Everything about Bob Wills totally explained
James Robert (Bob) Wills (
March 6,
1905 –
May 13,
1975) was an
American Western swing musician,
songwriter, and bandleader, considered by many music authorities one of the fathers of Western swing and called by his fans the "King of Western Swing."
New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma
He was born near
Kosse, Texas to Emma Lee Foley and John Tompkins Wills. His father was a
fiddle player who along with his grandfather, taught the young Wills to play the fiddle and the
mandolin. Wills spent his youth picking cotton and listening to adults sing their way through the day. "I don't know whether they made them up as they moved down the cotton rows or not," Wills once told Charles Townsend, author of
San Antonio Rose: The Life and Times of Bob Wills, "but they sang blues you never heard before."
After several years of drifting, "Jim Rob," then in his 20s, attended barber school, got married, and moved first to
Roy, New Mexico then to
Turkey, Texas (now considered his home town) to be a barber. He alternated barbering and fiddling even when he moved to
Fort Worth to pursue a career in music. It was there that while performing in a
medicine show, he learned comic timing and some of the famous "patter" he later delivered on his records. The show's owners gave him the nickname "Bob."
The fact that Wills made his professional debut in blackface is commented on Wills' daughter, Rosetta: "He had a lot of respect for the musicians and music of his black friends," Rosetta is quoted as saying on the Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys Web site. She remembers that her father was such a fan of
Bessie Smith, "he once rode 50 miles on horseback just to see her perform live." "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,
(External Link
) Jimmie Rodgers, 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."
After forming a new band, "The Playboys", and relocating to
Waco, Wills found enough popularity there to decide on a bigger market. They left Waco in January of
1934 for
Oklahoma City. Wills soon settled the renamed "Texas Playboys" in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, and began broadcasting noontime shows over the 50,000 watt
KVOO radio station. Their 12:30-1:15 Monday-Friday broadcasts became a veritable institution in the region.
Nearly all of the daily (except Sunday) shows originated from the stage of
Cain's Ballroom. In addition, they played dances in the evenings, including regular ones at the ballroom on Thursdays and Saturdays.
By
1935 Wills had added
horn,
reed players and
drums to the Playboys. The addition of
steel guitar whiz Leon McAuliffe in March, 1935 added not only a formidable instrumentalist but a second engaging vocalist. Wills himself largely sang
blues and sentimental
ballads.
With its
jazz sophistication, pop music and
blues influence, plus improvised
scats and
wisecrack commentary by Wills (something he learned clowning in those earlier medicine shows), the band became the first
superstars of the genre. Milton Brown's tragic and untimely death in 1936 had cleared the way for the Playboys.
Wills' 1938 recording of "Ida Red" served as a model for Chuck Berry's decades later version of the same song -
Maybellene.
In
1940 "
New San Antonio Rose" sold a million records and became the
signature song of The Texas Playboys. The song's title referred to the fact that Wills had recorded it as a fiddle instrumental in
1938 as "San Antonio Rose". By then, the Texas Playboys were virtually two bands: one a fiddle-guitar-steel band with rhythm section and the second a first-rate
big band able to play the day's
swing and
pop hits as well as
Dixieland.
In 1940 Wills, along with the Texas Playboys, co-starred with Tex Ritter in “Take Me Back to Oklahoma”. Other films would follow. In late 1942 after several band members had left the group, and as World War II raged, Wills joined the Army, but received a medical discharge in 1943.
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California
After leaving the Army in 1943 Wills moved to Hollywood and began to reorganize the Texas Playboys. He became an enormous draw in Los Angeles, where many of his Texas, Oklahoma and regional fans had also relocated during World War II.
He commanded enormous fees playing dances there, and began to make more creative use of
electric guitars to replace the big horn sections the Tulsa band had boasted. For a very brief period in
1944 the Wills band included twenty-three members. While on his first cross-country tour, he appeared on the
Grand Ole Opry and defied that conservative show's ban on using drums of any sort.
In
1945 Wills' dances were out drawing those of Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman
(External Link), and he'd moved to
Fresno, California. Then in
1947 he opened the Wills Point nightclub in
Sacramento and continued touring the Southwest and Pacific Northwest from Texas to Washington State.
During the postwar period,
KGO radio in
San Francisco syndicated a
Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys show recorded at the Fairmont Hotel. Many of these recordings survive today as the
Tiffany Transcriptions, and are available on
CD. They show off the band's strengths significantly, in part because the group wasn't confined to the three-minute limits of 78 rpm discs. They featured superb instrumental work from fiddlers Joe Holley and Jesse Ashlock, steel guitarists Noel Boggs and Herb Remington, guitarists
Eldon Shamblin and
Junior Barnard and electric mandolinist-fiddler
Tiny Moore. The original recorded version of Wills's "Faded Love," appeared on the Tiffanys as a fairly swinging instrumental unlike the ballad it became when lyrics were added in 1950.
Still a binge drinker, Wills became increasingly unreliable in the late 1940s, causing a rift with Tommy Duncan (who bore the brunt of audience anger when Wills's binges prevented him from appearing). It ended when he fired Duncan in the fall of
1948.
