[Harp-L] Re: Western Swing, Bob Wills

[Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

If there's a chromatic player out there looking to open a frontier that I 
think has not been explored at all, you could hardly do better than putting 
together a Western Swing band and show the world how to play that mess on 
chromatic.

Here are some basic notes, to get somebody started.

1. Western swing was the #1 most popular music in America by the time WW2 
was over.  Like the emerging R&B, it satisfied a very large demand for 
simple, swinging music that had been built up in the thirties.  Like R&B, 
it was a very important progenitor of Rock & Roll.

2. Like the swinging string band music that later became known as 
Bluegrass, Western swing was simply called country music at the 
time.  Bluegrass and Western swing records often sold to the same audience.

3. Bob Wills' band was nowhere near the most popular Western Swing band of 
the 1930's.  One band to listen to, if you like the 30's version of the 
music, is Milton Brown and his Brownies, a stunningly hard swinging 
band.  Wills and a few of the early Texas Playboys (Bob's band) did time 
with Brown.  There's a terrific 4 CD collection of Brown available, I 
believe, on Proper.  Inexpensive.

4. By the end of the war Wills' band was the number one money maker in 
America.  In any genre.  Their 40's sound blew people away from coast to 
coast on radio, records and at their shows, which were often played in huge 
ballrooms.

5. The music is exciting on record, but swing music is live music, and it's 
dance music.  Recalling the thrill of hearing Asleep At The Wheel live 
after hearing their records (no thrill for me) I have to believe that the 
Wills band was such a huge live draw because they simply blew the minds of 
their audience, who couldn't get enough.  There is still money in 
swing.  People think they're going to see a show of campy nostalgia and 
wind up buying every CD in sight.  Western Swing - same thing.

6. My favorite Wills recordings are on 10 CDs of transcriptions made for 
the Tiffany label.  The boys are looser and having more fun than they were 
at the formal recording sessions.

7. Wills music of the 40's is by no means my own favorite Western Swing of 
the era.  I prefer the music of Spade Cooley, Hank Penny, Hank Thompson 
(who even made records with Stan Kenton), Tex Williams and Merle 
Travis.  All these performers were very, very popular, sold tons of records 
and deserve a place in the collections of anyone interested in Western 
Swing.  One of the distinctive qualities that is common in all these bands 
is the ensemble of accordion, muted trumpet, fiddle team and steel 
guitar.  My favorite Western Swing records usually have a section where 
that ensemble is swinging some big fat lead chords.  I love that sound.  It 
is one of the most American sounds.

I have sat in with Western Swing bands, and I love playing diatonic, my 
axe, with a great swinging rhythm section.  But a chromatic harmonica 
leading in an ensemble with all those instruments, that'd be a thing of beauty.

I promise to say nice things about anyone who tries to make that happen.

K