Western swing

Western swing is, first and foremost, a fusion of country music, several styles of jazz, pop music and blues aimed at dancers. Much of it is dance music with an up-tempo beat and a decidedly Southwestern United States regional flavor. It consists of an eclectic combination of country, cowboy, polka,Gypsy jazz, Mexican, and folk music, blended with a jazzy "swing", with a tip of the hat to New Orleans jazz and blues, 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.

It originated in the dance halls of small towns throughout the Lower Great Plains in the 1920's and 1930's.^[1], evolving from the old house parties and ranch dances where fiddlers and guitarists 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 (until his untimely death in 1936) and the Light Crust Doughboys, also in Fort Worth. It reached its "golden age" during the years preceding post-WWII and blossomed on the West Coast during the War. Its decline in the years following the War reflected the waxing and waning of the more mainstream big-band sound. Spade Cooley coined the term 'Western swing' in the early 1940's, a play on Benny Goodman's reputation as the "King of Swing."

Notable bands and artists from the early era

• Al Dexter and His Troopers
• The Light Crust Doughboys
• Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys
• Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies
• The Southern Melody Boys
• The Hi-Flyers
• The Tune Wranglers
• Adolph Hofner and his San Antonians
• Floyd Tillman
• Bill Boyd and the Cowboy Ramblers
• Dude Martin and His Roundup Gang
• Hank Penny
• Spade Cooley and His Orchestra
• Deuce Spriggens and His Orchestra
• Tex Williams and the Western Caravan
• "Texas" Jim Lewis and His Lone Star Cowboys
• Hank Thompson and His Brazos Valley Boys
• Bill Haley and the Saddlemen (later - Bill Haley and the Comets)
• The Fort Worth Doughboys
• Doug Bine and his Dixie Ramblers
• Jimmie Revard and his Oklahoma Playboys
• The Washboard Wonders
• Cliff Bruner's Texas Wanderers
• Buddy Jones
• Smokey Wood and the Wood Chips
• W. Lee O'Daniel and his Hillbilly Boys
• Carolina Cotton (yodeler who sang with several Western Swing groups)
• Ocie Stockard and the Wanderers

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

• Asleep at the Wheel
• Merle Haggard & the Strangers
• Willie Nelson
• Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen
• The Hot Club of Cowtown
• Wayne Hancock
• The Ditty Bops
• The Red Dirt Rangers
• Cami Stinson and the 'Round Town Riot
• Don Walser and the Pure Texas Band
• The Bebop Cowboys
• Wylie & The Wild West
• Red Brown & the Tune Stranglers

See also

List of swing/big band musicians

Endnotes

1. ^ Boyd, Jean Ann. Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. ISBN 0-292-70859-9
2. ^ Kienzle, Rich. Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz. New York: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-94102-4

Resources

• 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
• Wetlock, E. Clyde; Richard Drake Saunders (eds.). Music and dance in Texas, Oklahoma, and the Southwest. Hollywood, CA: Bureau of Musical Research, 1950.

External links

• Spade Cooley article in LA Times
• The Lucky Stars website
• Western Swing at Big Bands Database Plus
• Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys website
• Milton Brown bio at TSHA
• WesternSwing.com Links
• Popular Culture Excavation Site
• The Tune Stranglers website
• Western Swing Drumming
• A Short History of Western Swing
• Wylie & The Wild West

Listen

• Swingin' West radio-online Mike Gross-Fairfield University Student Radio 1-4pm EST Friday afternoons.
• Swingin' West Hour - Swingin' West — Hosted by TwangTownUSA ; available 24 hours-requires RealPlayer (two minute commercial introduction).
• The Western Hour—Western & Western Swing - Golden Graham — Hosted by TwangTownUSA ; requires RealPlayer (two minute commercial introduction).