In 1968, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum finally had a home on Nashville’s “Music Row” and its 1968 inductee was announced to a national television audience. The “Kraft Music Hall” on CBS featured the 1968 Country Music Association Awards from the Ryman Auditorium and Roy Acuff and Tex Ritter welcomed the “King of Western Swing”, Bob Wills, to the Hall of Fame. In the 1930s and 1940s, Americans were dancing to the big band sounds of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Harry James but in Texas, Oklahoma there was no bigger attraction than Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. Playing their own mix of swing, big band, country and blues, The Texas Playboys packed dance halls across the southwest for years. Their vast repertoire included standards like “San Antonio Rose”, “Maiden’s Prayer”, “Take Me Back to Tulsa”, “Steel Guitar Rag”, “Stay A Little Longer” and Faded Love” with Wills leading the band with his fiddle and ever present cigars. Born into a musical family near Kosse, Texas, in 1905, “Jim Rob” Wills made his first recordings with Hermann Arnspiger in 1929 and formed his first group, The Wills Fiddle Band, in Fort Worth. In 1930, Milton Brown joined the group as lead vocalist and under the radio sponsorship of the makers of Light Crust Flour the band became known as The Light Crust Doughboys. In 1932, Brown left to form the Musical Brownies, considered the first true western swing band, and Wills replaced him with vocalist Tommy Duncan. However, a year later Wills relocated to Waco, Texas, and formed a new group, The Playboys. In January of 1934, the group left Waco for Oklahoma City. Renamed The Texas Playboys the group soon settled in Tulsa and began broadcasting noontime shows from Cain’s Ballroom over the 50,000 watt KVOO radio station. In addition to the twin fiddles that fronted the band, Wills soon added trumpets and drums to the mix and in 1935 brought in steel guitar whiz Leon McAuliffe as both a formidable instrumentalist and a second vocalist. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys did their first recording in Dallas in 1935, produced by Don Law and Art Satherley for the American Recording Corporation. With its jazz sophistication, pop music and blues influence, plus improvised scat, wisecrack commentary, and cries of “Ah, ha!” by Wills, the band became western swing’s first superstars. In 1940, “New San Antonio Rose” sold a million records and became the group’s signature song. During World War II, Wills moved to Hollywood where he appeared in a number of films and became an enormous draw in Los Angeles where many of his Texas and Oklahoma fans had relocated during the Great Depression in search of jobs. Monday through Friday, the band had a noontime broadcast over KMTR-AM (now KLAC) and played regularly every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night at the Mission Beach Ballroom in San Diego. In the mid-40’s, the band was outgrossing Harry James, Benny Goodman and the Dorsey Brothers in some of the west coast’s largest auditoriums and continued to do so until the 1950s. In 1944, the band made its first cross-country tour that included a well-remembered appearance on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville on December 30 of that that year. In 1948, the group appeared on the inaugural broadcast of KWKH’s Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, Louisiana. When the popularity of western swing began to decline, Bob Wills returned to Oklahoma City and continued to tour. Bad financial deals and binge drinking dogged him in those later years but he was able to keep the band on the road into the 1960s. In 1965, following two heart attacks, he dissolved the Texas Playboys but continued to perform as a solo act until a stroke in 1969 that left his right side paralyzed ended his active career. In 1973, he participated in a final reunion session with some of the members of the Texas Playboys from the 50s and 60s. After the first day’s session, Wills suffered a stroke overnight that was followed by another more severe one several days later that left him comatose. He lingered until his death on May 13, 1975. In 1970, Bob Wills was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. In 2007, he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also ranked #27 in CMT’s “40 Greatest Men in Country Music” in 2003. Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Fats Domino, Mel Tillis, George Strait and Ray Benson are just a few of the artists who have named him as an influence and every year in March the Bob Wills Birthday Celebration is held at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa. In 2011, the Texas Legislature adopted a resolution designating western swing as the “Official State Music of Texas”. Here’s a clip of Bob Wills and Texas Playboys, featuring vocalist Tommy Duncan, at the top of their game performing “New San Antonio Rose” in the 1940s (although on a Hollywood sound stage and not the Grand Ole Opry as the description erroneously states).
Posted on: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 22:41:39 +0000