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Bob Wills: Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys
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Biography: Bob Wills' name will forever be associated with Western swing. Although he did not invent the genre single-handedly, he did popularize the genre and changed its rules. In the process, he reinvented the rules of popular music. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were a dance band with a country string section ...Read full biography
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Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were without doubt the best-known band in the history of Western Swing and was one of the very few bands to continue performing this once highly popular dance style music well into the 1970s. The heyday of this fantastic big band sound reached its peak directly after the Second World War. By the mid 50s, this era had all but virtually ended.
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![[Bob Wills photo]](http://retrieverimages.lycos.com/images/b/o/b/bob-wills/i/002.jpg)
This dormancy remained until the renaissance of the early 1970's when a new generation discovered the music: and legacy of Bob Wills, and western swing was born again. Their last recording session was set for December 3-4, 1973, to coincide with a reunion of the group in Dallas. Bob Wills was there the first day and led the band from a wheelchair but that night he slipped into unconsciousness. The album of twenty-four songs was completed the following day and was appropriately titled, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, For The Last Time. Bob died on May 13, 1975, without ever regaining consciousness.
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Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys somehow found time to write, learn, and arrange new songs in the midst of their almost constant traveling and performing throughout the '30s, '40s and '50s. Bob wrote quite a few songs, but so did Jesse Ashlock, Tommy Duncan, the other Wills boys, and various other Playboys. Bob always incorporated pop tunes by the likes of Cole Porter, along with jazz works by W.C. Handy (a particularly soulful rendition of 'St. Louis Blues'), and even traditional folk songs by influences like Woody Guthrie. He would record the blues standard, 'Sittin' On Top Of The World' many times over the years.
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For that smart but somewhat jaded music fan who thinks he has every important box set under the sun: “Legends of Country Music — Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys” (Columbia/Legacy, four discs, $39.98). The Texas fiddler and bandleader popularized Western swing music while blithely mixing country, pop, blues and jazz. This four-CD set spans his career, from his first recordings in 1932 to his final session in 1973. Take one listen to his signature tune “San Antonio Rose” and you’ll understand why Bob Dylan raves about him on his XM radio show. MB
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In the end, as comprehensive and voluminous as this set is, it doesn’t capture the entirety of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. They were first and foremost a working band, and for Wills that always meant giving the people what they wanted (even if it meant alienating some of the “traditionalists” among his audience, older listeners who were offended by the Playboys embracing the swing sound that all the kids were going nuts over). The result was an ever-changing repertoire of the hits and popular songs of the day, many of which never showed up on commercial recordings. There were ... configurations of the band that never made it to record-notably the short-lived, orchestra-scale big band, comprising twin steel players, drummers, guitarists, and vocalists and a complete horn section, that Wills put together on the west coast in 1944. And of course, it isn’t the complete recorded Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, either, although it does cover an important part-perhaps the most important part-of that history. For all that, this is an epochal release.
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Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys