Bob Wills at 100
by Rich Kienzle
There’s good reason why Bob Wills, like Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, holds dual membership in both the Country Music Hall of Fame and (with his Texas Playboys) the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Wills left profound, lasting impacts on both styles that leave repercussions over one hundred years after his birth and over three decades after he died in 1975.
In Wills’ universe, musical boundaries simply didn’t exist. Like Duke Ellington and Bill Monroe, he had a flair for unifying seemingly disparate styles, the better to give the crowds who packed every hall he played the best possible music to dance to. He and the Texas Playboys freely mixed traditional fiddle tunes, country, blues and jug band numbers with Dixieland and swing, pop songs old and new and such distinctly Southwestern styles as polka and Mariachi. Several different styles often popped up in the space of one song.
Wills called it “Texas fiddle music.” Others later dubbed it Western Swing – infectious, exhilarating, danceable and as quintessentially American a bluegrass, rockabilly and Zydeco.
He was the first country bandleader to regularly use a drummer. To expand his musical range, he added brass and reed sections that played alongside fiddles, guitars and rhythm. He championed then-new amplified guitars and steel guitars; the Playboys’ earliest records became the first country records to feature electric lead guitar. Following World War II, Wills became one of the first “name” acts to endorse Leo Fender’s new line of amps and steel guitars.
“Please,” he implored Time magazine in 1945, “don’t anybody confuse us with none of them hillbilly outfits.” It’s true that Wills never considered himself country. He never much cared for the Nashville music scene. Even so, the Texas Playboys’ blend of fiddles, steel guitar and rhythm section helped define country’s sound and style from the 1940s to this day. The band’s fiddle, steel guitar and guitar virtuosos set the standards for country instrumentalists everywhere, their heavy dance beat anticipating early rock and roll. Beginning his career n his native Fort Worth in the Fifties, future jazz visionary Ornette Coleman routinely jammed with the Playboys, marveling at their love of bebop.
Bob’s charisma was legendary. He commanded any bandstand or nightclub stage he performed on: grinning, fiddling with flair, a cigar usually clenched between his teeth. In between fiddling or singing the blues tunes he loved, he scooted and buck-danced around the stage, in between his musicians, jive-talking like a white-Stetsoned, barrel-chested Cab Calloway. When a particular musical passage moved him, then and only then would he uncork his trademark, “A-haaaaaaaa!”
He allowed his sidemen near-total musical latitude. Onstage, he often pitched the recorded arrangements of songs out the window and rearranged the songs on the spot, calling on different soloists and encouraging them to play whatever moved them. As fiddler-electric mandolinist Tiny Moore, a Playboy from 1946 to 1950, explained, “He wanted a person to feel free to play the way they wanted to. If it fit in with him, fine. If it didn't, then that was it.”
But he strictly controlled packaging and presentation. The musical freedom was a given, but he insisted everyone watch him, ready to solo on cue and to smile as they played. Their dress, onstage and off, had to be sharp. Aware that fans considered him and the band family, Wills insisted that the Playboys schmooze and mingle with fans when offstage at dances.
Like many American music legends, Wills, beneath that white Stetson, was a mass of contradictions. Married five times, his dances were family affairs. While he routinely cut up on double-entendre tunes, before World War II, he dedicated every Thursday of his daily radio show on Tulsa’s KVOO to singing hymns. He mad a fortune but lost much of it to bad business deals. Known for his mercurial temper, he offered compassion and help to fans who’d fallen on hard times. His drinking binges were notorious. Yet when sober, he forbade any Playboys to drink on the job.
Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Lyle Lovett, George Jones, George Strait, Tracy Byrd, Brad Paisley and Lee Ann Womack are among the many who’ve been lifelong Wills admirers. For thirty-six years, Asleep At The Wheel has continue Wills’ musical vision and taken it around the world.
A Century after his birth into rural Texas poverty, Wills, like Elvis, Sinatra, Cash, Hank Williams and Robert Johnson, remains a cornerstone of American popular music past, present and future.
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He entered a world on the cusp of change. Limestone County, sixty-five miles south of Dallas, was a part of rural Texas where the nineteenth century only reluctantly gave way to the twentieth. For tenant farmers, mules and horses were still standard transportation. John Tompkins Wills, a hard-drinking sharecropper-fiddler, and wife Emmaline worked one such farm. John’s father Tom, an ace fiddler and farmer, taught John to play. Both were renowned locally for their dance fiddling.
The baby – John and Emma’s firstborn – arrived at 11:59 on March 6, 1905. They names him James Robert, but called him “Jim Rob.” He grew up playing with black kids who lived on nearby tenant farms, captivated by their music and dialect. In 1913, John and Tom Wills piled their families into two covered wagons bound for Hall County in West Texas. To survive, they did farm labor enroute. When Jim Rob wasn’t minding his younger siblings, he too picked cotton in the fields.
