-area Wilmington Press carried ads for an unidentified "Western Swing Orchestra" at a local nightspot in April 1942. That winter, influential LA-area jazz and swing disc jockey Al Jarvis held a radio contest for top popular band leaders. The winner would be named "the King of Swing". When Spade Cooley unexpectedly received
4950-446: The time, was purchased for only $ 1,600. In 1940, " New San Antonio Rose " sold a million records and became the signature song of The Texas Playboys. The "front line" of Wills' orchestra consisted of either fiddles or guitars after 1944. In 1940, Wills, along with the Texas Playboys, co-starred with Tex Ritter in Take Me Back to Oklahoma . Altogether, Wills appeared in nineteen films, including The Lone Prairie (1942), Riders of
5025-468: The violin and sang, and had two guitarists and a banjo player with him. "Bob was in blackface and was the comic; he cracked jokes, sang, and did an amazing jig dance." Since there was already a Jim on the show, the manager began calling him Bob. However, it was as Jim Rob Wills, paired with Herman Arnspiger, that he made his first commercial (though unissued) recordings in November 1929 for Brunswick/Vocalion . Wills quickly became known for being talkative on
5100-409: Was 148.8 inhabitants per square mile (57.5/km ). There were 206 housing units at an average density of 100.8 per square mile (38.9/km ). The racial makeup of the village was 83.22% White , 1.97% Native American , 12.17% from other races , and 2.63% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 52.63% of the population. There were 150 households, out of which 20.0% had children under
5175-470: Was Chuck Berry's primary inspiration for creating his first rock-and-roll hit " Maybellene ". Fats Domino once remarked that he patterned his 1960 rhythm section after that of Bob Wills. During the 49th Grammy Awards in 2007, Carrie Underwood performed his song " San Antonio Rose ". Today, George Strait performs Wills' music on concert tours and records songs influenced by Wills and his Texas-style swing. The Austin-based Western swing band Asleep at
5250-434: Was a filming location in the 2009 comedy film Did You Hear About the Morgans? . Roy is located at 35°56′38″N 104°11′35″W / 35.94389°N 104.19306°W / 35.94389; -104.19306 (35.943890, -104.193025). According to the United States Census Bureau , the village has a total area of 2.0 square miles (5.2 km ), all land. The village, originally 2 miles west of its current site,
5325-406: Was founded by ranchers Frank and William Roy, and named for Frank as the first postmaster in 1901. It was relocated after the Dawson Railway was built from Tucumcari through the area in 1902, on its way to coal fields at Dawson . The railroad was removed after 1950. As of the census of 2000, there were 304 people, 150 households, and 88 families residing in the village. The population density
5400-711: Was honored in Episode 2 of Ken Burns' 2019 series on PBS called Country Music. In 2021, Wills was inducted into the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame . Western swing Western swing is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands . It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas , Oklahoma and California during
5475-593: Was nobody intended to start anything in the world. We was just tryin' to find enough tunes to keep 'em dancin' to not have to repeat so much." Western swing was extremely popular throughout the West in the years before World War II and blossomed on the West Coast during the war. Radio broadcasts transmitted live shows to radio stations across the South and the Southwest , reaching millions of listeners. Throughout
5550-573: Was rushing out three more albums in the series, albeit with less of a Western swing flavor. The genre now called Western swing originated from the dance music of the 1920s–1930s, but lacked a coherent label until after the Second World War. The term swing music , referring to big band dance music, did not come into use until the 1932 Duke Ellington hit " It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing) ". Recording companies came up with several names before World War II trying to market
5625-714: Was seven or eight years old. The family moved to Hall County in the Texas Panhandle in 1913, and in 1919 they bought a farm between the towns of Lakeview, Texas, and Turkey, Texas. At the age of 16, Wills left the family and hopped a freight train, travelling under the name Jim Rob. He drifted from town to town trying to earn a living for several years, once nearly falling from a moving train. In his 20s, he attended barber school, married his first wife Edna, and moved first to Roy, New Mexico , then returned to Turkey in Hall County (now considered his home town) to work as
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