, Today marks the birthday of Bob Wills, one of the great American bandleaders and a true original in a music business full of unique wildmen. Wills was born into a family of cotton farmers and champion fiddlers and was profoundly influenced by the blues sung by black field hands. He told one interviewer that he had ridden fifty miles on horseback, just to hear Bessie Smith sing. “She was the greatest thing I ever heard.” Wills started out playing fiddle in local bands and within a decade he was leading a large, phenomenally popular dance band based in Tulsa, Oklahoma—Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, the group that invented “western swing” by coupling traditional fiddle music and blues to the swing rhythms of the big bands of the 1930s. During World War II, Bob drew bigger crowds than Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. An incomparable number of world-class musicians spent time in the Texas Playboys, including steel guitarist Leon McCauliffe, guitarists Eldon Shamblin (an early proponent of the electric guitar) and Junior Barnard, and the great vocalist Tommy Duncan. Bob was also a movie star, appearing in countless westerns.
Bob was a born entertainer who threw himself into the music, often punctuating his records with cries of “Aaaahhhhhh” and vocal interjections like “Shoot low, Sheriff—I think she’s ridin’ a Shetland!” When Bob and his boys got their first break, a recording session with Brunswick, the band cut a take of their first number and the producer took Bob aside to let him know that the band sounded great but that he needed to cut out the “yelling.” Bob turned to the band, told them “Pack up, boys, we’re going home” and walked out of the session. Wills was a hard drinker with a hot temper who was married six times (three times in a single year).
It would be hard to name an American musician who had a bigger influence than Bob Wills. His tune “San Antonio Rose” is an oft-recorded standard piece of Americana. Merle Haggard (a masterful interpreter of Bob’s music), Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings all revered Wills. Fats Domino and Chuck Berry were huge fans and were heavily influenced by him. Not many people are members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Bob Wills deserves his place in each one of them.
