"DOWN HOME" #162 Saturday, March 24, 2001 Guest DJ - KCSN subscriber Fred Hoeptner Recipient of the "DJ for a Day" premium during the Fall 2000 pledge drive Hosted by Chuck Taggart, email chuck (at) downhome (dot) org Visit The Gumbo Pages

BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS - Sally Gooden [MGM 10292, 78 RPM] THE MILLER BROTHERS - Fiddlin' Stomp [Four-Star 45 RPM] SPADE COOLEY - Oklahoma Stomp [THE ESSENTIAL SPADE COOLEY/Columbia-Legacy] MARK GARDNER WITH THE SKIRTLIFTERS - [SONGS OF THE SANTA FE TRAIL AND THE FAR WEST/self-release] ECK ROBERTSON - There's A Brownskin Girl Down the Road Somewhere [ECK ROBERTSON: OLD-TIME TEXAS FIDDLER/County] ETCETERA STRING BAND - Peaceful Henry [self-release cassette] EAST TEXAS SERENADERS - Three-in-One Two-Step [TEXAS FAREWELL/County LP] BOB WILLS & SLEEPY JOHNSON - Harmony [78 RPM] FORT WORTH DOUGHBOYS - Nancy Jane MILTON BROWN AND HIS MUSICAL BROWNIES - This Morning, This Evening, So Soon MILTON BROWN AND HIS MUSICAL BROWNIES - Do the Hula Lou MILTON BROWN AND HIS MUSICAL BROWNIES - Copenhagen MILTON BROWN AND HIS MUSICAL BROWNIES - Yes Sir! [MILTON BROWN AND HIS MUSICAL BROWNIES/Texas Rose Records] BILL BOYD AND HIS COWBOY RAMBLERS - The Train Song [Bluebird 78 RPM] BILL BOYD AND HIS COWBOY RAMBLERS - When the Sun Goes Down Again [Bluebird 78 RPM] BILL BOYD AND HIS COWBOY RAMBLERS - Frosty Mornin' [Bluebird 7800, 78 RPM] BILL BOYD AND HIS COWBOY RAMBLERS - Jig in G [Bluebird 7691, 78 RPM] BILL BOYD AND HIS COWBOY RAMBLERS - Riding on the Old Ferris Wheel [Bluebird 78 RPM] BILL BOYD AND HIS COWBOY RAMBLERS - Weeping Blues [Bluebird 78 RPM] LIGHT CRUST DOUGHBOYS - Uncle Zeke [Vocalion 03310, 78 RPM] LIGHT CRUST DOUGHBOYS - Troubles [Vocalion 04559, 78 RPM] W. LEE O'DANIEL AND HIS HILLBILLY BOYS - Hillbilly Stomp [Vocalion 03089, 78 RPM] W. LEE O'DANIEL AND HIS HILLBILLY BOYS - San Antonio [Vocalion 03248, 78 RPM] W. LEE O'DANIEL AND HIS HILLBILLY BOYS - In An Old Log Cabin By An Old Log Fire [Vocalion 03297, 78 RPM] W. LEE O'DANIEL AND HIS HILLBILLY BOYS - Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy [Vocalion 04727, 78 RPM] BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS - What's The Matter With the Mill? [Columbia 37622, 78 RPM] BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS - Steel Guitar Rag [THE BOB WILLS ANTHOLOGY/Columbia] BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS - Cherokee Maiden [Columbia 37422, 78 RPM] BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS - Have I Stayed Away Too Long? [fan club record] THE TUNE WRANGLERS - Chicken Reel Stomp [Bluebird 6982, 78 RPM] SWIFT JEWEL COWBOYS - Kansas City Blues [Columbia 37738, 78 RPM] ADOLPH HOFNER AND HIS SAN ANTONIANS - Alamo Steel Serenade [Columbia 37817, 78 RPM] JOHNNIE LEE WILLS AND HIS BOYS - Lazy John [Decca 46054, 78 RPM] BILL BOYD AND HIS COWBOY RAMBLERS - Lone Star Rag [BILL BOYD'S COWBOY RAMBLERS/Bluebird LP] BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS - You're the Sweetest Rose in Texas [BOB WILLS: MORE RARE PRESTO TRANSCRIPTIONS/Cattle Records] BRUCE MOLSKY - Cousin Sally Brown [POOR MAN'S TROUBLES/Rounder] =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= THE SOUTHWESTERN STRING BAND TRADITION Presented on Chuck Taggart's "Down Home", KCSN, March 24, 2001 Today I want to focus on the southwestern string band tradition and its development over the years up through the early 1950s when, in my opinion, it reached its apex of development. There was no generally applied name for the genre until it was dubbed "western swing", but that didn't occur until Spade Cooley became the self-styled "King of Western Swing" in the early 1940s. Today's program will include a number of rare 78 RPM records, many of which have not been reissued on CD, and I want to thank Michael Kieffer for his assistance in transferring them to CD. String band leaders were, of course, not purists and many of them supplemented their string bands first with a piano and later with wind instruments and even drums. Let's start by playing three examples of western swing from the decade of the 1940s, and then we will contrast by backtracking to the very beginnings of the western band tradition. 