Bob Wills' name will forever be associated
with Western Swing. Although he did not invent the genre singlehandedly,
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
that played pop songs as if they were jazz numbers.
Their music expanded and erased boundaries
between genres. It was also some of the
most popular music of its era. Throughout
the '40s, the band was one of the most
popular groups in the country and the
musicians in the Playboys were among
the finest of their era. As the popularity of Western Swing declined, so
did Wills's popularity, but his influence
is immeasurable. 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 Wills was a maverick and his spirit
infused American popular music of the 20th century with a renegade,
virtuosic flair.
Bob Wills was born outside of Kosse,
Texas, in 1905. From his father and
grandfather, Bob learned how to
play mandolin, guitar and, eventually, fiddle and
he regularly played local dances
in his teens. In 1929, he joined a medicine show
in Fort Worth, where he played fiddle
and did blackface comedy. At one
performance, he met guitarist Herman
Arnspiger and the duo formed the Wills
Fiddle Band. Within a year, they
were playing dances and radio stations around
Fort Worth. During one of the performances,
the pair met a vocalist called Milton
Brown, who joined the band. Soon,
Brown's guitarist brother Durwood joined
the group, as did Clifton "Sleepy"
Johnson, a tenor banjo player.
In early 1931, the band landed their
own radio show, which was sponsored by
the Burris Mill and Elevator company,
the manufacturers of Light Crust Flour. The
group rechristened themselves the
Light Crust Doughboys and their show was
being broadcast throughout Texas,
hosted and organized by W. Lee O'Daniel, the
manager of Burris Mill. By 1932,
the band were stars in Texas but there was
some trouble behind the scenes --
O'Daniel wasn't allowing the band to play
anything but the radio show. This
situation led to the departure of Milton Brown;
Wills eventually replaced Brown
with Tommy Duncan, who he would work with
for the next 16 years. By late summer
1933, Wills, aggrivated with a series of
fights with O'Daniel, left the Light
Crust Doughboys and Duncan left with him.
Wills and Duncan relocated to Waco,
Texas, and formed the Playboys, which
featured Wills on fiddle, Duncan
on piano and vocals, rhythm guitarist June
Whalin, tenor banjoist Johnnie Lee
Wills, and Kermit Whalin, who played steel
guitar and bass. For the next year,
the Playboys moved through a number of
radio stations, as O'Daniel tried
to force them off the air. Finally, the group
settled in Tulsa, where they had
a job at KVOO.
Tulsa is where Bob Wills and the
Texas Playboys began to refine their sound. Wills
added an 18 year-old electric steel
guitarist called Leon McAuliffe, pianist Al
Stricklin, drummer Smokey Dacus,
and a horn section to the band's lineup.
Soon, the Texas Playboys were the
most popular band in Oklahoma and Texas.
The band made their first record
in 1935 for the American Recording Company,
which would later become part of
Columbia Records. At ARC, they were
produced by Uncle Art Satherley,
who would wind up as Wills's producer for the
next 12 years. The bandleader have
his way and they cut a number of tracks
which were released on a series
of 78s. The singles were successful enough that
Wills could demand that steel guitarist
Leon McAuliffe -- who wasn't on the first
sessions due to ARC's abundance
of steel players under contract -- was featured
on the Playboys' next record, 1936's
"Steel Guitar Rag." The song became a
standard for steel guitar. Also
released from that session was "Right or Wrong,"
which featured Tommy Duncan on lead
vocals.
Toward the end of the decade, big
bands were dominating popular music and
Wills wanted a band capable of playing
complex, jazz-inspired arrangements. To
help him achieve his sound, he hired
arranger and guitarist Eldon Shamblin, who
wrote charts that fused country
with big band music for the Texas Playboys. By
1940, he had replaced some of the
weaker musicians in the lineup, winding up
with a full 18-piece band. The Texas
Playboys were breaking concert attendance
records across the country, filling
out venues from Tulsa to California and they
also had their first genuine national
hit with "New San Antonio Rose," which
climbed to number 11 in 1940. Throughout
1941 and 1942, Bob Wills and the
Texas Playboys continued to record
and perform and they were one of the most
popular bands in the country. However,
their popularity was quickly derailed by
the arrival of World War II. Tommy
Duncan enlisted in the Army after Pearl
Harbor and Al Stricklin became a
defense plant worker. Late in 1942, Leon
McAuliffe and Eldon Shamblin both
left the group. Bob enlisted in the Army late in
1942, but he was discharged as being
unfit for service in the summer of 1943,
primarily because he was out of
shape and disagreeable. Duncan was discharged
around the same time and the pair
moved to California by the end of 1943. Wills
revamped the sound of the Texas
Playboys after World War II, cutting out the
horn section and relying on amplified
string instruments.
