Western swing

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This article is about the musical genre. For the popular western swing steel guitar tuning, see E9 tuning.

Western swing is, first and foremost, a fusion of country music, several styles of jazz, pop music and blues aimed at dancers. Much of it is dance music with an up-tempo beat and a decidedly Southwestern United States regional flavor. It consists of an eclectic combination of country, cowboy, polka, and folk music, blended with a jazzy "swing", with a tip of the hat to New Orleans jazz and blues, and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar. Later incarnations have also included overtones of bebop. The similarities between Western Swing and Gypsy jazz, are often noted.

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[edit] History

Western Swing originated in the dance halls of small towns throughout the Lower Great Plains in the 1920s and 1930s.[1]Evolving from the old house parties and ranch dances where fiddlers and guitarists that entertained dancers. Bob Wills and Milton Brown essentially created the stylistic blend in the early 1930s as co-founders of the stringband that became the Light Crust Doughboys, who played dancehalls and took advantage of the new medium of radio broadcasting. That helped the style gain a much wider following through the music of Wills and his Texas Playboys in Tulsa, Brown in Fort Worth (until his untimely death in 1936) and the Light Crust Doughboys, also in Fort Worth.

Bob Wills recalled the early days of Western swing music, in a 1949 interview.[2] "Here's the way I figure it. We sure not tryin' to take credit for swingin' it." Speaking of Milt Brown and himself working with songs done by Jimmie Davis, the Skillet Lickers,[3] Jimmie Rodgers,[4] and others, and songs he'd learned from his father, he said that "We'd pull these tunes down an set 'em in a dance category. It wouldn't be a runaway, and just lay a real nice beat behind it an the people would get to really like it. It was nobody intended to start anything in the world. We was just tryin' to find enough tunes to keep 'em dancin' to not have to repeat so much."

[edit] Height of Popularity

Western Swing reached its "golden age" during the years preceding WWII, blossomed on the West Coast during the war, and was extremely popular throughout the West. [5] In the 1940s the Light Crust Doughboys broadcasts went out over 170 radio stations in the South and Southwest, and were heard by millions of people.[6] Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys played Western Swing nightly in Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma from 1934 until 1943. Crowds at Cain's were as large as 6,000 people. Daily shows were broadcast on KVOO radio, which had a far reaching 50,000 watt signal. Regular shows continued until 1958 with Johnnie Lee Wills as the bandleader. [7]

According to one report crowds of ten thousand people were not uncommon at Western Swing dances in the Los Angeles area. Another eyewitness report describes the California crowds as "huge". [8]

Another orchestra from this era was The Duece Spriggens Orchestra. They played nightly at the Western Palisades Ballroom, on Santa Monica Pier...then known as the largest ballroom on the West Coast. The music was broadcast as a radio show, The Cavalcade of Western Music, on station KFI. They also appeared on the Melody Roundup radio program. [9]

Some credit Spade Cooley with coining the term 'Western swing' in the early 1940s, as a play on Benny Goodman's reputation as the "King of Swing." At least one historian and two web sites, however, credit Cooley’s then manager Bert “Foreman” Phillips for creating the term. [10][11][12]

[edit] Decline and Lasting Influence

The decline of Western Swing in the years following the War reflected the waxing and waning of the more mainstream big-band sound. Asleep at the Wheel band leader Ray Benson relates his experiences with reintroducing Western Swing to Texans in an interview. [13]

Moon Mullican, who had performed with Western Swing bands, later found more success as a solo artist and his 1940s and 1950s hits often were done with a more western swing than pure country feel.

Western swing was one of the many genres to influence rockabilly, and rock 'n' roll. Bill Haley's music from the late 1940s and early 1950s is often referred to as Western Swing. Haley's band from 1948 and 1949 was named Bill Haley and The 4 Aces of Western Swing.

Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings, and Asleep at the Wheel helped make Austin, Texas a major center of Western Swing beginning in the 1970s The annual South by Southwest music festival and the Austin City Limits TV show have contributed to this success. [14] One regional name for Western Swing is simply "Texas."

[edit] Notable bands and artists from the early era

  • Dave Stogner and The Western Rythmnaires
  • Al Dexter and His Troopers
  • The Light Crust Doughboys
  • Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys
  • Tommy Duncan, the lead singer with the Texas Playboys
  • Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies
  • Herb Remmington
  • The Southern Melody Boys
  • The Hi-Flyers
  • The Tune Wranglers
  • Adolph Hofner and his San Antonians
  • Floyd Tillman
  • Bill Boyd and the Cowboy Ramblers
  • Dude Martin and His Roundup Gang
  • Hank Penny
  • Spade Cooley and His Orchestra
  • Deuce Spriggens and His Orchestra
  • Tex Williams and the Western Caravan
  • "Texas" Jim Lewis and His Lone Star Cowboys
  • Hank Thompson and His Brazos Valley Boys
  • Bill Haley and the Saddlemen (later - Bill Haley & His Comets)
  • The Fort Worth Doughboys
  • Doug Bine and his Dixie Ramblers
  • Jimmie Revard and his Oklahoma Playboys
  • The Washboard Wonders
  • Cliff Bruner's Texas Wanderers
  • Buddy Jones
  • Smokey Wood and the Wood Chips
  • W. Lee O'Daniel and his Hillbilly Boys
  • Carolina Cotton (yodeler who sang with several Western Swing groups)
  • Ocie Stockard and the Wanderers
  • The Port Arthur Jubileers aka Jimmie Hart & His Merrymakers
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

[edit] Later bands and artists of the genre (or influenced by it)

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

[edit] See also

[edit] Endnotes

  1. ^  Boyd, Jean Ann. Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. ISBN 0-292-70859-9
  2. ^  Kienzle, Rich. Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz. New York: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-94102-4

[edit] Resources

  • Ginell, Cary. Milton Brown and the Founding of Western Swing. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994. ISBN 0-252-02041-3
  • Ginell, Cary; Kevin Coffey. Discography of western swing and hot string bands, 1928-1942. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. ISBN 0-313-31116-1
  • Wetlock, E. Clyde; Richard Drake Saunders (eds.). Music and dance in Texas, Oklahoma, and the Southwest. Hollywood, CA: Bureau of Musical Research, 1950.

[edit] External links

[edit] Listen

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