Bob Wills & Texas Playboys For The Last Time Merle Haggard Vinyl 2-LP Record VG+

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1974 Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys For The Last Time Merle Haggard Vinyl 2-LP Record Box Set & Booklet VG+
Vinyl / Jacket Grade per Goldmine Standard: VG+ / VG+; 2-LP Box Set with Booklet as shown
Sidel 1. PLAYBOY THEME/Vocal, Merle Haggard 2. YEARNING/Vocal, Merle Haggard 3. FADED LOVE*/Vocal, Leon Rausch 4. WHAT MAKES BOB HOLLER/Vocal, Leon McAuliffe 5. STAY ALL NIGHT*/Vocal, Leon Rausch 6. GOIN’AWAY PARTY/Vocal, Leon Rausch Side 2 1. BIG BALLS IN COWTOWN*/Vocal, Hoyle Nix 2. KEEPER OF MY HEART*/Vocal, Leon Rausch 3. TWIN GUITAR BOOGIE */Inst., E. Shamblin, L. McAuliffe 4. BUBBLES IN MY BEER* */Vocal, Leon Rausch 5. BLUE BONNET LANE Vocal, Leon McAuliffe 6. WHEN YOU LEAVE AMARILLO/Vocal, Jody Nix Side 3 1. SAN ANTONIO ROSEVVocal, Leon Rausch 2. I WONDER IF YOU FEEL THE WAY I DO/Vocal, Merle Haggard 3. MY SHOES KEEP WALKING BACK TO YOU/Vocal, Jody Nix 4. MISS MOLLY/Vocal, Leon McAuliffe 5. I CAN’T GO ON THIS WAY* */Vocal, Jody Nix 6. THAT’S WHAT I LIKE ’BOUT THE SOUTH */Vocal, Leon McAuliffe Side 4 1. SILVER LAKE BLUES/Instrumental 2. MILK COW BLUESVVocal, Leon Rausch 3. COMIN’ DOWN FROM DENVER/Fiddle inst., Hoyle Nix 4. BABY, THAT WOULD SURE GO GOOD/Vocal, Leon McAuliffe 5. SHE’S REALLY GONE/Vocal, Hoyle Nix 6. CRIPPLED TURKE Y/Fiddle inst., Hoyle Nix Produced by Tommy Allsup For Konowa Music Productions Personnel: Leacler/Bob Wills Steel Guitar/Leon McAuliffe Elec. Guitar/Eldon Shamblin Piano/Al Stricklin Drums/Smokey Dacus Fiddle & Elec. Mandolin/Johnny Gimble Fiddle/Keith Coleman Fiddle/Hoyle Nix Bass/Leon Rausch *Bass/Tommy Allsup **Bass/Bob Moore Vocals & Fiddle/Merle Haggard Merle Haggard appears through the courtesy of Capitol Records Vocals & Drums/Jody Nix Vocal Trio/Johnny Gimble, Keith Coleman and Leon McAuliffe T dBbhe recording session that resulted in this album was an important event in the history of American music. It brought together Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, the man and the band that created Western Swing and, for over forty years, influenced popular American music in general and country and western in particular. The year this album was made, 1973, was the fortieth anniversary of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. Wills first called his band the “Playboys” in 1933 in Waco, Texas. The fact that this album was recorded forty years later tells a part of the story of their enduring popularity and incredible appeal. The story really began in West Texas in 1915. That year, James Robert Wills played the fiddle at his first “country” or “ranch” dance. When his father, John Wills, failed to show up to play for that dance, Jim Rob began playing one of the six selections he knew. The cowboys and their ladies were amused at the ten-year-old fiddler, but soon they were dancing. There were three basic influences in Jim Rob’s formative years that were important throughout his subsequent career. His music was for the most part “western music”; the fiddle dominated his music, and it was always primarily for dancing. He grew up in the heart of one of the best ranching areas in the world, and his music always reflected the western environment he knew and loved so well. His music was also western in the sense that it was oriented in general to the people in the westei n part of the United States. It was at the ranch dances that Jnn Kob played the folk-fiddle music that he learned from his father. He first learned the old “breakdown” fiddle tunes, folk music that had moved with the American frontier across the Mississippi and into Jim Rob s West Texas. He added a new dimension to that style by learning blues and jazz, the folk music of the Blacks. From the time he was three years old, he played with Black children and later worked with Blacks in the cotton fields. Jim Rob learned the blues style