Music Review: Legends of Country Music - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys - Page 2

When singer Milton Brown left to form his own band, the Musicial Brownies, Wills hired singer Tommy Duncan, left Fort Worth for Oklahoma City, and renamed his band the Texas Playboys. In 1935, Wills added drummer Smoky Dacus and singer/steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe. In 1937, guitarist-arranger Eldon Shamblin was brought in to help the musicians and bring them up to the level of the era’s great orchestras: Ellington, Henderson, Goodman and others.

Shamblin's work with the band is noticeable on the disc’s last track, “White Heat." This disc features standards, such as the Mississippi Sheiks “Sittin’ On Top Of the World” and “Basin Street Blues," which had been previously covered by Louis Armstrong.

Disc 2 continues with the 1937 sessions. Recorded during their November ’38 sessions, Wills’ first national hit was the instrumental “San Antonio Rose.” Like all great entertainers of the time, the Playboys went to Hollywood and appeared in their first picture, Tex Ritter’s B-Western Take Me Back to Oklahoma.

In April 1940 sessions, they cut “Bob Wills Special,” which Kienzle explains was the introduction “of Eldon’s and Leon’s revolutionary lead and steel guitar ensemble, a key component of the postwar Playboys sound.” This disc finds them covering Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel #1," Bessie Smith’s “Down Hearted Blues,” and Wills patterned his version of “Rosetta” after Fats Waller’s.

Disc 3 opens with 1940’s “New San Antonio Rose,” a revamp of their hit single with lyrics written by Wills. The next sessions were in February 1941, and the big band influence is pervasive, almost all swing and no western. They perform a great cover of Tommy Dorsey’s “Liebestraum.” It’s not until the fiddle opens “”I Know he Moment I Lost You” that the Western sound returns. In July 1941, they recorded in Hollywood and added the songwriting skills of 23-year-old Texan, Cindy Walker.

In 1942, Wills kept making movies and many band members took part in the war effort by enlisting or taking defense jobs. The two notables were Duncan and Shamblin. In July, former Light Crust Doughboys Leon Huff makes his Playboy-singing debut on Johnny Bond’s “Drop Us Off At Bob’s Place” while trumpeter Danny Alguire sings on Fred Rose’s “Home In San Antone.”

A two-and-half-year break between recording sessions began when Wills was drafted into the Army. After being honorably discharged, he went on to perform a national tour and then in 1945 got back together with Duncan for sessions in Hollywood for Columbia. Fred Rose’s “Roly Poly” became a Wills classic. Taken from an April Session, the last track is “New Spanish Two Step,” a vocal version of their 1935 instrumental that also went on to became a nationwide hit.

Article Author: El Bicho

This writer is a member of The Masked Movie Snobs, a collective that fights a never-ending battle against bad entertainment. Follow at twitter.com/ElBicho_MMS

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