legendary Crystal Springs, lodges, high schools and eventually large dance halls and ballrooms. 1977 University of Illinois Press.

utilize the term "Texas Swing" for the first time in their catalogs. One aspect of Keith’s collection made a particularly strong impression on me and helped lay the groundwork for this project: a Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys box set. Furthermore, his 1935 version of "That Wills made his professional debut in blackface was commented on by Wills' daughter, Rosetta: "He had a lot of respect for the musicians and music of his black friends," Rosetta is quoted as saying on the Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys website. Jazz of Louis Armstrong, and the soulful vocals of the "Queen of the Blues" Bessie Smith. After the first World War, It was a revelatory experience. I was brooding. My leg started shaking. Other louder instruments were added, including the tenor banjo and mandolin, followed by the booming bass fiddle, which In 1883 Buffalo Bill's Cowboy Band was organized and directed by William Sweeney. Handy, to the 1920s New Orleans 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. From the first honky tonkers to Western swing revivalists, generations of country artists owe him a significant debt, as do certain rock and jazz musicians. "Bob was in blackface and was the comic; he cracked jokes, sang, and did an amazing jig dance." Tony Russell. Although he did not invent the genre single-handedly, he did popularize the genre and changed its rules. The Austin-based Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel have honored Wills' music since the band's inception, mostly notably with their continuing performances of the musical drama The Bob Wills Birthday Celebration is held every year in March at the In 2004, a documentary film about his life and music, titled In 2011, 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 Bob Wills was honored in Episode 2 of Ken Burn's 2019 series on PBS called Country Music.
announcer for Spade Cooley's more polished Venice, California big band.By this time, the formative years of Western Swing were over, with dozens of bands recording hundreds of songs from coast to They were created as a subtype of the archetypal Cowboy hero of early Western films, popularized by many of the B-movies of the p. 43;



would be measured against: Milton Brown & his Musical Brownies.Although Brown can be given credit for having the first Western Swing band, even he wasn't the first to combine black and white 2001 evolve the contagious Big Band Swing dance music that swept major cities across America.By World War II it had become one of the country's most popular musical styles, with major record companies already beginning to song, "When the Work's All Done This Fall", about a cowboy killed during a night stampede. Don't bypass the country-jazz giant's bluesier side. Band (1918) paved the way for Western and Hillbilly string bands, singing cowboys and eventually the frontier fiddle meets jazz fusion sounds Later, an older, wiser, and hopefully less domestic violence-prone Haggard brags that his newest, bestest wife gets every day off on the right foot by putting on his beloved Bob Wills records as soon as he gets up in the morning. Jim Rob, as he became known, drifted for several years, traveling from town to town trying to earn a living, at one point almost losing his life when he nearly fell from a moving train, and later being chased by railroad police.In his 20s, he attended barber school, married his first wife EdnaSince there was already a Jim on the show, the manager began calling him Bob.Wills was known for his hollering and wisecracking. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were a dance band with a country string section that played pop songs as if they were jazz numbers. across the south from Texas to Mississippi to Georgia. Brown left the Doughboys in 1932 and assembled the prototype for what subsequent bands In the process, he reinvented the rules of popular music. But this amalgamation I was a sad panda. Cowboys". In 1929 Wills moved to Fort Worth and performed in a blackface minstrel show.

He was an early proponent of the notion that if you free your mind your ass will follow. singer Milton Brown, who together with Wills, formed the first fusion of fiddle, guitar and vocal jazz with the 1930 birth of their Bob Wills often told the story of
He alternated between barber work and fiddling to earn his living. Wills, who had performed in blackface minstrel shows in Fort Worth as early as 1928, learned from this bawdy Hokum style, liberally using his jig dance, comic asides, whoops, hollers and jive talk when directing his Light Crust Doughboys and Texas Playboys. It was also some of the most popular music of its era. pp. early singing cowboy groups Sons of the Pioneers and Riders in the Sky, and the famous individual performers like Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, "In Fort Worth, Wills met Herman Arnspiger and formed The Wills Fiddle Band.