People who interviewed people in this band in the 1970s said none of them thought of themselves as part of Country music and they all saw themselves as part of Jazz
@@stewartfenton7660 Well Bob started out with Milton who I haven’t heard as much as Bob, but everyone acknowledges Milton and the Brownies as the ground breaking band of Western Swing. I was born in Tulsa and my father said a lot of people really liked Johnny Lee Wills after he took over when Bob left Cains for the west coast. I had the opportunity to put together the New Texas Playboys in Ft Worth in the 80s while they were trying to produce Deep Within My Heart, the Bob Wills life story and just like Johnny Gimble told me Diane Wills might be hard to work with, Johnny was on board to produce the group for Warner Brothers West, and she and her sisters were ok at first and then just went sideways. So it’s a long sad story, that I haven’t mentioned until now since most are gone. But no matter that movie would be a hit if done right.
@@ronniebishop2496 and once more, I recognised your name, and I see I've talked to you about Bob and Milton before. I'm going to check your own stuff out in a minute, got a few chores first.
mom and Dad went see BoB Wills in 1949 and right in the middle of a song Bob stopped his playing and said somebody give that kid a bottle that kid was me,l guess l was crying and unruly, anyway Dad always told that story. like l said l was that kid im 76 years old now not crying so much but still unruly according to my wife.LOL
Heureuse de connaître la naissance de San Antonio Rose what I like also by Merle haggard...RIP with BIng Grosby thanks countrymen....respect ❤️❤️❤️👍👍👍for the game of violon
Leo Fender was big on this music. he gave the prototype for the Strat to Eldon shamblin who was at the time Wills' guitarist and band manager. These guys saw themselves more as part of Jazz and tried to be up to date. Unlikle almost everyone of their location and generation, Wills was in favor of rock and roll, he loved it as you can see with Billy Jack Wills' Bottle Babby Boogie even thouse these guys were more Swing era generation players
The musicianship is superb All the vocals are real good Bob Wills is a good guy and a fine Texas gentleman Bob Wills is still the king, ... no doubt about it
@John Lee it's just that You Will find the western swing in the Country genre aswell as bluegrass, honky tonk,rockin' Country, when You search Music in Spotify for example,anyway I call it Cowboy Music 🤠
@John Lee You are right un ONE thing it's different rhtym , when You listen Roy Accuf and Bob wills their Music sounds different and both of them we're considered King of COUNTRY Music ,and ir You don't know look for the Waylon Jennings "Bob Will is still the King" and I think that Waylon knew what he said ir sang .
FINALLY, I get to see steel guitarist Gene Crownover identified by name! He was great. Also second steel guitarist Maurice Anderson, whom I saw play many years later at Texas Steel Guitar Jamboree. TWO steel guitars Love it!
Gene is a real star, too bad he was not on more recordings. He really smokes it on the Liberty Records sides, the reunion with tommy duncan. He was very unique and very blusey but sweet. This is a kind of B team whoever Wills could get out on the road, some of my faves from this time like THE GREAT JOE HOLLY and Glen Reeves are not present
I am going to dedicate this Rock a Bye Baby Blues to my favorite Wolfman, BRIAN LEE, Saturday's awesome Doo Wop show that plays ALL our favorites from 4pm-6pm!! AAA-OOOOOOOOO!!
This is wills well past his peak just before his health as well as changing musical taste was going to put his band into a further nose dive. You want to hear a good Wills band you go get the liberty recordings in 1961 or 2 just a year before this, or any of the recordings Wills Made for Columbia from the late 1930s to 1947 or the Mercury Recordings in the late 40s and early 50s. This is nice, but the level of musicianship here and singing is below what Wills could have offered his audiences from 1938 to 1953 or 60-61
In the mid 1930s Wills was chased out of Texas by W Lee O Daniel who later became governor. His success as a band leader came entirely after he left when he first lived in Oklahoma and later after 1940 when he moved to California. He did move back to Dallas in the 1950s briefly and had a big club called the Ranch House in Dallas. It failed--Wills adoration of alcohol was a big problem in his life and career--and Wills sold his club to a shady character you may have heard of called Jack Ruby.
oh most actual recordings of Wills band before this, even the 1961-62 Liberty records sessions with a few of these guys were much better than this. None of Bob's great fiddlers like Jessie Ashlock, Louie Tierney, THE GREAT JOE HOLLEY appear here, nor do his great vocalist THOMAS ELMER DUNCAN, nor does THE GREAT JOHNNY GIMBLE who played fiddle and electric mandolin, nor do any of the great horn players who worked for Wills. This is nice, but this is kind of droopy and second or third rate compared to the recordings Wills made from the late 1930s until around 1960. This is the band starting to decline as this music was outmoded, and Wills health and his perrenial drinking problems were dragging it down.
