Western swing

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As Western swing one is music genre called the beginning of the 1930s in the southwestern United States from a combination of traditional Texan music with elements of blues of and different varieties of jazz was born. In the course of its development it was influenced by other styles. Similar to western music , western swing is now predominantly viewed as one of the numerous sub-genres of country music . However, this classification is controversial.

Western swing was primarily designed as dance music for live bands. Its characteristic feature is the combination of actually more urban big bands or their typical sound and the more rural cowboy image. While it was originally a regional phenomenon in Texas, it spread to Oklahoma and the west coast of the United States, particularly California , in the 1930s and 1940s .

history

The term "Western Swing" was coined in 1942 by Spade Cooley (or his manager at the time, Forman Phillips ) who, after a musical contest with Bob Wills, called himself the "King of Western Swing" and appeared in a short film of the same name in 1945. The actual founders of the genre, however, are Bob Wills and especially Milton Brown , who had developed a new style from various influences since the early 1930s. However, Brown was already killed in a traffic accident in 1936, so that Wills increasingly developed into the dominant "father figure" of Western Swing. In addition, numerous other bands also brought their own influences and made a significant contribution to the development of the new music.

The roots of Western Swing lie not only in the traditional musical tradition of the American Southwest but also in Afro-American influences such as blues , swing and Dixieland . In addition, the rural exodus of the time played a role at the sociological level, later also the environment of the armaments industry during the Second World War : On the one hand, with the rural population, their music moved to the metropolitan areas and mixed there with the more urban styles. On the other hand, the demand for rural music performances increased in the cities.

Origins

Fiddle music had always played a major role in Texas, but was initially less influenced by elements of the blues than music in the southeastern United States. The origins of this musical tradition can be traced back to the time of the Spanish colonization, which shaped Texas profoundly. The Spaniards not only established cattle breeding there with its cultural side effects, but also introduced their special instruments such as violin and guitar as well as characteristic dance events: the dissolute fandangos (derived from the dance of the same name ) and the more contemplative bailes. Dancing was an important part of the Spanish-Texan culture, as it offered the opportunity to escape the hardship of life, at least for a short time.

In the course of time this culture was enriched with new elements by immigrants from other cultures, especially under the impression of the increasing displacement of the Spanish and Mexican rulers in the course of the incorporation of Texas into the United States. In addition, other continental European influences were added, such as marches , waltz melodies , Scottish and polkas . For example, based Under The Double Eagle , one of the classics of Western Swing and 1936 a big hit for Bill Boyd & His Cowboy Ramblers, on the march Under the Double Eagle of Joseph Wagner , the Bob Wills later with Texas Double Eagle transformed into a classic polka. In some cases, these influences were first adapted by Afro-American musicians by syncopating the polkas and applying the offbeats of the polkas to marches. From this the typical African American dance music developed in 2/4 time, which in turn became interesting for white musicians like Bob Wills.

Eck Robertson around 1922

However, despite these new influences, the fiddle remained the predominant instrument of the Texan music scene, which was also preferred by the Anglo-Saxon residents. In the early 20th century, numerous so-called "fiddle contests" were held both locally and nationally. With Eck Robertson later, a representative of this music as the first commercial was country musician in the history books. Other representatives of this music were the East Texas Serenaders, the Southern Melody Boys or Prince Albert Hunt's Texas Ramblers. However, the boundaries between these "preliminary stages" and the actual Western Swing are individually disputed. The serenaders, for example, should not be one of them, as they lacked three essential key elements that set the early western swing bands apart from the traditional string bands, which mostly only played instrumental pieces: in addition to improvising, the addition of non-string instruments as well as " pop-style vocals ", that is, pleasing voices. However, the Serenaders expanded the current repertoire to include elements from ragtime in order to meet the audience's wishes for dances such as the Two Step or the Foxtrot . In this way they paved the way for other bands and, for some critics, laid the foundation for Western Swing. The fathers of Bob Wills and Milton Brown were both avid Fiddlers in the breakdown tradition. Wills had already performed publicly at the age of ten in square dance and in so-called ranch dances and house dances.