'Sally Goodin' was a traditional fiddle tune, which Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys updated in contemporary style in 1947. Then we'll hear 'Fiddlin' Stomp', by The Miller Brothers, a swinging group from Wichita Falls, Texas. Finally, Spade Cooley explodes with 'Oklahoma Stomp' in the West Coast style from 1946. Now, let's return to the frontier West, the West of the 19th century. Mark Gardner and the Skirtlifters, a fiddle and two banjos, have recreated the authentic music of the western migrants on their CD "Songs of the Santa Fe Trail and the Far West". The fiddle, often played unaccompanied, has been called "the royal instrument of the frontier". Second in popularity was doubtless the fretless banjo. The guitar was a poor third, because it was considered delicate, and was somewhat unwieldy to carry around. The group will perform 'The Battle Call', a patriotic Mexican War song from the Rough and Ready Songster of 1848, to the melody of a minstrel tune "De Boatman's Dance". You might justifiably wonder how what you have just heard could possibly develop into the western swing of the 1940s, but it did, and the thread can be traced through the fiddle instrumental tradition. In the early West fiddlers were in great demand for dances and competed in numerous fiddle contests. Eck Robertson from Vernon, Texas, who played for many a ranch dance, will fiddle 'There's a Brownskin Girl Down the Road Somewhere'[5], accompanied by members of his family on banjo and guitars. The first decade of the 20th century saw the flowering of the ragtime craze. Fiddlers playing for dances at ranches and schoolhouses began to get requests for ragtime music to accompany the new two-step dance. There were string bands that specialized in ragtime. First, we'll hear a contemporary group, the Etcetera String Band of Kansas City, led by Dennis Pash on the mandolin-banjo, who have recreated the sound of the 1890s, with 'Peaceful Henry' composed by Charles L. Johnson in 1901. Then the East Texas Serenaders, of Lindale, Texas, led by fiddler D.H. Williams, present 'Three-In-One Two Step', recorded in 1928, playing in a style that presages western swing. Finally, Bob Wills and Sleepy Johnson play Bob's version of 'Harmony Rag', a 1902 composition doubtless learned from his father, recorded in 1935. Bob Wills and Milton Brown are generally credited with being the primary facilitators of the transition from breakdown fiddling to western swing. Wills was brought up on a cotton farm in the West Texas panhandle and learned the repertoire of a breakdown fiddler from his father, who, incidentally, had competed in contests against Eck Robertson. He also learned the rural blues from the many black families living in the area. During his musical career he bridged the gap between these two musical genres. He was also able to broaden his style to accommodate the requests for music to accompany the round dances becoming popular Texas, such as the two-step and later the fox trot. Milton Brown's father, also an accomplished breakdown fiddler, moved the family from rural Texas to Fort Worth in 1918. Milton impressed Bob with his vocalizing at a dance where Bob was fiddling accompanied by guitarist Herman Arnspiger. They formed the Wills Fiddle Band in 1930 and obtained airtime over several Fort Worth radio stations. Audience response to the programs amazed everyone. In late 1930 Wills convinced W. Lee O'Daniel, President of the Burrus Mill and Elevator Company, which manufactured Light Crust Flour, to sponsor them. An announcer on KFJZ dubbed the group The Light Crust Doughboys. By late that year the group also had a steady job playing for dances at the Crystal Springs roadhouse. 'Nancy Jane', adopted from a version by a black group the Famous Hokum Boys, is one of only two tunes recorded by this group, in February, 1932. The band, called the Fort Worth Doughboys, comprised Wills, Milton Brown on vocals, Milton's brother Derwood, harmony vocal and guitar, and Sleepy Johnson, tenor guitar. While Nancy Jane can hardly be called "western swing", we can detect signs of the emerging style. The essence of jazz is the improvised take-off solo. Southwestern string musicians first adopted this melodic technique between 1929 and 1933 in emulation of the hot jazz that had swept the country about ten years earlier. Thus was created the style that record companies referred to as "hot string band", although "southwestern jazz" would have been more appropriate. The details of this transition are not well documented although numerous accounts exist of southwestern musicians listening attentively to the jazz and blues recordings of the day. By 1933 after various disputes with O'Daniel, both Bob Wills and Milton Brown had left the Doughboys to form their own musical aggregations. Brown, who had real promotional skills, organized the Musical Brownies and obtained airtime on Fort Worth's KTAT. His death resulting from a 1936 automobile accident ended his promising career. Here are the Musical Brownies. We'll hear 'This Morning, This Evening, So Soon'[10], and 'Do the Hula Lou' from 