Anthology 1935-1973

Amazon.com essential recording
Building on the sacred tradition of the Texas fiddle band, Wills's Western swing became country music's answer to big-band jazz. Wills gave his Playboys ample room for advanced improvisation, adding instruments (drums, horns, piano, electric guitar) that were not associated with country music. He drew on a variety of styles--not just fiddle tunes and jazz standards, but also polka, blues, mariachi, and Dixieland--punctuating the music with his light-hearted exhortations. This 2 CD compilation provides an overview of his career: from his early Columbia hits with steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe and rhythm guitarist Eldon Shamblin to his final 1973 session, which he conducted from a wheelchair. For those wanting to delve deeper, Columbia's box set and Rhino's nine-volume Tiffany Transcriptions focus more thoroughly on Wills's prime. --Marc Greilsamer

Anthology 1935-1973,Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys,Rhino / Wea,Country,Country & Western,Country Traditional,Pop,Traditional Country,United States of America,Violin,Western Swing

Average customer rating:

For the money this set is tops!

the galvanized washin' tub

As good as it gets

Fascinating band but too many steel guitars for my taste

Bob Wills Is Still The King

Anthology 1935-1973
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
Manufacturer: Rhino / Wea
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Country | Styles | Music
Western Swing | Country | Styles | Music
General | Traditional Country | Country | Styles | Music
Rhino Records | Amazon.com Label Stores | Stores | Music
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Take Me Back to Tulsa

Tiffany Transcriptions, Vol. 2

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Doughboys, Playboys and Cowboys: The Golden Years of Western Swing

The Essential Bob Wills 1935-1947

ASIN: B0000032MM
Release Date: 1991-07-02

Tracks:

Maiden's Prayer
Steel Guitar Rag
Right Or Wrong
Time Changes Everything
Corrine, Corrina
Big Beaver
New San Antonio Rose
Take Me Back To Tulsa
Cherokee Maiden
Home In San Antone
Miss Molly
My Confession
Texas Playboy Rag
Roly-Poly
Stay A little Longer
Basin Street Blues

Tracks:

My Window Faces The South
Fat Boy Rag
Three Guitar Special
Deep Water
Bubbles In My Beer
Blues For Dixie
South
Cotton Patch Blues
Boot Heel Drag
Faded Love
St. Louis Blues
Cadillac In Model 'A'
Heart To Heart Talk
The Jobob Rag
Blue Bonnet Lane
What Makes Bob Holler

Amazon.com essential recording

Building on the sacred tradition of the Texas fiddle band, Wills's Western swing became country music's answer to big-band jazz. Wills gave his Playboys ample room for advanced improvisation, adding instruments (drums, horns, piano, electric guitar) that were not associated with country music. He drew on a variety of styles--not just fiddle tunes and jazz standards, but also polka, blues, mariachi, and Dixieland--punctuating the music with his light-hearted exhortations. This 2 CD compilation provides an overview of his career: from his early Columbia hits with steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe and rhythm guitarist Eldon Shamblin to his final 1973 session, which he conducted from a wheelchair. For those wanting to delve deeper, Columbia's box set and Rhino's nine-volume Tiffany Transcriptions focus more thoroughly on Wills's prime. --Marc Greilsamer

Customer Reviews:

For the money this set is tops!.......2005-11-03

I own this really good set from Rhino and it has many of Bob Wills' classics on it. This set is fine but for the true Western Swing fan like myself I understand that the 11 CD Box Set "San Antonio Rose" from the Bear Family has all 300 of his early recordings along with a 1940 movie with Bob and Tex Ritter and to top it off a hard backed Book. I have purchased many of the Bear Familys great sets including Wanda Jackson, Jimmy Martin, The Louvin Brothers and the 7CD Anita Carter set that ran in price about as high as I can afford to pay (my Connie Smith set was about the cheapest). I would love to have this set from Bear Family but at $300.00 I don't think so. I think that I will stay content with my 2CD Rhino Collection. If anyone out there does happen to have a Bear Family set for sale at an affordable price I am interested!

"Enjoy" Joe Kopeck / Parkville,Maryland

the galvanized washin' tub.......2004-07-14

I'm lookig for this song....does anyone remember it or able to guide as to where to find it. I THINK it was played by Bob Wills......help....it is a childhood memory.THANKS!

As good as it gets.......2004-07-14

If you like the hot club of Cowtown, you will like this. This is the period of Wills' band that their work is founded on, listen to the Devilish Mary on here that they made the title of an album. Listen to the great masterful Sally Gooden, so good to be believed. This is great and hot and sometimes just so good you cannot believe it. This is more a guitar and steel guitar and mandolin players record than a fiddling record. It is also significant that while most of the Western Swingers went into the Hollywood Cowboy, mellow singing, buisnessman's bounce phase typified by Spade Cooley and Hank Penny, Will's band here in the postwar years stays red hot jazzy, bluesy, and fiddlin it all the way out!\

Without getting into the history: this is just good music suitable for anyone at any time with ears.
This is the real deal in regard to Western Swing. The Tiffany recordings were done for the Tiffany Furniture Company of Oakland in the period after WWII. They were sold to radio stations as music to play over the air along with or without commercials for the furniture company. This was done when playing normal commercial records on the radio was a rare and new thing.