The time of pure fiddle music was drawing to a close. By the mid-1930s, the tastes of the rural public had also changed. One of the organizers of the Georgia Fiddling Contest said in 1935: “The country folks ain't satisfied with the simple old fiddle tunes no more. They want this jazz band music ”. Accordingly, many rural musicians had also started to experiment with new stylistic devices. Music in the style of jazz guitarists Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti was also very popular as inspiration .

In addition, the minstrel and vaudeville shows , which were very popular at the time, played a major role and featured strong African-American elements such as blues and jazz. Since about 1929 Wills has been touring the country with a Medicine Show and was heavily influenced by its jazzy arrangements and the spirited demeanor of the actors. In particular, the music of Emmett Miller , one of the most influential representatives of the minstrel scene, had a lasting effect on him. This is particularly evident in his recording of I Ain't Got Nobody (1935), which is conscientiously based on Miller's earlier version. Will's typical heckling, his "hoots and hollers" can also be found in Miller. At this time, many minstrel bands also turned away from their traditional string band lineup and replaced the fiddle with wind instruments. The brothers Bill and Jim Boyd, who, alongside Bob Wills and Milton Brown, are among the pioneers of the genre, were also influenced by Vaudeville. Raised in the border area between Texas and Oklahoma, they saw a blackface artist with his guitar at a minstrel show in the nearby town in 1926, and they were so impressed by his performance that they bought a cheap guitar together and started playing it themselves taught.

In general, the Afro-American influence plays a major role in the development of Western Swing. Similar to the development of blue yodeling from the blues, white artists in the southwest who were looking for new impulses were happy to take up the stylistic suggestions of their black colleagues. However, this did not always meet with understanding: Bob Wills is said to have hired a black trumpeter when he was drunk, but he was not accepted by the audience, who were far less progressive than the musicians in this regard, in an otherwise exclusively white band.

Ted Daffan 's Texans - Bluest Blues (1942)

The close connection with the blues can be seen, for example, in the well-known piece St. Louis Blues , which was first made popular by blues musicians such as Bessie Smith , Bob Wills' favorite singer, and later became one of the great classics of Western swing.

Another building block in the foundation of Western Swing were the so-called "House Dances". These took place in private households, the owner cleared the living room and hired various musicians or a band. The background to these events was, on the one hand, that the common people could not afford the prices of the dance halls . On the other hand, these people did not feel comfortable in the elegant dance halls, where large orchestras and brass players played social music. In addition, it was easier to circumvent the prohibition of alcohol in the private sphere.

Beginnings

Bob Wills and Milton Brown met at one such house dance in Fort Worth around Christmas 1929. Both had made a name for themselves in the scene for a long time, but it was here that they met for the first time. According to a guest request, Brown sang the St. Louis Blues , accompanied by Wills and Arnspiger. Milton Brown had sung in high school and was nicknamed "Harmony Boy" there. After graduating, he had played alongside his work as a cigar seller with friends in a band whose repertoire around 1928 consisted mainly of barbershop and contemporary pop songs, which also included I Ain't Got Nobody .

From then on, Wills and Brown worked together, first in the Wills Fiddle Band, which was renamed Fort Worth Doughboys and then Light Crust Doughboys, a publicity stunt by their sponsor, the Burrus Mill and Elevator Company , who produced a type of flour called "Light Crust Flour “Made. For both of them it was primarily important to play rousing dance music. As a result, however, internal disputes arose as early as 1932. W. Lee O'Daniel , who was responsible for radio advertising at Burrus , wanted to forbid the band from performing at dance events which he feared would damage their image due to possible alcohol consumption. Instead, he wanted to force her to appear on the radio only on the sponsored shows. Brown then left the Doughboys and formed his own band, the Musical Brownies . Just a year later, O'Daniel also kicked Bob Wills out of the band, and with him the singer Tommy Duncan, who was used as a replacement for Brown, left the Doughboys. Wills also formed his own band, the Playboys, which he renamed the Texas Playboys shortly after the envious O'Daniel drove him to Oklahoma .

