In Praise of BOB WILLS

I've been listening to the Tiffany Transcriptions set a lot today. I picked up the whole thing at once and so I'm just getting to know the individual volumes little by little, but this is some of the most infectious stuff I have ever heard. I'm not the hugest western swing fan -- my favorite type of early country music is string band music -- but this stuff is really convincing me I need to delve deeper than the compilation LPs I have (all 8 volumes of the Old-Timey label's Western Swing series are solid all the way thru.)

UNDENIABLE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU3ce07nL-4

still the king

otm

ian, might i recommend ray price's amazing early '60s bob wills tribute album, san antonio rose?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ-TKmUKusA

i love bob wills! how about a little community singing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l7rLA9Jm1I

jinx

Moon in all your splendor, known only to my heart,
Bring back my rose, rose of San Antone.
Lips so sweet and tender, like petals falling apart,
Speak once again of my love, my own

one of my favorite experiences was during a marathon 44 hr drive from L.A. to chicago and stopping at that famous 72 oz steakhouse in amarillo and my wife and i being serenaded tableside by a quartet of old gents playing this tune.

that rulez.
i will check out that ray price record! ray price is kind of one of my blind spots -- i know a lot of ppl revere him as one of the best honky tonk country singers, but the only records i ever come across of his are smoothed out over-produced prettiness.

yeah after a certain point things get a little slick w/price, not my cup o tea either. this one is pretty sweet though, and can be found on the cheap iirc.

Have San Antonio Rose on 78 and love it! Sounds great on the victrola.

http://www.allmusic.com/album/take-me-back-to-tulsa-proper-box-mw0000218699

solid gold

Tommy's vocal on "Right or Wrong" is as hardcore as it gets. We gave up a lot when we quit the pain yodel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxHu_71sU1E

Right?

tiffany transcriptions have a serious claim to be the most infectiously fun live recordings of popular music in the 20th century. i got them from rhino in about... 1997? this was in the days when massive box sets were still a novelty. gave them to my dad (who grew up in west texas) for his birthday and blew his mind.

"up the lazy river", "milk cow blues"

etc etc

I have the best of the Tiffany Transcriptions cos I found it cheap in a sale that I think had several other volumes in. Wouldn't have known where to start on the individual volumes. Glad I got what I did though.
Have quite a bit of it on a walkman that I play at random so tracks from it turn up juxtaposed with very different things, Sonic Youth & such like.

Also got some Milton Brown & his Musical Brownies on that player. Also great stuff.

"i bet you think that's two fiddles playin....... well, it is"

Listening to Bob making Tommy Duncan crack up never fails to put a smile on my face.

the tiffany transcriptions are his best but the classic stuff he re-recorded for decca in the 50s is great too.

roooooly poly, daddy's little fatty

otm

http://www.premierguitar.com/ext/resources/archives/6b9b87a7-7f96-4e4a-919e-5c59bb9577a0.JPG

the hot rock

fantastic page here:

https://birthplaceofwesternswing.com/pioneers.html

the tiffany transcriptions remain for me this inexhaustible fount, like just a fuckin codex of popular american music. i think of daddino’s “bomb at the middle of the century” spotify playlist, comprised entirely of songs from 1950. the TT are a little earlier than this but they feel similar in the way they reach back to the 19th century, forward into the rock n roll that hadn’t been invented yet, sideways into hot jazz, into blues, and into the boys’ own childhood, soaking it all up. just endless. and when you think maybe the sound recordist might not have been arranged, or paid, and these recordings might not have happened… best not to think about it.

yeah, may need to get some more of the set than that best of I have. Can see that crossroads thing with a number of things. Was thinking about the ethnic folky roots of r'n'r earlier thsi week. Like picking up the Proper Farewell To Ireland set in the early 00ies and hearing echoes of that Irish stuff and subsequently thinking they weren't the only ethnicity to feed into the sound.
That and the Hillbilly Boogie set I also got from Proper and thinking it sounds majorly like r'n'r without the amplification and does directly tie in with jazz roots as does Bill Monroe I think.
I have a Proper Bob Wills too and one on Milton Brown seem to be doing that reissuing things coming out of copyright in a decent way. Not sure who else does as well I think if i have anything on JSP it's the Rembetika set Do They Have Hashish in Hell.

But yeah seems like Wills was pretty dashed fine archetypal an dfun things like that