Winding Down
Having lived a lavish lifestyle in California, in 1949 Wills moved back to Oklahoma City, then went back on the road to maintain his payroll and Wills Point. An even more disastrous business decision came when he opened a second club, the Bob Wills Ranch House in
Dallas, Texas. Turning the club over to what was later revealed as dishonest managers left Wills in desperate financial straits with heavy debts to the
IRS for back
taxes that caused him to sell many assets including, mistakenly, the rights to "New San Antonio Rose." It wrecked him financially.
In 1950 Wills had two Top Ten hits, "Ida Red Likes the Boogie" and "Faded Love". He continued to tour and record through the 1950s into the early 1960s, despite the fact that Western Swing's popularity even in the Southwest, had greatly diminished. Even a 1958 return to KVOO where his younger brother Johnnie Lee Wills had maintained the family's presence, didn't produce the success he hoped for. He kept the band on the road into the 1960s. After two heart attacks, in 1965 he dissolved the Texas Playboys (who briefly continued as an independent unit) to perform solo with house bands. While he did well in Las Vegas and other areas, and made records for the
Kapp Records label, he was largely a forgotten figure — even though inducted into the
Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968. A 1969 stroke left his right side paralyzed, ending his active career.
Discography
| Top 40 Hits. |
| Year |
Position |
Title |
Label |
| 1944 |
3 |
New San Antonio Rose |
OKeh 5694 |
| 1944 |
2 |
We Might As Well Forget |
OKeh 6722 |
| 1944 |
2 |
You're From Texas |
" |
| 1945 |
1 |
Smoke On The Water |
OKeh 6736 |
| 1945 |
3 |
Hang Your Head In Shame |
" |
| 1945 |
1 |
Stars And Stripes On Iwo Jima |
OKeh 6742 |
| 1945 |
5 |
You Don't Care What Happens to Me |
" |
| 1945 |
1 |
Texas Playboy Rag |
Columbia 36841 |
| 1945 |
1 |
Silver Dew On The Blue Grass Tonight |
" |
| 1945 |
1 |
White Cross On Okinawa |
Columbia 36881 |
| 1946 |
1 |
New Spanish Two Step |
Columbia 16966 |
| 1946 |
3 |
Roly Poly |
" |
| 1946 |
2 |
Stay A Little Longer |
Columbia 37097 |
| 1946 |
4 |
I Can't Go On This Way |
" |
| 1947 |
5 |
I'm Gonna Be Boss From Now On |
Columbia 37205 |
| 1947 |
1 |
Sugar Moon |
Columbia 37313 |
| 1947 |
4 |
Bob Wills Boogie |
Columbia 37357 |
| 1948 |
4 |
Bubbles In My Beer |
MGM 10116 |
| 1948 |
8 |
Keeper Of My Heart |
MGM 10175 |
| 1948 |
15 |
Texarkana Baby |
Columbia 38179 |
| 1948 |
10 |
Thorn In My Heart |
MGM 10236 |
| 1950 |
10 |
Ida Red Likes The Boogie |
MGM K10570 |
| 1950 |
8 |
Faded Love |
MGM K10786 |
| 1960 |
5 |
Heart To Heart Talk |
Liberty 55260 |
| 1961 |
26 |
The Image Of Me |
Liberty 55264 |
Legacy
Wills' musical legacy, however, endured. His style influenced performers
Buck Owens and
Merle Haggard and helped to spawn a style of music now known as the
Bakersfield Sound (
Bakersfield, California was one of Wills' regular stops in his heyday). A 1970
tribute album by Haggard directed a wider audience to Wills' music, as did the appearance of younger "revival" bands like
Asleep at the Wheel and the growing popularity of longtime Wills disciple and fan
Willie Nelson. By 1971, Wills recovered sufficiently to travel occasionally and appear at tribute concerts. In 1973 he participated in a final reunion session with members of some the Texas Playboys from the 1930s to the 1960s. Merle Haggard was invited to play at this reunion. The session, scheduled for two days, took place in December, 1973, with the album to be titled
For the Last Time. Wills, speaking or attempting to holler, appeared on a couple tracks from the first day's session but suffered a stroke overnight. He had a more severe one a few days later. The musicians completed the album without him. Wills by then was comatose. He lingered until his death on
May 13,
1975.
Bob Wills was inducted into the
Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, and received the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.
During the
49th Grammy Awards,
Carrie Underwood performed his song "
San Antonio Rose."
From the 1970s until his 2002 death,
Waylon Jennings performed a song called "Bob Wills is Still the King". In addition, the
Rolling Stones performed this song live in
Austin, Texas at
Zilker Park for their DVD
The Biggest Bang.
Wills ranked #27 in
CMT's 40 Greatest Men in Country Music in 2003.
Today,
George Strait performs Bob Wills music live on concert tours and also records songs greatly reflecting the magic of Bob Wills and his Texas style swing.
Asleep at the Wheel, the
Austin, Texas-based western swing band has been paying homage to Bob Wills for over 35 years.
Hollywood films
In addition to the 1940 film
Take Me Back to Oklahoma, Wills appeared in
The Lone Prairie (1942),
Riders of the Northwest Mounted (1943),
Saddles and Sagebrush (1943),
The Vigilantes Ride (1943),
The Last Horseman (1944),
Rhythm Round-Up (1945),
Blazing the Western Trail (1945), and
Lawless Empire (1945). According to one source, he appeared in a total of 19 films.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Bob Wills'.
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