The first recordings

In February 1932, the Doughboys recorded two songs for Victor , which represent the only recorded collaboration between Wills and Brown: Nancy Jane and Sunbonnet Sue . For some authors, they represent the first recordings of Western Swing. For the first time, a Texan fiddle band worked here, singing in a soft style that was clearly different from all previous ones: Albert Hunt, a representative of the fiddle Music Jazz elements used and sung, but in a style that is described as rough and crude. Other well-known Texan singers had also been reminiscent of clumsy cowboys in their singing style. However, there is still no improvisation in both recordings by Wills and Brown. Gary Ginell, for whom the recordings are not the first western swing for this reason, blames Bob Wills for this: "(...) Bob Wills could not play jazz" Wills, who plays the fiddle, sticks to the melody, one Quality he never gave up. Later, with Jesse Ashlock, Johnny Gimble and others, he always had a talented violinist to take on this part. Purists therefore only see the musical Brownies as the first western swing band.

The Light Crust Doughboys or Wills' and Brown's own bands can be seen as the nucleus of Western Swing. Many musicians who were later to be among his outstanding representatives either played in one of these bands or were at least inspired by them. In addition, of course, they also brought their own influences, so that the Western Swing genre could develop over time.

Adolph Hofner is one of these musicians influenced by Wills or Brown . Since his parents immigrated to the USA from Bohemia in what was then Austria-Hungary, he was already heavily influenced by polka and waltzes as a child and played in polka bands with his brother Emil as a teenager. Enthusiastic about Milton Brown's music, he turned to western swing and is now considered to be the one who introduced the accordion to western swing. From Hofner's point of view, however, it was the other way around: "I was about the first guy to put a country music sound to German and Czech music and to this day it follows me."

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys - Hang Your Head in Shame (February 1945; B-side of Smoke On the Water )

Above all, Wills experimented with different styles in the course of time and used new instruments such as drums, saxophone and trumpet, which the string bands in the south-west and south-east had not or only rarely used. The soloists were given the opportunity to improvise. Often elements from a wide variety of genres were also introduced, such as blues , mariachi or polka . Brown, in turn, put a pianist in a string band for the first time with Fred Calhoun, from whom the Brownies took over the jazz improvisation. As a guitarist he hired Bob Dunn, who was the first to use an electrically amplified steel guitar and established it in Western Swing.

Brown also expanded the repertoire. The string bands had already included popular songs in their stock, but these were usually Victorian ballads from around the turn of the century. In contrast, Brown often used contemporary pop and jazz songs.

Heyday

Texas had been spared the worst effects of the Great Depression because of the oil boom . Nevertheless, times were tough at the beginning of the 1930s and in addition to the workers in the oil fields, the simple rural population was also looking for a valve to occasionally "let off steam". The new style of music, which from the beginning was primarily conceived as rousing dance music, was therefore initially able to celebrate great success in the dance halls of Texas and Oklahoma. But also in California, where many residents of the Dust Bowl had ended up in search of a better life, western swing fell on fertile ground: During the Second World War , many of the newcomers worked in the large arms factories in southern California. The music style was enthusiastically received in the large dance halls there and a large number of new bands formed. One of their most successful representatives was the band of Spade Cooley, whose orchestra temporarily comprised more than twenty musicians. The California-style western swing, however, had a softer and more pleasing sound than the original Texan music.

In 1940 Bob Wills had the genre's first major national hit with New San Antonio Rose , a text-backed remake of his popular instrumental piece. However, there was no big boom that could be compared with the successes in the western states. Only a few artists were mainly active in the East, such as Hank Penny or Louise Massey , although the latter is not primarily to be classified as a representative of Western Swing.