One of the best dance bands ever and to have Gene Crownover and Maurice Anderson on the same band it doesn't get any better. ....and yes Bob wills was an amazing player
Didn't someone else play that tune on Steel pretty good. Love Gene and the liberty records sides he cut, but Leon both with Wills and later with his own Cimmaron Boys band twas great.
@@ronniebishop2496 Leon invented what? If you mean "Steel Guitar Rag," yes he probably did, and it's great. But I gather he learned a lot from Bob Dunn, steel player for the overlooked Milton Brown.
@@stewartfenton7660 I think it’s steel guitar rag. But all those guys learned from each other, now Kieth Coleman one of his fiddle players was said to have invented some of those tunes Bob played but I’m not sure if whoever told me that was right.
Joe Andrews really slays "You Can't Break A Heart" at 9:20. (He takes a break from playing the Fender Bass) Hear how he holds onto every note until it has to change? Pure talent. Very classy band. If you had talent then Bob Wills would get it all out of you. Plain and simple. They let the music speak for itself.
the host got it right when he says "you really get a lot of music out of these boys" -- what a standard of musicianship Bob Wills set for his band! I realize this performance is well past the acknowledged peak of Wills career, but this is still top-shelf, and all with a goddamn cigar tucked in his mouth!
Everything you say is true I read somewhere Bob never put a playlist together he shouted out the next tune and brutha if you didn't know it you were walking down the road . and yes o'l Bob was getting a little past his prime but you can still see that proud Banny Rooster strut out from time to time. What a fuckin genius he was
yeah first time I seriously listen to Wills when the Anthology came out around 1971, first thought was this man must have made a lot of money. In 1945 he was the biggest grossing music act in the USA. Lots of band leaders in all forms of music are like that. the leader just knows what he is going to call and you better know what is going to be played from the cure, although Wills or Tomky duncan would usually announce the tune first. I think more than 300 different musicans have been documented playing for Wills and at least 150 appeared on his recordings
Somewhere on YT is a later color TV clip c.1966 of what had to be the last iteration of Wills' legendary band. Wills was a loyal customer of Leo Fender going back to the 1940's and would not allow his players to play non Fender equipment on stage,so this clip is almost a catalog shot of 1960's Fender amps and guitars. And for all the OCD gearheads, the mikes for Bob and the other fiddle player are 1950's Sennheiser Labor W models, beyond uber rare even in 1963. And then there's all that great Bob Wills music...................................
Thank you and Fender loved this music and often designed his instruments to the desires of Western swing players like Eldon Shamblin, Wills' long time guitarist, band manager and arranger often giving Wills band members prototype of new instruments and equipment to test out on the road. This band is actually a less loud, less electric/metal sounding band than the Playboys band in the immediate post WWII period best captured in the Tiffany Transcriptions. Other musicians like Rose Maddox said this was the loudest band she ever heard, in the 40sl. This is these guys 15-20 years after their hot period with really nobody else but Wills left over from the glory days in the late 1930s and 1940s when they had big national hits
the song "you can't break a heart" was recorded 64 or 65 and Bob in this video says it's a new song. Plus that's a Fender jazz bass would make it around this time as well
All that Fender gear back then is still sought after today ,the Fender P bass has got that beat thumping ! I listen and play hard rock these guys where the bomb back then !
The bassist is playing a Fender Jazz Bass, NOT a Precision Bass! See the double concentric knobs and the 'F' stamped chrome bridge cover? The P-Bass never had either of these.
Leo Fender was a fan of this and other Western Swing bands and originally crafted his solid bpdy electric instruments for Western Swing. The first Strat was given by Fender to Eldon Shamblin who played guitar for Wills in the 30s and 40s and would return and come back across the late 40s and 50s and sometimes managed the band. the great Rose Maddox said the playboys band of the 1940s was the loudest band she ever heard.
