Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys

While he may not have invented Western swing (<a href="spotify:artist:2KIjlYyCUDt5JHyDgcCW1S">Milton Brown</a>, Leon Selph, <a href="spotify:artist:26UhFQdfl7mnbL1MhiGbBc">Ted Daffan</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:0jnNekiUCOsyZ9FlFGLYFr">Bill Boyd</a> deserve some credit), <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Bob Wills</a> defined the genre. Take fiddle-based old-time string-band music from the 1920s and '30s, move it to a city such as Tulsa or Fort Worth, add jazz, blues, pop, and sacred music, back it with strings and horns played by a dozen or so musicians, add an electric steel guitar along the way, and you have Western swing. And when you talk Western swing, you start with <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Bob Wills</a>. Though the sound began in the 1930s, the '40s proved its heyday, with <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Bob Wills</a> and his <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Texas Playboys</a> filling dancehalls across the South. <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Wills</a> picked his musicians carefully: bluesy crooner <a href="spotify:artist:2xS555UhAr5LdCV4nL4c8N">Tommy Duncan</a> was the vocal lead, <a href="spotify:artist:3Ic8963ssFFyuOsnGrfAW5">Leon McAuliffe</a> played electric steel guitar (doing much to popularize it country-wide), and the great Eldon Shamblin played lead guitar. <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Wills</a>, a fiddler himself, always featured one or two of the hottest players around, including the incredible <a href="spotify:artist:3MNxoB8Ybc8SW79rnxy67T">Johnny Gimble</a>. One of country music's best-known songs, "San Antonio Rose," was written by <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Wills</a> and sold a million copies in 1940.

<a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Wills</a> and his <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Texas Playboys</a> sold so well that they appeared in eight movies, Westerns in which the solitary singing cowboy was replaced by a hot-playing swing band. The mania for Western swing had ended by the '50s, and though <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Wills</a> played dates (including Las Vegas) throughout the '60s and recorded occasionally, his heights in the '40s were never again reached.

In 1973, <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Wills</a> called together a group of his best <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Playboys</a> (plus <a href="spotify:artist:2ptmyXoL7poH6Zq62h1QT9">Merle Haggard</a>, one of his greatest fans) for one last recording session. In a wheelchair, <a href="spotify:artist:3YeRGjR8sa1PHjTUMjqsQg">Wills</a> was present for the first day only, suffering a stroke and never regaining consciousness. This final album was titled For the Last Time. ~ David Vinopal, Rovi