Of the new styles (for example honky tonk and bluegrass ) that emerged from the common roots of traditional old-time music in the 1930s and 1940s, western swing moved furthest away from its origins. Its popularity among the followers of the (then still called) " Hillbilly music" was therefore limited. For many, the sound was too “jazzy”. In addition, there was always controversy with the traditional representatives of hillbilly music, who were not comfortable with the experimentation of western swing. In 1944 this culminated in Bob Wills' exile from the Grand Ole Opry after daring to play drums there. According to Opry officials, this constituted a "violation of the purity of music".

The popularity of western swing also contributed to film appearances by some artists, mainly in westerns . Since the beginning of the 1930s, various western heroes had become naturalized singing parts in the films, from which the Singing Cowboys later developed . For the producers of these films, it made sense to hire established bands that also had a western image, such as the Sons of the Pioneers or the Cass County Boys , to accompany the singing star or to replace stars who could not or did not want to sing themselves . Pee Wee King & His Golden West Cowboys were the first western swing artists to appear alongside Gene Autry in Gold Mine In The Sky in 1938 . After Bob Wills had landed a national hit with New San Antonio Rose in 1940 , the Monogram Studio offered him to take over the musical accompaniment in Tex Ritter's Take Me Back To Oklahoma , but he had to reduce his orchestra to five members. Since the performance was positively received by the audience, further guest appearances followed on the side of Penny Singleton, Russell Hayden and Charles Starrett . In 1942, Bill Boyd appeared in six films in the short-lived Frontier Marshals series, but was derided by critics as an implausible and terrible actor in the cowboy role.

Spade Cooley's Orchestra made its first appearance alongside Bob Crosby in The Singing Sheriff in 1944 . Other films also followed here, including the documentary shorts Spade Cooley, King of Western Swing (1945) and Spade Cooley and His Orchestra (1949). However, all of the above focused mainly on their careers as musicians. The only western swing artist with a film career was Carolina Cotton, who had appeared with Dude Martin, Spade Cooley, Tex Williams and Bob Wills during and after the war. After she had a small role as a yodeler at the side of Roy Acuff in Sing, Neighbor, Sing in 1944 , she played several times alongside Ken Curtis , Charles Starrett, Gene Autry and Eddy Arnold.

End of the golden era and present

Parallel to the development in Western Music , the great era of Western Swing came to an end at the end of the 1940s; as dance music it has been supplanted by rockabilly and rock 'n' roll . One of the last representatives of the golden era was Hank Thompson and the Brazos Valley Boys , who played a tougher honky tonk- inspired style they called honky tonk swing in the 1950s . The same applies to Bob Wills' 21 years younger brother Billy Jack Wills, who anticipated the upheavals in music with his band founded in 1952: Although his music had the typical big band elements, he also experimented with the jump blues and the evolving rhythm and blues , often using 4/4 time instead of the 2/4 time Bob Wills preferred. He also took up elements of rockabilly, such as heavier rhythms and drum beats.

However, there have always been and still are individual bands that are successful with this style, such as Asleep At The Wheel , Prairie Oyster or Hot Club of Cowtown. The more modern variants are also known as Western Swing Revival . Representatives of modern country music also repeatedly fall back on the western swing repertoire, for example George Strait , who had a number one hit in 1984 with a cover version of the classic Right or Wrong by the minstrel artist Emmett Miller had recorded before Wills and Brown. In May 2011, Western Swing was declared the " Official State Music of Texas " by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Texas .

Characteristic

At its core, western swing is the combination of the popular styles of jazz and big band swing with the culture of the American Southwest. However, the musicological classification of the genre, in particular the demarcation from jazz and country, is controversial.

Demarcation

Today western swing is sometimes seen as a “country's jazzy substyle” , ie as a sub-category of country music. Art Satherly, legendary producer and A&R manager for Columbia, who rejected the term Western Swing because of its "uptown swing-band connotations" and is said to have urged Wills in vain not to use brass, also put Wills' music in the "Country" category classified, although it should be noted that he also classified blues and other "race music" in this way. However, according to voices in the literature, this classification of Western Swing can only be agreed if one describes all American music with a rural background as country.

