Leon McAuliffe

William Leon McAuliffe entered the world in Houston in 1917 and rose to prominence as a leading steel guitarist during his years with Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys. He took up both acoustic and steel guitar at fourteen, which quickly placed him in the Waikiki Strummers, a Hawaiian-style ensemble, by 1931. Two years later he joined the Light Crust Doughboys, an early Western swing outfit, where Milton Brown’s steel player Bob Dunn showed him how to amplify the instrument electrically. In 1935 McAuliffe moved to the Texas Playboys, soon regarded as the foremost Western swing band of the period. One of their first sessions produced the instrumental “Steel Guitar Rag,” McAuliffe’s adaptation of Sylvester Weaver’s blues piece “Guitar Rag.” The recording established him as a star and a model for steel players, while Bob Wills’ recurring exclamation “Take it away, Leon!” became a familiar musical catchphrase. He stayed with the group until late 1942, when World War II military service called him away; during that time he worked as a flight instructor.

After the war McAuliffe assembled his own large ensemble, the Cimarron Boys. The band secured steady broadcasts on a Tulsa radio station and signed with Columbia, after which the instrumental showcase “Panhandle Rag” reached the Top Ten in 1949. Through the 1950s the group alternated down-home Western material with polished big-band jazz, sometimes edging close to mainstream swing territory. In the 1960s McAuliffe recorded for Dot, Capitol, and Starday, yet Western swing had by then become a relic of earlier decades, so performances remained largely local; he later purchased a radio station in Rogers, Arkansas. A 1973 reunion session brought him back together with Wills on record, and after Wills’ death shortly afterward McAuliffe led occasional Texas Playboys reunions. He died in 1988.