Bob Wills was and remains the unquestionable king of Western Swing music. The son of a fiddle player, Wills moved to Fort Worth in the 1920s and worked with Milton Brown in the seminal country dance band, the Light Crust Doughboys. Eventually forming his own group, Wills incorporated blues, country, big band, tin pan alley, and folk music into his unique brand of exhilarating Western swing. Wills scored a series of country hits in the 1940s and also starred in 17 movies from 1940 to 1947. Vocalist Tommy Duncan left the group in 1948 and the unit’s commercial viability quickly diminished.
Nobody has been more accomplished at translating joy through a microphone than the farm boy from Turkey, Texas. Listed below are twenty-three of his essential songs and performances.
Basin Street Blues, 1936. Louis Armstrong popularized this Spencer Williams composition in 1928. With the New Orleans meets West Texas instrumentation, red light district prostitution never sounded more subtle.
A Big Ball in Cowtown, 1966. Hoyle Nix, a devoted Wills fan that would later tour with his hero extensively, recorded this tribute to Fort Worth dancing in 1949. Wills covered in 1966 with Leon Rausch on lead vocals. (I saw Rausch perform with Asleep at the Wheel a few years ago. For a man born in 1927, he still packs a strong vocal punch.) George Strait got on the Cowtown bandwagon, cutting his own version, in 1995.
Blue Yodel, 1937. A cover of the classic Jimmie Rodgers “Blues Yodel No. 1,” as in “T for Texas, T for Tennessee.” The band stomps along winningly and Leon McAuliffe sounds like the Chuck Berry of the steel guitar.
Bring it On Down to My House, Honey, 1936. Wills wrote this explicitly sexual number and trades vocals with Tommy Duncan. Besides the accomplished fiddle playing that one expects from Wills, he even scats in the last verse.
Bubbles in My Beer, recorded in 1947, reached #4 in 1948. Tommy Duncan, Cindy Walker, and Wills penned this musically jaunty, lyrically morose tune. Duncan gives one of his best crooning performances as we waltz our blues away. Later covered by Willie Nelson on the Shotgun Willie album, along with “Stay a Little Longer.”
Cherokee Maiden, 1941. Check out that Indi…um, that Native American drum intro. Written by Cindy Walker, the pride of Mexia, Texas, Wills tosses in all kinds of cartoon instrumentation into this amusing yet enduring tale. Merle Haggard took this to #1 on the country charts in 1976.
Faded Love, #8, 1950. Three Wills teamed up to write this one – Bob, his father John, and his brother Billy Jack. This was the band’s last hit for ten years and the end of their significant commercial run. Tommy Duncan had left after tiring of his bandleader’s drinking and the significantly less impressive Rusty McDonald sang lead on this number. Patsy Cline posthumously took this song to the #7 slot in 1963.
Home in San Antone, 1942. Jazz cornet player Danny Alguire took the vocal slot and played an excellent solo on this Fred Rose composition. This single failed to chart, but Wills would have better luck the next time he sang about The Alamo City.
I’ll See You in My Dreams, 1938. Isham Jones and Gus Kahn penned this standard in 1924. Showing their surprising versatility, The Playboys perfectly replicate a big band in the intro.
Ida Red, 1938. In the plagiary versus research debate, Wills took the traditional folk tune “Ida Red” and added lyrics from a 1878 song (“Sunday Night” by Frederick Root) for this fiddle based dance number. In 1950, our fine gal returned with “Ida Red Likes to Boogie.”
“New San Antonio Rose.” Recorded in both 1940 and 1941, hit #3 in 1944. “San Antonio Rose” was originally recorded in 1938 as an instrumental. One version of why the “new” “Rose” was recorded is that Wills needed an additional song for a recording session in 1940 and penned the lyrics in thirty minutes. That story was widely reported and is almost surely inaccurate. Another version of how this standard came to be is that Irving Berlin’s publishing company told Wills that the song would be published if lyrics were added. Wills would later claim that he worked on the lyrics for two years, but it’s believed that trumpet player Everett Stover contributed to the words of the poetic ode to the Lone Star State, but did not receive any writing credit. The single was released in 1940 and didn’t chart, but became the group’s first major hit when re-released in 1943 (Bing Crosby moved over a million copies of his version in 1941). It is a song of remarkable and infinite beauty.
Old Fashioned Love, 1935. Written by African American composers Cecil Mack and James P. Johnson, Wills covers this like a Hollywood jug band. Merle Haggard included this ditty on his album A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World (or, My Salute to Bob Wills). The art department at Capitol records must have loved that pithy title.
Right or Wrong, 1936. This was written by Arthur Sizemore and Paul Biese, with words by Haven Gillespie, as a jazz ballad. Close your eyes when you are listening and you can see cowboy hats and spurs two-stepping across the dance floor. Lyricist Gillispie had a pretty good track record. He also penned “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” (I personally thought that Springsteen wrote that one).
Roly Poly, 1946. This Fred Rose nursery rhyme to boy with a voracious appetite made it to #3 in 1946. A generous number – the pianist, guitarist, and cornet player all get solos as part of Bob’s musical kaleidoscope.
Silver Dew on the Blue Grass Tonight, 1945. Ed Burt, who I know less than nothing about, wrote this #1 hit. The Wills Corporation was not against cashing in on World War II and the maudlin lyric about a Kentucky woman that is missing her soldier is offset by the usual “a-haaaas” and fiddle theatrics of our hero. Alex Brashear contributes an ace trumpet solo.
Sitting on Top of the World, 1935. The Mississippi Sheiks cut this “she’s gone, I’m elated” song in 1930 and Wills, the onetime minstrel performer, does a blackface inspired cover. Milton Brown of the Fort Worth band the Musical Brownies had cut the first Western swing cover of this fiddle based blues number in 1934.
Smoke on the Water, 1945, #1. Not the Deep Purple metal riff classic, this was written by Red Foley and he took it to #7 on the country charts in 1944. With World War II coming to a halt, the U.S. was ready for a song that called out Hitler and Mussolini. It was a tough year for “heathen Gods.”
Stay a Little Longer, 1946, #2. Wills and Duncan borrowed a verse from an old folk song called “Shinbone Alley” on this fast paced swing dance tune. A definitive example of the lighthearted joy that was Wills’ specialty.
Sugar Moon, 1947, #1. You can overdose on bliss on this Bob Wills/Cindy Walker. So light and spry and romantic, you don’t even mind when they rhyme “June/moon/soon.”
Take Me Back to Tulsa, 1941. This buoyant non-sense number, which was never a hit but became one of the band’s signature songs. features all the classic Wills interjections. Like “That’s What I Like About the South” the lyrics include references to race that would seem completely inappropriate to the modern ear.
Texas Playboy Theme. Like “Hello There” by Cheap Trick, this is an incredibly brief band introduction. This became a part of the official discography in 1973; earlier versions were probably from their frequent radio shows.
That’s What I Like About the South, 1938. This upbeat number was penned by African American composer Andy Razaf, who also wrote “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” “Honeysuckle Blue,” and “Black and Blue.” Phil Harris, perhaps best known for voicing a number of popular Disney characters, recorded a breathless cover in 1947.
You’re From Texas, 1942. Sometimes titled “If You’re From Texas,” Cindy Walker wrote this number about the strange elation that occurs with one Texas meets another Texan. Tejas – it’s like a whole ‘nother country.