Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys - The Bob Wills Anthology

We do a lot of influences here - personal and cultural - but we don't often go way back. This is WAY BACK. It was Wills and his iconoclastic cohorts that set the stage for so much that came later. Scotty Moore, responsible for one of the greatest guitar solos ever (the second 12 bar break - not the first - in Hound Dog), counted Wills as his major influence. And the list continues.

Wills and his boys (among the best musicians of the era) swung hard, and three quarters of a century later the ease and nonchalance of their recordings can be deceptive until you realize that they were creating something that had never been heard before.

This is my go-to for long road trips across the West and nothing beats ending a hot dusty day with a little Bob Wills and a couple of cold ones.

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amg:

Bob Wills' name will forever be associated with Western swing. Although he did not invent the genre single-handedly, he did popularize the genre and changed its rules. In the process, he reinvented the rules of popular music. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys were a dance band with a country string section that played pop songs as if they were jazz numbers. Their music expanded and erased boundaries between genres. It was also some of the most popular music of its era. Throughout the '40s, the band was one of the most popular groups in the country and the musicians in the Playboys were among the finest of their era. As the popularity of Western swing declined, so did Wills' popularity, but his influence is immeasurable. From the first honky tonkers to Western swing revivalists, generations of country artists owe him a significant debt, as do certain rock and jazz musicians. Wills was a maverick and his spirit infused American popular music of the 20th century with a renegade, virtuosic flair.

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