Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys

Bob Wills may not have originated Western swing—Milton Brown, Leon Selph, Ted Daffan, and Bill Boyd all helped lay its foundation—yet he became the artist who gave the style its lasting identity. The approach typically began with the fiddle-led old-time string bands of the 1920s and 1930s, relocated those ensembles to cities like Tulsa or Fort Worth, blended in jazz, blues, pop, and sacred music, and supported the mix with roughly a dozen musicians playing strings and horns while featuring an electric steel guitar. Any serious discussion of the genre therefore begins with Bob Wills. Although the sound first appeared in the 1930s, its greatest popularity arrived in the 1940s, when Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys drew large crowds to dancehalls throughout the South. Wills chose his sidemen with care: bluesy crooner Tommy Duncan served as lead vocalist, Leon McAuliffe handled electric steel guitar and did much to promote the instrument across the country, and the great Eldon Shamblin played lead guitar. A fiddler himself, Wills regularly showcased outstanding players such as the remarkable Johnny Gimble. He also wrote one of country music’s most familiar pieces, “San Antonio Rose,” which sold a million copies in 1940. Strong record sales allowed the Texas Playboys to appear in eight movies, Westerns that substituted a lively swing band for the traditional lone singing cowboy. Enthusiasm for Western swing had largely passed by the 1950s; although Wills continued to perform, including shows in Las Vegas, and recorded from time to time during the 1960s, he never regained the stature he enjoyed in the 1940s. In 1973 he assembled a group of his strongest former Playboys, along with one of his most devoted admirers, Merle Haggard, for a final studio date. Present only on the first day and seated in a wheelchair, Wills suffered a stroke and never regained consciousness. The album that resulted was titled For the Last Time.