Western swing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the musical genre. For the popular western swing steel guitar tuning, see E9 tuning.

Western swing is, first and foremost, a style of jazz[1][2][3] which evoloved in the American Southwest among the region's popular Western string bands.[4][5] Much of it is dance music with an up-tempo beat[6][7] consisting of an eclectic combination of rural, cowboy, polka, and folk music, blended with a jazzy "swing", with a tip of the hat to New Orleans jazz and blues,[8] and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar. [9] Later incarnations have also included overtones of bebop. The similarities between Western Swing and Gypsy jazz are often noted.[10]

Contents

[edit] History

Western Swing originated in the dance halls of small towns throughout the Lower Great Plains in the 1920s and 1930s[11][12] Evolving from the old house parties and ranch dances where fiddlers and guitarists that entertained dancers. Bob Wills and Milton Brown essentially created the stylistic blend in the early 1930s as co-founders of the stringband that became the Light Crust Doughboys, who played dancehalls and took advantage of the new medium of radio broadcasting. That helped the style gain a much wider following through the music of Wills and his Texas Playboys in Tulsa, Brown in Fort Worth and the Light Crust Doughboys, also in Fort Worth.

Western swing differed in several ways from the music played by the nationally popular horn driven big swing bands of the same era. In Western bands—even the fully orchestrated bands—vocals and the other instruments followed the fiddle's lead. Additionally, most Western bands improvised freely, either by soloists or collectively. Popular horn bands tended to arrange and score their music.[13] The rhythm and the use of electrically amplified stringed instruments, especially the steel and guitar, also gave the music a distinctive sound.[14]

Bob Wills recalled the early days of Western swing music in a 1949 interview. "Here's the way I figure it" he said, "We sure not tryin' to take credit for swingin' it." Speaking of Milt Brown and himself—working with popular songs done by Jimmie Davis, the Skillet Lickers, Jimmie Rodgers, songs he'd learned from his father and others—he said that "We'd ... pull these tunes down an set 'em in a dance category. ... They wouldn't be a runaway ... and just lay a real beat behind it an' the people would began 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."[15]

[edit] Origin of the name

Western swing in its beginnings had no name—it was just dance music. Just the term "swing", meaning big band dance music, wasn't used until after the 1932 hit "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)".[16] Recording companies came up with several names before World War II trying to market it—"Hillbilly", "Old Time Music", "Novelty Hot Dance", "Hot String Band", and even "Texas Swing" for music coming out of Texas and Louisiana.[17] Most of the big Western dance bandleaders simply referred to themselves as Western bands and their music as Western dance music, many adamantly refusing the "hillbilly" label.[18]

Finally in about 1942, Spade Cooley's promoter, Foreman Phillips, began using "Western Swing" to advertise his client.[19][20] The first use in print was a 1944 song book by Spade Cooley titled Western Swing.[21] After that the music was "Western Swing".

[edit] Height of Popularity

Western Swing reached its "golden age" during the years preceding WWII, blossomed on the West Coast during the war, and was extremely popular throughout the West. [1] In the 1940s the Light Crust Doughboys broadcasts went out over 170 radio stations in the South and Southwest, and were heard by millions of people.[2] Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys played Western Swing nightly in Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma from 1934 until 1943. Crowds at Cain's were as large as 6,000 people. Daily shows were broadcast on KVOO radio, which had a far reaching 50,000 watt signal. Regular shows continued until 1958 with Johnnie Lee Wills as the bandleader. [3]

According to one report crowds of ten thousand people were not uncommon at Western Swing dances in the Los Angeles area. Another eyewitness report describes the California crowds as "huge". [4]

Fred "Poppa" Calhoun, piano player for Milton Brown, vividly remembed how people in Texas and Oklahoma danced when Bob Wills played. "They were pretty simple copules dances, two steps and the Lindy Hop with a few western twirls added for good measure. By 1937 the Jitterbug hit big in the West and allowed much greater freedom of movement. But the Jitterbug was different in the West. It wasn't all out boogie woogie; it was 'swingier' - more smooth and subdued." [22]