The historian Jean Ann Boyd takes a view contrary to this view: " (...) Country is an inappropriate and misleading label for Western Swing." According to her, it is an independent cultural phenomenon whose roots lie in the peculiarities of Texan culture. Both Texas and Oklahoma were largely agricultural until the 20th century. Just like the Mexican conjunto , western swing was aimed at rural audiences who had migrated to the cities for various reasons, but had retained their idiosyncrasies and preferences. The early centers of western swing were " basically extensions of the rural countryside ". Her conclusion: “ Western Swing was jazz created by and for country folk. “For Boyd, the background to the general perception of the genre is the decision of the record industry at the time to classify the new style as hillbilly in the absence of a suitable category.

This view is also taken by other authors: For reasons of simplification, it was still customary in the 1930s in the press when dealing with the music of the common people to call African American music “race music” and the music of whites summarized under the term "Hillbilly". For Robert Palmer , too , the problem with Western Swing, especially with regard to the Musical Brownies, was that it was, so to speak, caught between all chairs: “Their music has proved too jazzy and swinging to win them a prominent place in the annals of country music , too "hillbilly" to be taken seriously by jazz scholars, too full of regional quirks to be accepted as mainstream pop. "

Even Bob Wills himself did not find his music to belong to the country genre: Bob Wills' aversion to the terms country or even hillbilly is legendary. He hated the associated hillbilly image and tried to differentiate his band in appearance and music from the contemporary hillbilly bands. He preferred to see himself in the tradition of band leaders like Tommy Dorsey . When he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968, his friends had to persuade him to even accompany them to Nashville . He himself did not believe in a recording, especially since he had always insisted on not playing country music and had no connection with the Opry. Bill C. Malone assumes that the Country Music Association "apparently" defined country as any music of rural origin, but was above all aware of Wills' great influence on the development of country music.

Clayton McMichen, around 1925

Clayton McMichen , who left the Skillet Lickers in a dispute in 1931 and turned to a more jazzy style with the newly founded Georgia Wildcats , saw this in a similar way to Wills . In an interview in 1958, he accused his former bandmates of musical backwardness. He also rejected the hillbilly image they cultivated: "That 'hillbilly', we fought it, teeth and toenails." According to Norm Cohen, McMichen did not distinguish between country, pop or jazz, but between old-fashioned and modern music.

Between these two extreme positions - the classification as country on the one hand or jazz on the other - a mediating view has established itself. According to this, Western Swing is neither the traditional music that the young Bob Wills learned from his father, nor is it pure jazz. It is therefore widespread that Western Swing cannot simply be classified into an existing category, that it actually eludes categorization (“(…) it is indeed beyond category.”) And that it has its own characteristics: “(…) a unique musical hybrid of big band and string band ”Elsewhere it is referred to as“ the prototypical synthesis music ”, the prototype of the musical synthesis which“ obviously ”deserves its place in any study of jazz.

In his commentary on Columbia's pioneering Bob Wills Anthology (1973), William Ivey, then director of the Country Music Foundation, points out on the one hand that Western Swing is a distinct art form. In order to truly appreciate it, the listener must banish any preconceived notions about the nature and sound of country music from his mind. At the same time he calls it one of the most important sub-categories of the country music tradition. This formulation has been contradicted with the argument that it could just as easily be viewed as a sub-category of jazz, swing or popular music. The phrase "most significant influence on the country music tradition" is better.

According to other commentators, Western Swing is only vaguely reminiscent of "Country and Western Music" as we know it today. He combined “country string band sounds” with lively brass instruments, as one is used to from Dixieland, and smooth singing in pop style instead of nasal twang . This combination - string band, brass / jazz and pleasing vocals - can be seen as a standard description of Western Swing, linked with the reference to the resulting synergy effects: “It was from the start (…) its own music, something more than its parts ".

Style issues

The relationship between western swing and jazz should, however, be primarily of a stylistic nature: While the Light Crust Doughboys and their predecessors were still a pure string band in terms of instrumentation, the melody and rhythm were clearly based on jazz geared towards danceability. This is especially true for the music of the later Texas Playboys, which is basically jazz or swing, which is enriched with fiddle and steel guitar. There is little in common with the hillbilly music produced at the same time.