Google Junior Barnard, Wills great guitarist on and off from 46 to 49. He did his own electronics to make his archtop guitar have a total metal sounding electric sound. These guys were very modern and not at all old fashioned, and not at all conservative. Wills took a big stand in the 1950s saying Rock and Roll was just younger people doing what he had been doing all along.
I wanna know who the 19 were that hit the dislike on this youtube video. *I got a can of somethin' to give you if you'll kindly tell me where you might be found.
Very good band. ..and yes Bob wills was a great fiddle player. ..When you have Gene Crownover and Maurice Anderson on the same band it doesn't get any better playing steel. .and as far as the teeth go Idk what you mean other than Joe Andrews. ..Billy Jack., Bob, Luke Maurice and Gene all had there teeth lol great music
Anthony Jones Back in the day, they did not have good tooth paste, or soaps like we have, no need to make fun. He suffered, and when they went home, they had it hard. The worked very hard.
I love Gene, but if you want to hear steel with Wills, you need to listen to Leon MacAuliffe in the 30s up to 1942, Noel Boggs after the war and THE GREAT HERBIE REMMINGTON who took over after Boggs went with Spade Cooley and you might want to listen to the great Joacquim Murphy who preceded Boggs with Cooley and his great Oklahoma Stomp
+Hagfan789 Anyone raised in West Texas had ugly teeth---but recognized by dentists everywhere that they were the strongest, healthiest teeth in the world---all those minerals, dontcha know!!!!
Yeah wills was an outspoken supporter of Rock and Roll when most people of his age period let along in the music business were condemning . There is one clip from a movie they did in the early 1940s where you can see Bob Wills do the Moon Walk!
Pelu Maad Thanks a lot, Pelu; I'm a blues fan and have a couple of Mr. Weldon's tracks, but you've reminded me of how much I like them, so I'll get more! :D
Rohan Dawson This was not the first band to play Western Swing. In my opinion the first true Western Swing band would probably be the Light Crust Doughboys with Milton Brown as the leader. Milton Brown and Bob Wills kind of co-founded the style. Wills later formed his own band (Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, featured in this video).The predominate instruments or "vital elements" are the fiddle and pedal steel guitar. If you have any more questions just ask. I gave you a very brief history of the style. Lol
milton brwon and the musical brownies were around at the same time I think the light crust Doughboys were first im not sure. Impretty sure Bob was in that band
+Russ Tolman is correct. Eldon Shamblin is playing a Fender Jaguar here, not a Jazzmaster. Note narrow pickups and chrome control plates, clearly visible at 7:55. And that means that even if Leo Fender gave Shamblin the very first Jaguar (and he might have -- this was Leo's favorite band, and Shamblin got the first custom-color Strat, among other things), this can't be any earlier than 1962 or so.
John that is not Eldon Shamblin on the guitar Billy jack plays some as well as luke Wills Bob's brother's not great players on the guitar but Billy jack was a great dummer and luke played wonderful bass
Vocalists--when he didnt have a standard vocalist like THE GREAT THOMAS ELMER DUNCAN, he would let any band member brade enough sing. On this show he has bass player George Andrews (who also fiddled) and his brothers Luke and Billy Jack sing
Bob into's it as 'Rose of Old Pawnee' at about 1:58. Have many Wills albums, but have never heard it before. Prefer his hot western swing style over this straight two-step ballad style.
Bob Wills was a drunk! He had great musicians & he was a good fiddle player but every video & recording that I have ever seen, it seems he has to be the center of attention.
Well there’s a real good reason for that and that’s because people wouldn’t even come to the show if they knew he wasn’t going to be there, because he was the center of attention for me, and Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and just about every musician in country and western music. That’s your answer. lol. I think you just made the dumbest remark I’ve ever heard proving you know nothing about this lol. Nothing.
He was one many drinking entertainers. Certainly insecure, he needed the attention. He put together some great music with some very good musicians. The playboys ended up in Roseville CA with Billy Jack. Tiny Moore was part of that band. You will see tiny with The New Riders of the Purple Sage and Commander Cody.