Another orchestra from this era was The Duece Spriggens Orchestra. They played nightly at the Western Palisades Ballroom, on Santa Monica Pier...then known as the largest ballroom on the West Coast. The music was broadcast as a radio show, The Cavalcade of Western Music, on station KFI. They also appeared on the Melody Roundup radio program. [5]

Some credit Spade Cooley with coining the term 'Western swing' in the early 1940s, as a play on Benny Goodman's reputation as the "King of Swing." At least one historian and two web sites, however, credit Cooley’s then manager Bert “Foreman” Phillips with creating the term. [6][7][8]

[edit] Decline and Lasting Influence

The decline of Western Swing in the years following the War reflected the waxing and waning of the more mainstream big-band sound. Asleep at the Wheel band leader Ray Benson relates his experiences with reintroducing Western Swing to Texans in an interview. [9]

Moon Mullican, who had performed with Western Swing bands, later found more success as a solo artist and his 1940s and 1950s hits often were done with a more western swing than pure country feel.

Western swing was one of the many genres to influence rockabilly, and rock 'n' roll. Bill Haley's music from the late 1940s and early 1950s is often referred to as Western Swing. Haley's band from 1948 and 1949 was named Bill Haley and The 4 Aces of Western Swing.

Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Asleep at the Wheel helped make Austin, Texas a major center of Western Swing beginning in the 1970s. The annual South by Southwest music festival and the Austin City Limits PBS TV show have contributed to this success. [10] One regional name for Western Swing is simply "Texas."

[edit] Notable bands and artists from the early era

(See also Category:Western swing musical groups and Category:Western swing performers.)

[edit] Early groups (includes leaders)

  • Hank Thompson and His Brazos Valley Boys
  • Jimmy Heap and the Melody Masters
  • Bill Boyd and the Cowboy Ramblers
  • Doug Bine and his Dixie Ramblers
  • The Flinthill Boys
  • The Fort Worth Doughboys
  • Pee Wee King and His Golden West Cowboys
  • The Hi-Flyers
  • W. Lee O'Daniel and his Hillbilly Boys
  • The Light Crust Doughboys
  • "Texas" Jim Lewis and His Lone Star Cowboys
  • Ole Rasmussen and his Nebraska Cornhuskers
  • Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies
  • Jimmie Revard and his Oklahoma Playboys
  • Herb Goddard and his Oklahoma Wanderers
  • Deuce Spriggens and His Orchestra
  • Spade Cooley and His Orchestra
  • The Port Arthur Jubileers (Jimmie Hart & His Merrymakers)
  • Dude Martin and His Roundup Gang
  • Bill Haley and the Saddlemen (later - Bill Haley & His Comets)
  • Adolph Hofner and his San Antonians
  • The Southernaires
  • The Southern Melody Boys
  • Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys
  • The Texas Swingsters
  • Cliff Bruner and The Texas Wanderers
  • Al Dexter and His Troopers
  • Ocie Stockard and the Wanderers
  • The Tune Wranglers
  • T.J. "Red" Arnall and His Western Aces
  • W.A. "Bill" "Slumber" Nichols and His Western Aces
  • Tex Williams and the Western Caravan
  • Billy Gray and His Western Okies
  • Dave Stogner and The Western Rythmnaires
  • The Washboard Wonders
  • Smokey Wood and the Wood Chips
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

[edit] Early performers

  • Carolina Cotton (yodeler who sang with several Western Swing groups)
  • Tommy Duncan, the lead singer with the Texas Playboys
  • Leon Huff, guitarist and lead singer with the Hillbilly Boys (later with Wills)
  • Buddy Jones
  • Billie "Tiny" Moore
  • Moon Mullican
  • Hank Penny
  • Herb Remington
  • Floyd Tillman
  • Speedy West
  • Kitty Williamson ("Texas Rose"), lead fiddle & sometimes vocal with the Hillbilly Boys)
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