directly from the Blacks. “I don’t know whether they made them up as they moved down the cotton rows or not” Wills told the author, “but they sang blues you never heard before.” One of his favorite artists was the “Empress of the Blues” Bessie Smith, and he rode nearly fifty miles on horseback to see her in person. He also learned a good deal about rhythm from the Blacks. While he lived in West Texas he began to combine the folk-fiddle music he learned from his family with the Negro blues and jazz to develop his own style of dance music. It took him years to develop the style he wanted, but Wills eventually incorporated every jazz idiom into his music: blue notes, syncopation, improvisation, and a heavy New Orleans or dixieland beat. In combining the elements of the fiddle music of the frontier with New Orleans jazz, Jim Rob Wills created a new music that could as properly be called “Western Jazz” as “Western Swing!’ In fact, it was the jazz that made his western music swing. Jim Rob lived in West Texas for over fourteen years after he played the fiddle at his first dance. He always said he developed his style while he lived “down between the rivers” on the family farm. In those years, he played for dances at ranches all over West Texas, won fiddlers’ contests, and became one of the area’s favorite musicians. These were good years for young Wills musically, but they were difficult years financially. John Wills and his family worked in the fields all day and played dances at night to earn a living and make mortgage payments on their river farm. The Wills family referred to those years as “hubbin’ it” or hard' times. As the oldest of nine children, Jim Rob worked hard to help provide. During those years, he was a farmer, ^"^^.^^Vw^rker, boy, insurance salesman, con almost fi bailor in the United otates i «y barber college in Amarillo and P1^ barber trade in New Mexico and his hometo °f ^’in the fall of 1929, Jim Rob left his boy- hood home in West Texas and moved to Fort Worth. He and the Great Depression ai i ived Fort Worth at about the same time. He woi ked as a musician, singer, and black-faced comic on Doc’s Medicine Show; he barbered a while aftei the show went broke; he then began playing for dances and various radio stations in roi t Worth. These included KT AT, KF JZ, and WB AP. He formed the Wills Fiddle Band that consisted of himself as fiddler and Hei man Arnspiger as guitarist. Their populai ity spread as they appeared on radio shows, won fiddlers’ contests, and played for “house dances” (a country or ranch dance moved to town). In 1930 Bob added Milton Brown as vocalist; Durwood Brown as guitarist; and Clifton Johnson as tenor banjoist (rhythm- style). In that same year, the band began play- ing dances at Crystal Springs, a Fort Worth dance hall that became famous not only because Bob Wills played there early in his career, but also because Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow and other underworld figures frequently danced there. While in Fort Worth Bob added a great deal to the folk music of the frontier he learned “between the rivers” in West Texas. This was still the Jazz Age, and by listening to the radio and phonograph, Bob and his musicians heard swingy jazz in all kinds of dance music. If he was to be successful in dance music, he knew he would have to move closer to this music and style. They listened to popular music, blues, New Orleans jazz, ballads, folk, and race music (blues and jazz performed by Blacks). Durwood Brown said, “We listened to all kinds of music, but especially whatever kind of music people danced by!’ Using the piano, guitar, and tenor banjo, Bob developed a rhythm section that laid down a good danceable jazz beat With more instruments playing rhythm, Durwood i own was free to take jazz choruses. Bob said Brown was the first to do so in any of his am s. Improvised jazz choruses were one of...




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