King of Western Swing Bob Wills was born in Kosse, Texas, in 1905 to a family of farmers and fiddle players. Kosse is a small town in eastern Texas, located halfway between Dallas and Houston. Shortly after it was settled, it became the end of the Houston and Texas Central railway, making it easy for people to travel there. Due to its proximity to areas of prominent cotton farms, there was a strong African American influence in the community, which Bob Wills and his family embraced in their music. The area was known specifically for its African American roots, producing legendary musicians such as Scott Joplin, Victoria Spivey, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, who all played a critical role in shaping Wills as a creative. It was from his Black neighbors that he learned blues and jazz, a passion that eventually drove him across the state of Texas, where he played ranch house dances and medicine shows.
After leaving the family farm at 17, Wills traveled around, pursuing musical interests and taking up odd jobs. At the age of 10, he played the fiddle at his first ranch dance and relied heavily on this talent through his young adulthood to carry him through his time of occupational uncertainty. In 1929, after settling in Fort Worth, Wills was working multiple jobs, acting as a barber and a musician in medicine shows where he would perform in blackface. This is ironic because it’s incredibly well known that Bob Wills was influenced so heavily by the music of his African American neighbors, and arguably wouldn’t have been able to develop country-western music without that influence. Even Wills’ daughter, Rosetta, is quoted, openly conveying her confusion for his participation in minstrel shows, saying “He had a lot of respect for the musicians and music of his black friends”. She even recalls that her father loved Bessie Smith, an African American blues singer so, so much that “…he once rode 50 miles on horseback just to see her perform live”.
It was around the same time when Wills met guitarist Herman Arnspiger, and the pair recorded two songs for the Brunswick label, which were never commercially released. They stuck together, and a year later, brothers Milton and Derwood Brown joined wills and Arnspiger to create the Aladdin Lamp Company’s “Aladdin Laddies,” a musical advertisement for the WBAP-Fort Worth radio station. Later that same year, the band was hired to promote Light Crust Flour, also on WBAP, and were renamed the Light Crust Doughboys.
These groups were instrumental in helping Wills develop his signature “western swing” sound, influenced heavily by his roots in African American music and traditional country music. Wills was free to explore these interests more in 1934 when he formed the Playboys, who started in Waco, TX, and eventually migrated to Oklahoma City, then Tulsa, where they found the most success. The band was a revolving door for talented musicians, ranging in number from 6 to 22, comprised mainly of traditional string instruments, adding drums, amplified steel, and standard guitar, and horns, which weren’t typically popular in country music. As the pioneer of the new “western swing” genre, Wills had the creative freedom to use this non-traditional instrumentation to his advantage, drawing from country, jazz, Dixieland, big band, minstrelsy, pop, blues, and various ethnic styles.
The Texas Playboys were Bob Wills’ most successful venture from 1935 to 1947. In those twelve years, the group recorded for ARC, Vocalion, OKeh, and Columbia, selling records in the hundreds of thousands. The groups’ biggest hit, “San Antonio Rose” is estimated to have sold millions of copies. “San Antonio Rose” is written in the first person about the rose of San Antonio, the love interest of the story’s narrator. This tune helped bring Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys the national fame they’re known for today, charting in its release year 1940, and again in 1941. Recorded at Burrus Sawmill Studio in Saginaw, Texas, “San Antonio Rose” is the epitome of western swing, with a blues-inspired bassline and a true country string section. It was with these recordings that Wills popularized his “ah-ha!”, which he called out with the names of each of his performers in every song.
Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys are also credited for popularizing “Cotton Eyed Joe”, which predates the Civil War and was passed among generations of African Americans on plantations prior to the abolition of slavery. Taking inspiration from the musical styles of the Czech, German, and Cajun immigrants in Texas, Wills transformed the song into a rural country tune that helped to develop the popular dance that accompanies the melody.
“Deep In The Heart Of Texas” is the song that best reflects Texas ideology. Each line of the song examines a different part of Texas, suggesting that the stars are only big and bright, and the sage in bloom smells like perfume, only in the heart of Texas.
Bob Wills is most clearly tied to Texas in his musical origins, having such obvious connections to blues, jazz, and gospel from the African American community that existed in Texas after the abolition of slavery. The lyrical content of the majority of his music fits the “western swing” genre that Wills was instrumental in creating, often relating to themes of the western genre of entertainment that had reached its peak popularity in the mid-twentieth century, around the same time that Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys were approaching the climax of their career. Furthermore, Bob Wills was a significant figure for many Texas musicians that came onto the scene either at the end of Wills’ career or after it had concluded. One of the biggest names influenced by Wills was Willie Nelson, who claims Wills was making “real American music” for as long as he was active. Nelson grew up on similar music to Bob Wills, polkas, waltzes, etc., and learned a lot of blues and gospel at church. Without Wills’ influence, it’s hard to say whether or not Nelson would have ever had the incentive to develop his own traditional sound or pioneer his own musical movement with the inception of Outlaw Country, which helped to further develop country-rock music and popularize African American styles in commercial music.
Works Cited
“78 Record: Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys – New San Antonio Rose (1940).” 45worlds, www.45worlds.com/78rpm/record/05694.
“Bob Wills.” Country Music Hall of Fame, 3 Feb. 2014, countrymusichalloffame.org/artist/bob-wills/.
“Bob Wills.” Cowtown Birthplace of Western Swing, birthplaceofwesternswing.com/wills.html.
“Bob Wills.” Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/biography/Bob-Wills.
Dorman, Robert L. It Happened in Oklahoma: Stories of Events and People that Shaped Sooner State History. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
“Kosse History.” Welcome to Kosse, Texas! – A Little Town with a Big Heart, www.kossetexas.com/kosse-history.html.
“PBS – American Roots Music: Oral Histories – Willie Nelson.” PBS: Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/americanrootsmusic/pbs_arm_oralh_willienelson.html.
“Western Swing’s Mystery Man — and Why It’s Time He Got His Due.” Media and Public Relations | Baylor University, 25 May 2011, www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=94575.
“Wills, James Robert | The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture.” Oklahoma Historical Society, www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=WI020.
“Wills, James Robert.” TSHA, www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/wills-james-robert.
Wolff. Country Music, “Big Balls in Cowtown: Western Swing From Fort Worth to Fresno”, p. 94.