[edit] Later bands and artists of the genre (or influenced by it)

[edit] Groups

[edit] Individuals

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Boyd, Jazz of the Southwest, p. ix-x: "They were and are in the same league with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, and many others, not in the 'hillbilly' category where they were assigned by record executives who could not decide how to classify improvisation played on string instruments. Western swing musicians have nothing against country music and in fact recognize country music as one of many tributaries of their music. But 'country' is an inappropriate and misleading label for western swing."
  2. ^ Townsend, San Antonio Rose, p. 63: "Without exception, every former member of Wills's band interviewed for this study concluded, as Wills himself did, that what they were playing was always closer in music, lyrics, and style to jazz and swing that any other genre."
  3. ^ Price, "Jazz Guitar and Western Swing", p. 81: "Clearly western swing deserves its place in any study of jazz, and its guitarists, while always a breed apart, were and are central to the music, intimately bound to its origins and evolution."
  4. ^ Brink, "Western Swing", p. 550: "In many ways, western swing music is a manifestation of the cultural forces that came together where the geographical isolation and harsh living conditions of the frontier met the electronic age. People still living in dugouts and sod houses on the Southern High Plains became a part of popular culture through the radio and the jukebox, mingling their musical talents and tastes with the new sounds introduced to them through the accessibility of phonographs and the airwaves."
  5. ^ Logsdon, "Folk Songs", p. 299: "In the 1920s Bob Wills, a fiddle player son of a cotton farmer in West Texas, started playing ranch-house dances. His desire to play dances eventually developed a dance genre know as western swing. While the music has elements of jazz and blues, it actually evolved from the specific merger of cowboy and farmer folk song and instrumention."
  6. ^ Townsend, San Antonio Rose, p. 38: "According to Leon McAuliffe, one of the musicians who later helped Jim Rob pioneer western swing, this emphasis on music for dancing was the principal reason Wills's music was so different from music in the East that also had rural and folk roots: 'The basic difference in country and western music, if there is any way of defining it, is that west of the Mississippi River when we played, we played for dancing. East of the Mississippi they played a show, or they played in a schoolhouse, just for people to sit and listen, visual or audible entertainment and not for dancing'."
  7. ^ Malone, Stars of Country Music, p. 170: "Wills knew dance audience too well to sing about divorce, the heartbreak of broken homes, or poverty during the Depression. ... Bob had fun performing, and he tried to play music that created an atmosphere of gaiety and happiness. Everything that contributed to this atmosphere—the beat, the jazz choruses, the syncopation, and the extemporaneous improvisation—remained basic to his syle until the end of his career."
  8. ^ Price, "Jazz Guitar and Western Swing", p. 82: "The assimilation was so thorough that western swing, at the hands of an accomplished bandleader like Bob Wills, Milton Brown or Spade Cooley, cannot be seen as ersatz anything. It was from the start—or at least from its earliest documentation on record—its own music, something more than its parts, allowing a freedom of expression offered neither by traditional country music (whch would have no part in improvisation or between-the-beats rhythm) nor by the structured jazz community (in which no southwestern bumpkin would be likely to feel welcome)."
  9. ^ Coffey, Merl Lindsay and His Oklahoma Nite Riders, pp. 3-4: "By 1938, Merle [Lindsay] was leading a versatile dance band that numbered as many as ten pieces; it was a fairly typical Oklahoma western swing band of the day in its lineup, along similar lines to the Texas Playboys, ... with twin fiddles, three horns, steel guitar and rhythm (including drums, an instrument far more common at the time in Oklahoma bands than in Texas and elsewhere)."