Able to play only six fiddle tunes, Jim Rob accompanied his dad and granddad’s fiddling by strumming a mandolin behind them at dances that lasted hours – and hated it. Then one night in 1915, he arrived early at a dance toting his mandolin and John’s fiddle. John, a drinker himself, didn't show. Facing a room full of dancers, Jim Rob repeatedly fiddled his half-dozen tunes, satisfying the dancers. From then on fiddling became his passion. John and Tom Wills proved demanding tutors who insisted he master a smooth, long and precise style of bowing.
The Wills family moved around Hall County before buying a cotton farm near Turkey, Texas. Times were good, but when prices tanked in 1922 Jim Rob hit the road for an extended period to find himself. He labored at various jobs and at one point dabbled in the idea of preaching. When he married Edna Posey in 1926, he needed a steady trade that wouldn’t risk his fiddling hands. He became a barber, first in New Mexico, then back home in Turkey where his fiddling made him a local celebrity. Jailed overnight for drunkenness in 1929, he angrily stormed out of Turkey carrying his fiddle and would up in Fort Worth.
He’d worked a medicine show back home, and played similar show in Fort Worth, fiddling and learning the blackface comedy then in vogue and continuing to cultivate his love of the blues. A show owner dubbed him “Bob.” He found a new accompanist: guitarist Herman Arnspiger. Working area parties and dances as the Wills Fiddle Band, they soon met the Brown brothers: cigar salesman and singer Milton Brown and his teenaged guitarist brother Derwood. Since they all had similar musical tastes, they joined forces. Rehearsing in the record department of a downtown furniture store, they listened to the latest blues, jug band, country and pop records to expand their repertoire. Bob and Milton particularly loved the jazzy music of white minstrel singer Emmett Miller. Recalling John Wills shouting “up, boys!” to liven up dances, Bob hollered ‘a-haaaa!” when the music moved him.
A spot on Fort Worth’s KFJZ turned permanent in 1930 when the Burrus Mill and Elevator Company, makers of Light Crust Flour, took over sponsorship. A station announcer dubbed the group the Light Crust Doughboys. W. Lee O’Daniel, Burrus sale manager, canceled the program; convinced “hillbilly music” would hurt flour sales. After Bob groveled to O’Daniel, he reluctantly reinstated the broadcasts only to find the show sent Light Crust’s sales into the stratosphere. The opportunistic O’Daniel, a future Texas Governor and U.S. Senator, built the group a studio, expanded the broadcast statewide and hired a new host: himself.
Not that the Doughboys shared the wealth. Ill-paid and ill-treated, battling O’Daniel became an occupational hazard for them. Milton quit in 1932 and formed the first actual Western Swing band: Milton Brown And His Musical Brownies. Bob auditioned sixty-seven singers before hiring twenty-one-year old Texan Tommy Duncan. Despite other personnel changes, the group continued, though Bob, whose drinking sprees plagued him through most of his life, sometimes missed broadcasts. When it happened once to often in the fall of 1933, he quit before a furious O’Daniel could fire him. Duncan and a guitarist left, too.
Bob formed a band he called the Playboys and set up shop at WACO radio in Waco. Though musically ragged, his showmanship and Tommy’s agreeable, Bing Crosby-like voice brought them local popularity. Problems continued. The Doughboys and Brownies ruled the region and the vindictive O’Daniel unsuccessfully sued Bob for mentioning his Doughboy past on dance posters. Noting they had substantial Oklahoma fan mail, Bob relocated there in January, 1934, renaming the group the Texas Playboys.
O’Daniel’s vendetta extended to Oklahoma City, where two radio stations fearing his wrath reluctantly turned away Wills and his musicians. Tulsa’s 25,000 watt KVOO, Gene Autry’s former home base, was more receptive. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys hit their airwaves at midnight, February 10, 1934. That fall, they settled into a Monday-Friday afternoon broadcast, sponsored by General Mills from 1935 on.
Bob wanted a versatile outfit able to play current dance band favorites along with their other material. To that end, he added horn players and local drummer Smoky Dacus. Cain’s Dancing Academy in downtown Tulsa became their permanent base for broadcasts and for two weekly dances in January, 1935. They established a regular regional dance circuit, playing some venues weekly, others monthly.
March, 1935, brought another new voice to the Playboys: eighteen-year-old guitarist and acoustic steel guitarist William Leon McAuliffe, who left the Light Crust Doughboys to join Bob. His musical hero was Bob Dunn, Milton Brown’s revolutionary electric steel guitarist. It took little convincing for Bob to buy Leon a pickup and amplifier like Dunn’s that he could use on his instruments.