1934, 'Copenhagen' from 1935, and 'Yes, Sir!' from 1936. Note Derwood Brown's strident guitar work and, on the latter two, Bob Dunn's improvisations on the amplified steel guitar. Both Dunn's take-off performance style and the amplification were totally innovative for the time. Other excellent western bands formed and developed concurrently. Over in Dallas at city-owned WRR, Bill Boyd gathered a group of musicians to form his band The Cowboy Ramblers. Boyd's groups featured changing personnel over the years, many of them borrowed from other groups such as the Light Crust Doughboys. We'll hear 'The Train Song' and 'When The Sun Goes Down Again'[15] from 1935. A later Boyd aggregation showed the strong influence of hot jazz. Classically trained fiddlers Carroll Hubbard and Kenneth Pitts, devotees of Joe Venuti, and pianist John "Knocky" Parker, who later became a college professor and eminent jazz pianist, stand out. We'll hear 'Frosty Mornin'' sung by Bill himself and obviously learned from the Bessie Smith 1924 recording, 'Jig in G', 'Riding on the Old Ferris Wheel', incidentally featuring Knocky on the accordion, and 'The Weeping Blues', which was a pseudonym for the Duke Ellington composition "Jeeps Blues", from 1937 and 1938. Meanwhile, W. Lee O'Daniel formed a new group under the name The Light Crust Doughboys to replace Wills and Brown. Then the Burrus Mills fired O'Daniel in 1935 and, realizing how much flour the music was selling, formed its own group of Light Crust Doughboys under Eddie Dunn. We'll hear first the instrumental 'Uncle Zeke'[20] featuring guitarist Muryel "Zeke" Campbell, and then the traditional waltz song 'Troubles'. Upon leaving the Burrus Mills "Pappy" O'Daniel formed his own band the Hillbilly Boys. He first used them to sell his own brand of Hillbilly Flour on the radio, and later to campaign for Governor of Texas, a post that he won in 1938. The Hillbilly Boys will give us 'Hillbilly Stomp', 'San Antonio', and 'In An Old Log Cabin By An Old Log Fire' from 1935, and 'Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy'[25] from 1937. O'Daniel used this final number as a theme, sung to the tune of "I Like Mountain Music" and featuring the fine tenor voice of Leon Huff, known as The Texas Songbird. Meanwhile, Bob Wills had formed a much larger aggregation including a full horn section. He moved the band to Tulsa and radio station KVOO and played dances regularly at Cain's Academy ballroom. We'll hear two tunes from 1936 starting with the traditional 'What's the Matter With The Mill' with Tommy Duncan on vocal. Following will be his famous 'Steel Guitar Rag', an instrumental classic because each of the three sections builds upon the devices of the previous section in leading to a climax. Although the recording gives composer credit to steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe, actually McAuliffe learned the first two sections from a recording by black guitarist Sylvester Weaver of his "Guitar Rag", but did add the climactic third section. This will be followed by the Cindy Walker composition from 1941 'Cherokee Maiden' with Tommy Duncan on the vocal. Then Tommy sings 'Have I Stayed Away Too Long' from 1944. You can tell that this was not a commercial recording because Tommy starts to chuckle at one of Bob's comments right at the end. Now we'll sample some other popular but lesser known western swing groups. The Tune Wranglers from San Antonio present the rather unique 'Chicken Reel Stomp'[30] from 1936. Then the Swift Jewel Cowboys, formed by an executive of the meat packing firm and billed as "the only mounted cowboy band in America" perform Kansas City Blues' from 1939. Next we'll hear an instrumental by Adolph Hofner and his San Antonians featuring some unique solos. J.R. Chatwell must have loosened his fiddle bow in order to play on all four strings and the steel player lets loose some wild microtones and syncopations on the 'Alamo Steel Serenade' from 1941. When Bob Wills went to California after World War II, his younger brother Johnnie Lee took over at Cain's Academy in Tulsa. Here's one of his classics 'Lazy John', vocal by Leon Huff, from about 1947. We'll close the show with two examples of western swing from the late 1940s. Bill Boyd and his Cowboy Ramblers continued to produce exemplary examples of the genre in the 40s and into the 50s. We'll hear 'Lone Star Rag' from 1948. After Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan parted ways, Wills tried a number of other vocalists. Carl Luper sings 'You're the Sweetest Rose In Texas' from 1949. Fred Hoeptner March, 2001

 

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