On the other hand, there are also some differences to "real" jazz. In Western Swing, the fiddle is always the leading instrument, by which the others act. The extent of improvisation is also said to have been higher in western swing than in contemporary brass orchestras. Many of his performers were self-taught who could not read music, played their music by ear and therefore relied on improvising, also to emphasize their individuality. Cliff Bruner confirms this that he has heard new songs on the radio or on records and reenacted them in his own way: “These tunes would come out and I'd just improvise on them and play them. I'd set my own style; there were many different fiddle men who set a style of playing. "

Adolph Hofner, who was heavily influenced by Milton Brown at the beginning of his career, explained: “They (the Musical Brownies) played jazz then, the same as New Orleaans jazz, but without the horns. They did it with strings. ”In a study conducted by historian Charles Townsend, all former members of Bob Wills' band stated that their music was stylistically more similar to jazz than any other style of music. Leon Mc Auliffe, next to Bob Dunn one of the steel guitar pioneers and member of the Texas Playboys, remembers: “I can't think of a country artist we ever listened to and learned their tunes. We listened to Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong ... "

Outwardly, most of the bands appeared in the western suits introduced by Wills. With regard to this, Ray Benson, front man of Asleep at the Wheel explains: "Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys were probably responsible for the 'W' in 'C&W'" and points out the immense influence that the dressing gown introduced by Bob Wills Had code on the image of country music since the 1940s. Ironically - despite all the stylistic disputes - this outfit was adopted more and more by the hillbilly bands and thus - together with the singing cowboys - led over time to the identification of country music, like the hillbilly genre after the second World War I was called with the cowboy.

Main performers

Pioneer

Texas

California

Swing Revival

literature

  • Jean Ann Boyd: The Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing . University of Texas Press, 1998. ISBN 978-0-292-70860-0
  • Cary Ginell, Kevin Coffey: Discography of Western Swing and Hot String Bands, 1928-1942 . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, ISBN 978-0-313-31116-1
  • Richard Kienzle: Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky Tonk, Western Swing and Country Jazz . Routledge, 2003, ISBN 978-0-415-94103-7 .
  • Robert Kaiser: American Country Music: a view of its history, styles and artists . 1997 (English, science.kairo.at [accessed March 12, 2007]).