As their regional popularity grew, Don Law of the American Recording Company (ARC) heard about their success and offered them a recording contract. In September, legendary A&R man Art Satherly, an urbane Brit who loved American blues, string band and jug band music, came to Dallas to record various acts, including the Playboys, in a makeshift studio.
Assuming they were a string band, some awkward moments ensued regarding the presence of horns and Bob’s talking and hollering over the music. In the end, Satherley left for New York with twenty-four Wills masters, unsure that they’d sell. By 1936, Wills’ record sales in the Southwest were so impressive Satherley sent a private railroad coach to Tulsa to transport the Playboys to Chicago for an October session.
All this transpired amid the mushrooming national phenomenon known today as the Big Band Era, symbolized by the mass popularity of swing orchestras like those of Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, inspired by the great black bandleaders who built the style, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington and Jimmie Lunceford among them. While Bob loved this music and wanted to play it for his dance crowds, he realized that big band arrangements were more structured than the Playboys’ loose, madcap sound. He needed an arranger, one who could write for reading musicians and teach non-readers their parts.
In 1937 he found the right man: Tulsa guitarist Eldon Shamblin, a self-taught arranger. Eldon’s efforts resulted in new, more capable horn players joining the Playboys and more sophisticated arrangements. He enabled them to evolve into a formidable big band, expanding their scope without compromising the fiddle tunes and blues that fans already loved.
Bob’s fiddle instrumental “San Antonio Rose” became a national hit in 1938. He and the Playboys, well-paid for their dance work, prospered and became part of the region’s cultural fabric. Grocers in Oklahoma and neighboring states carried their Play Boy Bread and Flour. The KVOO broadcast had become an institution. Dances were family affairs and band member often played at fans’ funerals, with Bob refusing any payment offered. In 1939 they performed at the Oklahoma Governor’s inaugural ball, though Bob refues to endorse or perform for political candidates and spurned suggestions he run for Governor. In 1940 the band traveled to Hollywood to appear in Take Me Back To Oklahoma, a B-Western starring Tex Ritter.
Crowds at Wills dance personified economic and cultural diversity. Farmers, bankers, laborers, housewives, librarians, teachers and preachers alike danced to the Playboys’ joyously eclectic repertoire. And Bob cherished them all. In 1937, he told the Tulsa Tribune that “My boys are trained to be nice to the public. I don’t care how dirty or awful a man might be, but if he’s paid his money to see me, then I’m grateful to him.” Gratitude was only part of it. Wills gave as much as he got. He paid his musicians well, supported his own extended family and also helped many local individuals down on their luck, often anonymously.
By 1940 he’d more than realized his musical dream. His big band rendition of “New San Antonio Rose” with added lyrics became such a hit that many considered it a pop record. The Playboys, retaining their irrepressible crazy quilt of styles, could lead with fiddles or a powerful horn section, whether Duncan or McAuliffe sang a pop tune, or Bob sang a blues classic by his longtime hero, Bessie Smith, or a pop ballad by another hero, crooner Gene Austin. They didn’t just play originals or country favorites. Their ability to serve up current hits by bandleaders Bob Crosby, Tommy Dorsey, Jan Savitt and Glenn Miller brought younger people flocking to the dances, to Bob’s delight.
Pearl Harbor, of course, changed everything. In 1942 Duncan and Shamblin each left for the army; other musicians took defense jobs. Maintaining the Playboys’ musical excellence, Wills replaced the departing members and filmed more Westerns in California. When the band played a few dances in L.A.-area ballrooms, they met old fans from home who’d relocated to find better-paying wartime jobs.
His personal life took an upturn when, after four failed marriages, he married Betty Anderson. As 1942 ended, however, Wills faced his own date with the Army. It lasted roughly seven months. Unable to transition from boss to buck private, he repeatedly clashed with superiors jealous of his wealth and fame, drank and went AWOL. The Army folded and honorably discharged him in July, 1943. In Tulsa, he reorganized a smaller band with the recently discharged Tommy Duncan and moved to L.A. that fall, ready to entertain that ready-made West Coast audience they’d found. Fans took to his leaner, meaner lineup which used fiddles and, to replace the horn sections, electric guitars playing in ensemble, another of the Playboys’ major innovations.
In the past, Bob’s few sorties east of the Mississippi had failed, yet late in 1944 he headlined a national theater tour with some vaudeville acts. On December 30, 1944 they appeared on Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, which then barred “modern” instruments like horns and drums. Told by Opry officials to set the drums behind a curtain, at the last minute he turned the tables by bringing Playboy drummer Monte Mountjoy out front with the others. After a roaring version of “New San Antonio Rose” that left everyone begging for more, the Opry had the last word. They were denied an encore.