During the '40s, Art Satherley had
moved from ARC to OKeh Records and Wills
followed him to the new label. His
first single for OKeh was a new version of
"New San Antonio Rose" and it became
a Top Ten hit early in 1944, crossing
over into the Top 15 on the pop
charts. Wills stayed with OKeh for about year,
having several Top Ten hits, as
well as the number ones "Smoke on the Water,"
and "Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima."
After he left OKeh, he signed with Columbia
Records, releasing his first single
for the label, "Texas Playboy Rag," toward the
end of 1945.
In 1946, the Texas Playboys began
recording a series of transcriptions for
Oakland, California's Tiffany Music
Corporation. Tiffany's plan was to syndicate
the transcriptions throught the
Southwest, but their goal was never fufilled.
Nevertheless, the Texas Playboys
made a number of transcriptions in '46 and
'47, and these are the only recordings
of the band playing extended jams.
Consequently, they are close approximations
of the group's live sound. Though
the Tiffany Transcriptions would
turn out to be important historical items, the
recordings that kept Wills and the
Playboys in the charts were their singles for
Columbia, which were consistently
reaching the Top Five between 1945 and
1948; in the summer of 1946, they
had their biggest hit, "New Spanish Two
Step," which spent 16 weeks at number
one.
Guitarist Eldon Shamblin returned
to the Playboys in 1947, the final year Wills
recorded for Columbia Records. Beginning
in late '47, Wills was signed to MGM.
His first single for the label,
"Bubbles in My Beer," was a Top Ten hit early in
1948, as was its follow-up, "Keeper
of My Heart." Though the Texas Playboys
were one of the most popular bands
in the nation, they were beginning to fight
internally, mainly because Wills
had developed a drinking problem that caused
him to behave erratically. Furthermore,
Wills came to believe Tommy Duncan
was demanding too much attention
and asking for too much money. By the end
of 1948, he had fired the singer.
Duncan's departure couldn't have
come at a worse time. Western Swing was
beginning to fall out of public
favor, and Wills's recordings weren't as consistently
successful as they had been before
-- he had no hits at all in 1949. That year, he
relocated to Oklahoma, beginning
a 15-year stretch of frequent moves, all
designed to find a thriving market
for the band. In 1950, he had two Top Ten hits
-- "Ida Red Likes the Boogie" and
"Faded Love," which would become a country
standard; they would be his last
hits for a decade. Throughout the '50s, he
struggled with poor health and poor
finances, but he continued to perform
frequently. However, his audience
continued to shrink, despite his attempts to
hold on to it. Wills moved throughout
the Southwest during the decade, without
ever finding a new home base. Audiences
at dance halls plummeted with the
advent of television and rock &
roll. The Texas Playboys made some records for
Decca that went unnoticed in the
mid-'50s. In 1959, Wills signed with Liberty
Records, where he was produced by
Tommy Allsup, a former Playboy. Before
recording his first sessions with
Liberty, Wills expanded the lineup of the band
again and reunited with Tommy Duncan.
The results were a success, with "Heart
to Heart Talk" climbing into the
Top Ten during the summer of 1960. Again, the
Texas Playboys were drawing sizable
crowds and selling a respectable amount of
records.
In 1962, Wills had a heart attack
that temporarily debilitated him, but by 1963,
he was making an album for Kapp
records. The following year, he had a second
heart attack which forced him to
disband the Playboys. After the second heart
attack, he performed and recorded
as a solo performer. His solo recordings for
Kapp were made in Nashville with
studio musicians and were generally ignored,
though he continued to be successful
in concert.
In 1968, the Country Music Hall of
Fame inducted Bob Wills and the following
year the Texas State Legislature
honored him for his contribution to American
music. The day after he appeared
in both houses of the Texas state
government, Wills suffered a massive
stroke, which paralyzed his right side.
During his recovery, Merle Haggard
-- the most popular country singer of the late
'60s -- recorded an album dedicated
to Bob Wills, A Tribute to the Best Damn
Fiddle Player, which helped return
Wills to public consciousness and spark a
wide-spread Western Swing revival.
In 1972, Wills was well enough to accept a
citation from ASCAP in Nashville,
as well as appear at several Texas Playboy
reunions, which were all very popular.
In the fall of 1973, Wills and Haggard
began planning a Texas Playboy reunion
album, featuring Leon McAuliffe, Al
Stricklin, Eldon Shamblin, and Smokey
Dacus, among others. The first session
was held on December 3, 1973, with
Wills leading the band from his wheelchair.
That night, he suffered another
massive stroke in his sleep; the stroke left him
comatose. The Texas Playboys finished
the album without him. Bob Wills never
regained consciousnesss and he died
on May 15, 1975 in a nursing home. Wills
was buried in Tulsa, the place where
his legend began. -- Stephen Thomas
Erlewine
