[Harp-L] Help find Western swing player

[Rick Dempster]

Thanks Arthur. Now I know. Been wondering what those 100 or so records
were, that I've got stuck between 'country' and 'jazz' in my disc
collection.
Thing is, I reckon I could recognise the sound of a fiddler who had worked
in a WS band. Ditto steel, and probably some other instruments as well.
But a chromatic harp improvising on an old tin-pan alley song, will just
sound like 'jazz' harp. Of course you can stick a chromatic in a WS band,
but
it doesn't make it 'western swing harmonica'. If you play 'San Antonio
Rose' on a chrom, it does not make it 'WS'.
By the way, I played steel in a WS style band for about thirty years. I
also occasionally played a little harp, diatonic and chromatic.
Just so's you know where I'm coming from.
Cheers,
RD











On Wed, 28 Sept 2022 at 10:44, Arthur Jennings <arturojennings at xxxxx>
wrote:

> According to Wikipedia,
>
> "*Western swing music* is a subgenre of American country music
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_music> that originated in the late
> 1920s in the West <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_United_States>
> and South <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_United_States> among
> the region's Western
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_music_(North_America)> string bands
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_band>. It is dance music, often
> with an up-tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance halls and
> clubs in Texas <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas>, Oklahoma
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma> and California
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California> during the 1930s and 1940s
> until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre's
> decline.
>
> The movement was an outgrowth of jazz <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz>. The
> music is an amalgamation of rural
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_roots_music>, cowboy
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_music_(North_America)>, polka
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polka>, old-time
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-time_music>, Dixieland jazz
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixieland_jazz>, and blues
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blues> blended with swing
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_music>; and played by a hot
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_improvisation> string band often
> augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_guitar>. The electrically amplified
> stringed instruments, especially the steel guitar, give the music a
> distinctive sound. Later incarnations have also included overtones of
> bebop <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebop>.
>
> Western swing differs in several ways from the music played by the
> nationally popular horn-driven big swing bands
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_band> of the same era. In Western
> bands, even fully orchestrated bands, vocals, and other instruments
> followed the fiddle's lead. Additionally, although popular horn bands
> tended to arrange and score their music, most Western bands improvised
> freely, either by soloists or collectively."
>
> On Sep 27, 2022, at 4:56 PM, Rick Dempster <rickdempster33 at xxxxx>
> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 27 Sep 2022, 23:23 Slim Heilpern, <slim at xxxxx> wrote:
>
> Here's the thing, it's all about what you do with it.
>
>
> For instance, accordion was prominent in the Tex Williams and Spade Cooley
>
> western swing bands and Jeff Taylor of The Time Jumpers carries on that
>
> tradition beautifully (great player!). I can certainly see how a harmonica
>
> player could fill that stylistic slot, especially on chromatic, if one had
>
> the chops.
>
>
> - Slim
>
>
>
>
> Define "western swing". Until the post war era, it wasn't even  known as
> that. The term originally meant outfits like Basie, et al, from Kansas
> City. How's about "Bluegrass bassoon"?
> RD
>
>
>
>