Individual evidence

  1. Guy Logsdon: The Cowboy's Bawdy Music . In: Charles W. Harris (ed.): The Cowboy: Six-Shooters, Songs, and Sex , University of Oklahoma Press, 2002, ISBN 978-0-8061-1341-8 , pp. 127-138, here: p 137.
  2. ^ Jean A. Boyd: Western Swing - Working-Class Southwestern Jazz of the 1930s and 1940s . In: Michael Saffle (Ed.): Perspectives on American Music, 1900–1950 . Taylor & Francis, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8153-2145-3 , pp. 193-214, here: pp. 195 f.
  3. ^ George Lipsitz : Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and culture in the 1940s. University of Illinois Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-252-06394-7 , p. 323.
  4. ^ George Lipsitz: Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and culture in the 1940s . University of Illinois Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-252-06394-7 , p. 323.
  5. ^ Cary Ginell, Kevin Coffey: Discography of western swing and hot string bands , 1928–1942. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001, ISBN 978-0-313-31116-1 , Introduction xiii.
  6. ^ Cary Ginell, Roy Lee Brown: Milton Brown and the founding of Western Swing . University of Illinois Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-252-02041-4 , p. 251, note 22.
  7. Handbook of Texas Online, Patrick Henry Bogan, Jr., "EAST TEXAS SERENADERS"
  8. Cusic, Don: Discovering country music , Praeger Publishers, 2008, p 36. ISBN 978-0-313-35245-4
  9. Nick Tosches: Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock'n'Roll . Da Capo Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-306-80713-8 , p. 102.
  10. ^ Robert Christgau: Grown up all wrong: 75 great rock and pop artists from Vaudeville to Techno . Harvard University Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-674-44318-1 , p. 40.
  11. ^ Jean A. Boyd: The Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing . University of Texas Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-292-70860-0 , p. 171.
  12. ^ Charles W. Joyner: Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture . University of Illinois Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-252-06772-3 , p. 205.
  13. ^ Jean Ann Boyd: "We're the Light Crust Doughboys from Burrus Mill": An Oral History . University of Texas Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-292-70925-6 , p. 26.
  14. ^ Jean Ann Boyd: "We're the Light Crust Doughboys from Burrus Mill": An Oral History . University of Texas Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-292-70925-6 , p. 18.
  15. ^ Jean Ann Boyd: "We're the Light Crust Doughboys from Burrus Mill": An Oral History . University of Texas Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-292-70925-6 , p. 27.
  16. ^ John Mark Dempsey: The Light Crust Doughboys are on the air: Celebrating seventy years of Texas Music . University of North Texas Press, 2002, ISBN 978-1-57441-151-5 , p. 29.
  17. ^ Ivan M. Tribe: Country: A Regional Exploration . Greenwood guides to American roots music, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006, ISBN 978-0-313-33026-1 , p. 80.
  18. ^ Richie Unterberger: Music USA: The Rough Guide . Rough Guides, 1999, ISBN 978-1-85828-421-7 , p. 338.
  19. Christopher C. KIng, Occurance at Deep Ellum , Oxford American, No. 87, Winter 2014 .: " The raspy forcefulness of Hunt's violin tone reflected the coarse huskiness of his singing, ... "
  20. ^ Cary Ginell, Roy Lee Brown: Milton Brown and the founding of Western Swing . University of Illinois Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-252-02041-4 , p. 64.
  21. ^ Cary Ginell, Roy Lee Brown: Milton Brown and the founding of Western Swing . University of Illinois Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-252-02041-4 , pp. 63 f. This quote from Ginell can also be found in John Mark Dempsey: The Light Crust Doughboys are on the air: Celebrating seventy years of Texas Music . University of North Texas Press, 2002, ISBN 978-1-57441-151-5 , p. 44.
  22. ^ Jean A. Boyd: The Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing . University of Texas Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-292-70860-0 , p. 15.
  23. ^ Gary Hartman: The History of Texas Music . Texas A&M University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1-60344-002-8 , p. 115.
  24. James P. Leary: Polkabilly: How the Goose Island Ramblers redefined American folk music . Oxford University Press US, 2006, ISBN 978-0-19-514106-1 , p. 36.
  25. ^ Jean A. Boyd: The Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing . University of Texas Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-292-70860-0 , p. 15.
  26. ^ Alan B. Govenar: Texas Blues? The rise of a contemporary sound . Texas A&M University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1-58544-605-6 , p. 77.
  27. ^ Cary Ginell, Roy Lee Brown: Milton Brown and the founding of Western Swing . University of Illinois Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-252-02041-4 , p. 251, note 22.
  28. Richard Holland, Music , in: Mark Busby (ed.), The Greenwood encyclopedia of American regional cultures: The Southwest , Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, ISBN 9780313328053 , 315 ff, here. P. 326.
