Recently in Western Swing Category
Dallas - DC9 At Night - Echoes And Reverberations: The Ghosts Of The Longhorn Ballroom
Bob Wills, Merle Haggard, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, the Sex Pistols -- they all played the Longhorn.
DEWEY GROOM & THE LONGHORN BALLROOM « Paula's Back-Log
"Dewey Groom: From the Mabank Flash To Big Daddy of Country Music" from the July 1971 edition of the Country Music Reporter.
WFMU's Beware of the Blog: Twistin' The Country Classics (MP3s)
A 1963 recording by a Liberty Records studio band featuring legendary guitarist Tommy Allsup: "The album, released at the peak of the nation's raging case of twist fever, combined familiar standards with more contemporary country tunes and re-interpreted them as hard-driving twist tempo instrumentals." Includes Wabash Cannonball, Ida Red, and San Antonio Rose.
HackLawyer.net: Don Helms, last surviving sideman for Hank Williams, dead at 81
"His steel guitar provided an aching, visceral tone of grief to Williams' music and hence, its very identity.... As a boy, he fell in love with the music of our own Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys and in particular, with the steel guitar music of Leon McAuliffe. He got his first steel guitar from his grandmother when he was 15 and at the tender age of 18, began to play with Williams around the joints in Alabama. After Williams' death, Helms joined the Ray Price band and was a key part of that singer's success in the 1950s."
The story of the Ernie Ball family and their guitars, interwoven with the story of the southern California music scene and names like the Beach Boys, Leo Fender, and Albert Lee. (Ernie Ball played steel guitar for Tommy Duncan's band.) "One of the great things we did back then was drive to the northern border of the San Fernando Valley and go to a place called the Sundance Saloon. They had a Tuesday night Jam hosted by Don Everly. The band was Buddy Emmons, Byron Berline, and just about every legend at the time even Glen Campbell..everyone. I wasnt old enough but sometimes I would sit out front and sometimes they would let me in. I remember sitting outside one night and the kid next to me was a guitar from Oklahoma named Vince....Vince Gill."
Proper Box Set: Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys: Take Me Back to Tulsa
Discography for Proper's excellent 4 disc set, covering the years 1934-1950.
Bob Wills Discography -- Joe Sixpack's Guide To Hick Music
Handy (but incomplete) summary of compilations, transcriptions, and reissues by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, plus albums by the other Wills brothers and Tommy Duncan.
tomhull.com: Old-Time Country / Cowboy / Western Swing
A summary of grades assigned to albums, but without the bullet reviews. Interesting collection includes a lot of western swing and other forms of hot hillbilly music. And here's a broader list which includes outside recommendations.
tomhull.com: January 2002 Notebook
The top entry on this page has two-sentence reviews of about 50 albums, including most of Bob Wills's Tiffany Transcriptions, For the Last Time, and the Longhorn Recordings; the two Billy Jack Wills compilations; Tommy Duncan's solo work; Adolph Hofner; Merle Travis; Jimmie Rogers (the Singing Brakeman); Jimmie Rivers (Brisbane Bop); and old-time fiddler Eck Robertson. This guy doesn't care for obscuring the music patter and chatter -- the sort you find on the Longhorn Recordings and on old radio transcriptions. I find the snippets of talk colorful and fascinating.
Tommy Allsup MyBestYears.com INTERVIEW SPOTLIGHT
The legendary western swing & rock-n-roll guitarist looks back over 60 years in music: the Oklahoma Swingbillies, Johnnie Lee Wills, Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings, the Winter Dance Party Tour and the fateful coin-flip with Ritchie Valens, producing Bob Wills, session work for Kenny Rogers, George Jones, and the Everly Brothers, and leading the ongoing Texas Playboys band.