It didn’t matter. Bob Wills was indeed the king in 1944-46. He had more nationwide hits including “Texas Playboy Rag” and “New Spanish Two Step.” He bought an expensive fiddle and settled on a huge ranch near Fresno. As he sold-out dancehalls from Tulsa to Seattle and San Diego, he paid the Playboys huge bonuses.
In 1947 he left Columbia for the new MGM label. That year he also moved the band’s home base to Sacramento where he bought a local ballroom he renamed Wills Point and instituted a daily broadcast on KFBK radio, hoping to work closer to home with fewer lengthy tours. It didn’t happen that way. In 1948, stressed by the ballroom’s added financial burden, he again hit the bottle. The binges, which could last for weeks, caused frequent no-shows on tour. In his absence, the Playboys took heat from angry fans and promoters who paid them less. The drinking aggravated a growing rift between Bob and Tommy. In September, 1948, Bob fired him. He would hire other singers but never truly replace Duncan.
That wasn’t the only challenge. In pop music, the days of the big bands gave way to solo pop singers. Even in their home turf of the Southwest, Western Swing bands lost ground to younger country singers from Nashville. TV’s exploding popularity further eroded the dancehall business. Bob moved to Oklahoma City in the fall of 1949 and in 1950, to his lavish new Bob Wills Ranch House in Dallas, a forerunner to today’s Texas mega-venues like Billy Bob’s Texas. He had another big hit in 1950 with the now-classic “Faded Love.” A turnaround seemed possible.
Instead, he plunged into a nightmare.
Believing a man’s word was his bond, Wills unknowingly hired managers who turned out to be unscrupulous, whose shady deals plunged the Ranch House and Bob’s personal finances into turmoil. His binges resumed and when the smoke cleared, he had to borrow money, sell property and deal with the IRS, since he and the Ranch House owed substantial back taxes. He sold his song catalog. He intended to keep “New San Antonio Rose” but inadvertently signed it away as well. In 1952 he sold the Ranch House – to the Jack Ruby. Disheartened as he was, he had no choice but to press on.
Western Swing’s popularity faded throughout the Fifties, and Bob’s moves between various Texas cities in hopes of finding a permanent base couldn’t change that. Even a 1958 return to Tulsa proved disappointing, though a 1960-62 reunion with Duncan boosted interest for a while. In 1962, he began working solo. Even alone, taking along a vocalist and appearing with house bands, he could still play respectable venues, including Las Vegas.
When Kapp Records signed Wills in 1965, he became the last major Western Swing figure recording for a major label, though many of his Kapp albums, recorded in Nashville with top-notch local studio musicians, were stiffly arranged and overproduced. Bob, who had many friends among country performers, never cozied up to Nashville’s way of doing things. But Nashville knew full well what it owed him, leading to his 1968 induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
In early 1969 he began having minor problems with his playing and speech that indicated a mild stroke or mini-strokes. The problem worsened through the spring. On May 31, 1969, a day after he was honored by the Texas legislature at a ceremony in Austin, Bob suffered a major stroke at his Fort Worth home. Other strokes and medical problems followed. In the end, his right side was paralyzed, his speech impaired but his memory intact.
Merle Haggard, growing up in Bakersfield in the Forties and Fifties, saw Bob and the Playboys often, and as a newcomer in the late Sixties, got to know Bob. After the stroke, intent on playing Bob’s music onstage, he taught himself to fiddle. In April, 1970 he and his band the Strangers, augmented by several ex-Playboys, recorded A Tribute To The Best Dam Fiddle Player In The World, recreating various Wills favorites and launching a renewed international interest in his music that’s never waned.
When a wheelchair-bound Wills was strong enough to travel in 1971, Haggard flew Bob and Betty to his Bakersfield home for a reunion-jam with ten former Playboys. In 1972-73 he appeared at various benefit-tributes in Texas and in the fall of 1973, planned a two-day Playboy Dallas reunion session for December. December 4, the first day of recording, he worked from his wheelchair with his hand-picked Playboy alumni. It proved to be a storybook ending. The next day he suffered another stroke, followed by a massive one leaving him comatose. A studio of saddened musicians completed the album.
A Fort Worth nursing home became Bob Wills’ final residence. He died there of pneumonia May 15, 1975. Many former Playboys attended his funeral in Tulsa. He lies there today in Tulsa’s Memorial Park in the family plot beneath a bronze plaque inscribed “Deep Within My Heart Lies A Memory,” the lyrics from “New San Antonio Rose.”
