Don’t get to hear enough of this stuff these days. Just watched Last of the Breed on PBS and it reminded me of the good old days, Bob Wills and the Texans Playboys, Asleep at the Wheel and all the dudes who sang and played in this genre.
Western swing is a style of popular music that evolved in the 1920s in the American Southwest among the region’s popular Western string bands. Fundamentally an outgrowth of jazz[3], much Western swing is dance music with an up-tempo beat consisting of an eclectic combination of rural, cowboy, polka, and folk music, New Orleans jazz, or Dixieland, and blues blended with a jazzy “swing”. and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar. Later incarnations have also included overtones of bebop. The similarities between Western swing and Gypsy jazz are often noted.
Western swing originated in the dance halls of small towns throughout the Lower Great Plains in the 1920s and 1930s evolving from the old house parties and ranch dances where fiddlers and guitarists entertained dancers. According to guitarist Merle Travis, “Western Swing is nothing more than a group of talented country boys, unschooled in music, but playing the music they feel, beating a solid two-four rhythm to the harmonies that buzz around their brains. When it escapes in all its musical glory, my friend, you have Western Swing.” During the early developmental phase an uncoordinated but parallel progression occurred with scores of groups from San Antoinio to Shreveport to Oklahoma City playing different repertories with same basic sound.”
Bob Wills and Milton Brown are considered to be the seminal band in this style when in the early 1930s they co-founded the stringband that became the Light Crust Doughboys, playing dancehalls and taking advantage of radio broadcasting.
I tried but I have so many widely varying interests just couldn’t come up with a right name or a right way to hook it into the network. Tell ya what. Since you have a blog, would you care to offer your expert advice?
You not being able to come up with a name when have used about a billion names here is rather hilarious.
Why thank you sir but a blog name that speaks to the content is far different than a user name, now ain’t it? I guess this means your expertise is not mine for the asking, huh? ;-)
