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Bob Wills
"Would I like to go to
Tulsa, you bet your boots I would. Just let me off at Archer, and I'll
walk down to Greenwood. Take me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to marry."
('Take Me Back To Tulsa' by Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan)
All work and no play makes
Jack a dull boy. This was the motto. Following the thought Bob Will's
band would set up on the front porch. All the furniture was carried out
and an evening of merriment was promised.
In the 1930s, America was
immersed in the great economic Depression, but it was also experiencing a
technological and cultural explosion. The motorized transportation and the
new electronic media would forever change the world. And yet, from the
Midwest to the Pacific Ocean, we were still a developing, open,
agricultural wild land. The music that had been carried through the folk
tradition continued to be handed down through the families that had worked
the land, the families who'd faced dust storms and other hindrances to
their hard work west of the Mississippi. But music was reaching those
folks with the help of new technology, too. Radio changed things. It
created national celebrities, musicians who took folk tunes and dressed
them up, giving them class and widespread acceptance. The strong
identities with the common man and his work stayed in the music, but a new
sound was creeping into it, with more structured arrangements and melodies
to dance to. Cowboy music.
Today the door to the Old
Jones Place swings open to only the prairie wind, but in 1930's things
were sure different. The oil executives from Conoco oil parked in long
rows on both side of the long drive and it was the one time a car was
allowed on the meadow.
Lee had a gift for making
elderberry wine and on this night the sweet drink flowed freely. The
spigot on the barrel in the cellar was opened again and again to fill
pitchers placed out for folks to fill their glasses. Some of the more
genteel ladies were heard to say, "I didn't know that wine had such a
"kick."
'Bob was a stylish, western
rogue,' says Ray Benson, leader of Asleep At The Wheel, Western Swinging
Bob Wills disciples for the past quarter century. 'He danced on-stage, he
was outrageous. He strutted like a peacock, unheard of back in those
days.'
His was a tight little
fiddle band. The most important qualifications for Texas Playboys were
that they be good musicians and good people. They had to get along with
the others and with the audience, it was that simple.
The completion of the Bob
Wills sound meant having a vocalist who was more crooner than cowpoke, but
with a definite western touch. Tommy Duncan's relaxed, smooth voice was as
appealing as Bing Crosby's, just more suited for a fiddle band. When it
was mixed with Bob's cheerleading interjections, there was a magical
combination.
I can still see the man,
calling out "Ah Hah," in response to the lyrics of Tommy Duncan. We
children wanted to worry the musicians with our adulation. However they
were more like friendly fatherly men who would wink at us as they went on
with the playing of their instrument. These were the good times, and there
was no depression for us.
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