If you look on the discography you will find there were more than 200 recordings done by Wills over the years for this operation. So even if Rounder has put out ten volumes of this music, they are still just offering the best of the collection. These were rare treats among the collectors. I remember first hearing about them around 1977 when a friend of mine who lived in NYC mentioned he knew someone in Indiana who had taped copies of these records. I remember how I treated the tape he made me like a golden jewel, carrying it with myself personally when I moved.

People I know who actually heard the Texas Playboys play during the 1930s and 1940s say these recording say this is the way the Playboys sounded at their best live. This is the repertoire. Since it was officially a non-commercial recording, they recording all the songs they would play at live dates, and not just songs they recorded which were usually filtered by the Columbia, MGM, and MCA operation to make sure they recorded songs that had the right publishing andwere charting for others.

On other Tiffany recordings you can hear the Playboys make wonderful music on Nat King Cole's Straighten up and Fly Right, Basie's Swing Blues, Ellington's Take the A Train, Dinah Shore's Sentimental Journey, and even a gret instrumental on the theme from the movie Mission to Moscow!

The recording quality isn't always as good as the Columbia and MGM sides, but that is because they simply recorded all day whenever the tour schedule took the Playboys into San Fransisco, cutting tunes without rehearsals, on the first take, cutting five or six or seven sides in a day, as opposed to the standard recording studio concept of 4 sides in three hours, which was never met. However, on a number of these tunes they really cut lose in instrumentals they way they don't on the commercial disks. If you love the repartee between Bob and the Band, you get a lot more of that on these tunes.

What these records represent for the history of Western Swing is priceless. The guitar trio sound grew out of the duos that Eldon Shamblin and Leon MacAufliffe did with Wills before WWII. When Jimmy Wyble (who went on to be one of the key Jazz guitarists of the 1950s and 1960s) and Cameron Hill came in during the War and were joined by Noel Boggs, that sound was perfected. On these sides we hear it bluesier and hotter played by Junior Barnard or Eldon on guitar, Tiny Moore on Mandolin, and Boggs or Herbie Remington on steel guitar. You don't get as much of this on the contemporary Columbia sounds, although you did on the first MGM sides there was a revival

If you have one CD, get this one so you can listen to the Sally Gooden on it. It is a unique recording, of which the Hot Club of Cowtown is only a pale imitation, since they only really have a trio, and this adds in guitar, steel guitar and other instruments. You must have that cut!

Fascinating band but too many steel guitars for my taste.......2004-05-15

When I was much younger, I heard a Bob Wills record. I don't recall which one it was, but it was a fairly conventional fiddle and steel guitar mix, no trumpets, saxes or jazz bass. Then, decades later, I heard this set and was both delighted and surprised by the truly excellent music that Wills presented to his audiences, which included a fair dose of real jazz, blues and Mexican rhythms. Among my favorite tracks on this set are "Cherokee Maiden" (in my view, one of the standout recordings of the entire Swing Era), "Big Beaver," "Stay a Little Longer," "Fat Boy Rag" and "Basin Street Blues." Also very good are "Three Guitar Special," "Corrinne Corrina," "New San Antonio Rose," "Roly Poly" and "South." But for me, personally, there are still too many steel guitar solos that just don't grab me.

Wills' best band, judging from aural evidence, was probably his postwar group of 1946-48 with the superb Junior Barnard on guitar and Millard Kelso, his finest pianist and a real jazz swinger. Without having heard the complete set, then, I would probably recommend the Tiffany transcriptions as aural highlights of a great country band that could provide some truly unexpected jazz thrills. As an overview of his complete career, however, this Rhino set is probably quite accurate in showing the real mix of jazz to fiddle band music the Wills group played.

Your willingness to buy this set will probably depend on your interest in Texas fiddle music in general and Wills in particular. I personally find that the 17 tracks I really like give me constant enjoyment, however. Wills' band was a truly happy one, with an esprit de corps that didn't always exist in more polished and sophisticated groups of the time, and I do believe that both the least and most sophisticated musical listeners will find something here of high quality and lasting pleasure.

Bob Wills Is Still The King.......2000-04-26

No one can dispute Bob Wills' dominance of the Western Swing genre, even twenty-five years after his death. The thirty-two songs on this album are all classics, and they, along with the fairly extensive liner notes, provide a nice retrospective on Bob Wills' long career. For true fans who have the money, though, the Tiffany Transcriptions set is probably the way to go.

Music Album:

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