  10. ^ Ginell, Milton Brown and the Founding of Western Swing, p. xxii: "Although his influence canot be overestimated, Milton Brown has been placed in a category in which he did not belong during his lifetime. In the early years of western swing's evolution, the genre bore little similarity to country music. 'Hillbilly music,' as it was known then, meant artists such as Gid Taner and his Skillet Lickers, Uncle Dave Macon, and the Carter Family, along with homespun radio programs like WSM Nashville's Grand Ole Opry and WLS Chicago's National Barn Dance. The performers on these shows learned much of their material from traditional folk sources. As musicians, they were generally self-taught and rarely read music. If they knew anything at all about blues or jazz, they looked down on them as inferior, alien sounds. The Brownies would have felt more comfortable in the small jazz clubs of Europe, playing alongside Django Reinhardt and the Quintet in the Hot club of France, than in checkered overalls on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry."
  11. ^ Kienzle, Southwest Shuffle, pp. vii-xi: Preface.
  12. ^ Carney, "Country Music", p. 535: "Seven substyles of country music emerged during the twentieth century. Four of these originated in the Great Plains states of Texas and Oklahoma: singing cowboy, western swing, honky-tonk, and country rock."
  13. ^ Boyd, "Western Swing", p. 208: "But modernization did not diminish the unique and basically rural character of western swing, which remained distinct from mainstream horn jazz because of the prominent place given to fiddles and guitars, both standard and steel. The fiddle was the lead instrument in any western swing band, even those with horns, and every other instrumentalist adjusted to the fiddlers' stylings and preferences for sharp keys. There were also rhythmic differences between western swing bands and horn bands. Western swing was dance music, with the emphasis on a clearly discernible and uncluttered beat pattern. Western swing bands tended to use a highly syncopated rhythmic bass (i.e. \tfrac{2}{4} time signature), moving to the more relaxed swing-four (i.e., \tfrac{4}{4} time signature) only to back certain soloists. This gave western swing bands more rhythmic drive and an overall more aggressive character than most horn bands. The amount of improvisation also was significantly different between western swing and mainstream horn bands. Most of the nationally know horn bands were populated by reading musicians who were more comfortable with scores than long stretches of solo or collective improvisation. But western swing musicians were largely self-taught non-readers who improvised out of necessity and the need to express their individuality in their music."
  14. ^ Wolff, Country Music, "Big Balls in Cowtown: Western Swing From Fort Worth to Fresno", p. 71: "The instrumentation of both Brown's and Wills' bands, in fact, was one of the major distinctions that set their music apart from either straight hillbilly or jazz. For starters, the Brownies featured Bob Dunn, a steel guitarist who is credited as the first country artist on record to use an electric string instrument. Wills had his answer to Dunn in McAuliffe, whose "Steel Guitar Rag" became hugely popular and brought the new amplified sound to the public's attention."
  15. ^ Wills, Bob. 1949 interview from Honky Tonks, Hymns and the Blues.
  16. ^ Marble, Freedom On My Mind, p. 57: "The Song 'It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)' is notable because it gave a motto ('The Swing Era') to the 1930s and to jazz music in general"
  17. ^ Lang, Smile When You Call Me a Hillbilly, p. 89: "Prior to the war [WWII], record companies labeled early western swing as 'Novelty Hot Dance' or 'Hot String Band' music. In 1941, the Victor recording company referred to its latest release of Texas and Louisiana country groups as 'Texas Swing.'
  18. ^ Lange, Smile When You Call Me A Hillbilly, p. 98: "Wills himself proved an extremely capable musical politician, sharply refuting any association with southeastern country music ('Please don't anybody confuse us with none of them hillbilly outfits') ..."
  19. ^ Logsdon, "The Cowboy's Bawdy Music", p.137: "The term 'western swing' was not used until Foreman Phillips, a promoter-disc jockey, used it to describe Spade Cooley in 1942."
  20. ^ Komorowski, Spade Cooley, p. 4: " He [Spade Cooley]] promptly proclaimed himself the 'King of Western Swing', the first time the term was used to describe this style of music, and it was one that stuck."
  21. ^ Lang, Smile When You Call Me a Hillbilly, p. 89: In October 1944, Billboard made the following announcement, unceremoniously giving the subgenre its common label for the first time in a national publication: 'Spade Cooley will put out 25 of his original tunes, together with an album of band numbers and suggestions on arrangements for Western Bands. Book to be titled Western Swing.' "
  22. ^ The Complete Book of Country Swing & Western Dancing and a Bit about Cowboys Peter Livingston Livingston/Boulder Books 1981 ISBN 0-385-17601-5 page 44