  29. ^ Douglas B. Green: Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy . Vanderbilt University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8265-1412-X , p. 198.
  30. ^ Douglas B. Green: Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy . Vanderbilt University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8265-1412-X , p. 209.
  31. Irwin Stambler, Landon Grelun: Country Music: The Encyclopedia . Macmillan, 2000, ISBN 978-0-312-26487-1 , p. 105.
  32. ^ Douglas B. Green: Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy . Vanderbilt University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8265-1412-X , pp. 246f.
  33. ^ Kurt Wolff, Orla Duane: The Rough Guide to Country Music. Rough Guides, London 2000, ISBN 978-1-85828-534-4 , pp. 72, 87.
  34. Michael McCall et al., The Encyclopedia of Country Music , Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 9780199770557 , p. 594.
  35. ^ Kurt Wolff, Orla Duane: The Rough Guide to Country Music. Rough Guides, London 2000, ISBN 978-1-85828-534-4 , p. 91.
  36. ^ State Symbols USA: Western Swing - Texas State Music
  37. Rough Stock's History of Country Music: Western Swing ( Memento of 7 July 2014 Internet Archive ): " Combining the popular styles of jazz and big band swing with the culture of the South West, (...). "
  38. ^ Robert K. Oermann: A Century of Country: An Illustrated History of Country Music . TV Books, 1999, ISBN 1-57500-083-0 , pp. 59 f.
  39. ^ Charles Townsend: San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills . University of Illinois Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-252-01362-1 , p. 286.
  40. ^ Jean A. Boyd: The Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing . University of Texas Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-292-70860-0 , Introduction x.
  41. ^ Jean A. Boyd: The Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing . University of Texas Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-292-70860-0 , p. 1. The quotation by Jean A. Boyd is also reproduced in Ralph G. Giordano, Country & Western Dance , Greenwood, 2010, ISBN 9780313365546 , P. 2.
  42. ^ Will Friedwald: The King of Western Swing Goes National . The New York Sun , September 18, 2006.
  43. ^ Robert Palmer: Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies . Fi Magazine, June 1997.
  44. ^ Kurt Wolff, Orla Duane: The Rough Guide to Country Music . Rough Guides, London 2000, ISBN 978-1-85828-534-4 , pp. 70, 94.
  45. ^ Bill C. Malone, Judith McCulloh, Stars of Country Music: Uncle Dave Macon to Johnny Rodriguez . University of Illinois Press, 1975, ISBN 978-0-252-00527-5 , p. 173.
  46. ^ Tony Russell: Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost . Oxford University Press US, 2007, ISBN 978-0-19-532509-6 , p. 39.
  47. Cohen's quotation in: Jeffrey L. Lange: Smile when you call me a hillbilly: Country Music's struggle for respectability , 1939–1954, University of Georgia Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-8203-2623-8 , p. 49.
  48. ^ Charles Townsend: San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills . University of Illinois Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-252-01362-1 , p. 292, note 16.
  49. ^ Charles W. Joyner: Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture . University of Illinois Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-252-06772-3 , p. 204.
  50. ^ Michael H. Price: Jazz Guitar and Western Swing . In: James Sallis (Ed.): The guitar in jazz: An anthology . University of Nebraska Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-8032-4250-0 , pp. 81-88, here: p. 81.
  51. Columbia KG 32416
  52. ^ Charles Townsend: San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills . University of Illinois Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-252-01362-1 , p. 292, note 16.
  53. Joel Selvin: Remember Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys . In: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle , October 14, 1973; cited by Townsend, p. 286.
  54. ^ Michael H. Price: Jazz Guitar and Western Swing . In: James Sallis (Ed.): The guitar in jazz: An anthology . University of Nebraska Press, 1996, ISBN 978-0-8032-4250-0 , pp. 81-88, here: p. 82.
  55. ^ Western Swing Bands History
  56. ^ Ralph G. Giordano, Country & Western Dance , Greenwood, 2010, ISBN 9780313365546 , p. 3.
  57. ^ Jean A. Boyd: Western Swing - Working-Class Southwestern Jazz of the 1930s and 1940s . In: Michael Saffle (Ed.): Perspectives on American Music, 1900–1950 . Taylor & Francis, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8153-2145-3 , pp. 193-214, here: pp. 208 f.
  58. ^ Cary Ginell, Roy Lee Brown: Milton Brown and the founding of Western Swing . University of Illinois Press, 1994, ISBN 978-0-252-02041-4 , p. 164.
  59. ^ Charles Townsend: San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills . University of Illinois Press, 1986, ISBN 978-0-252-01362-1 , p. 63.
  60. ^ Kurt Wolff, Orla Duane: The Rough Guide to Country Music . Rough Guides, London 2000, ISBN 978-1-85828-534-4 , p. 92.
  61. CD booklet for Asleep at the Wheel: Tribute to the music of Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys , Liberty Records, 1993, No. 18 (Dusty Skies)