[edit] Bibliography

  • Boyd, Jean Ann. Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. ISBN 0-292-70859-9
  • Boyd, Jean A. "Western Swing: Working-Class Southwestern Jazz of the 1930s and 1940s". Perspectives on American Music, 1900-1950 (ch. 7, pp. 193-214), edited by Michael Saffle. Routledge, 2000. ISBN 0-8153-2145-7
  • Brink, Pamela H. "Western Swing". Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, David J. Wishart (ed.), p. 550. University of Nebraska Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8032-4787-7
  • Carney, George O. "Country Music". Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, David J. Wishart (ed.), pp. 535-537. University of Nebraska Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8032-4787-7
  • Coffey, Kevin. Merl Lindsay and his Oklahoma Nite Riders; 1946-1952. (Krazy Kat KKCD 33, 2004) booklet.
  • Ginell, Cary. Milton Brown and the Founding of Western Swing. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994. ISBN 0-252-02041-3
  • Ginell, Cary; Kevin Coffey. Discography of western swing and hot string bands, 1928-1942. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. ISBN 0-313-31116-1
  • Kienzle, Rich. Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz. New York: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-94102-4
  • Komorowski, Adam. Spade Cooley: Swingin' The Devil's Dream. (Proper PVCD 127, 2003) booklet.
  • Lange, Jeffrey J.Smile When You Call Me a Hillbilly: Country Music's Struggle for Respectability, 1939-1954. ISBN 0-8203-2623-2
  • Logsdon, Guy. "The Cowboy's Bawdy Music". The Cowboy: Six-Shooters, Songs, and Sex (pp. 127-138) edited by Charles W. Harris and Buck Rainey. University of Oklahoma Press, 2001. ISBN 0-8061-1341-3
  • Logsdon, Guy. "Folk Songs". Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, David J. Wishart (ed.), pp. 298-299. University of Nebraska Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8032-4787-7
  • Malone, Bill C.; Judith McCulloh (eds.) Stars of Country Music: Uncle Dave Macon to Johnny Rodriguez. University of Illinois Press, 1975. ISBN 0-252-00527-9
  • Marble, Manning; John McMillian; Nishani Frazier (eds.). Freedom on My Mind: The Columbia Documentary History of the African American Experience. Columbia University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-231-10890-7
  • Price, Michael H. "Jazz Guitar and Western Swing". pp. 81-88 The Guitar in Jazz: An Anthology, James Sallis (ed.). University of Nebraska Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8032-4250-6
  • Townsend, Charles. San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob wills. University of Illinois Press, 1986. ISBN 0-252-01362-X
  • Wetlock, E. Clyde; Richard Drake Saunders (eds.). Music and dance in Texas, Oklahoma, and the Southwest. Hollywood, CA: Bureau of Musical Research, 1950.
  • Wills, Bob. 1949 interview from Honky Tonks, Hymns and the Blues. Part 2: "Raising the Roof", first broadcast by NPR July-September 2003. Written by Kathie Farnell, Margaret Moos Pick, Steve Rathe.
  • Wolff, Kurt; Orla Duane. Country Music: The Rough Guide. Rough Guides, 2000. ISBN 1-85828-534-8
  • Zolten, Jerry. Western Swingtime Music: A Cool Breeze in the American Desert. Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine. Volume 23/Number 2, 1974.

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