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Merle Haggard, RIP: His role in the western swing revival
Legendary country singer and songwriter Merle Haggard died Wednesday on his 79th birthday. It might be going too far to say he saved western swing from oblivion, but Merle Haggard's efforts to honor Bob Wills went a long way toward introducing a new generation to the sound. In 1946 or...
Bob Wills's Fresno ranch house to be saved
Earlier this year it was learned that a new subdivision threatened the site of Bob Wills's Triple BBB Ranch in Fresno. The famous western swing bandleader and his family lived on the 80-acre ranch in the mid-1940s. Local preservationists were too late to get the ranch on the historic register...
Bob Wills Fresno home endangered
ABOVE: Bob Wills and his wife Betty hang out the washing to dry at the Triple B Ranch in Fresno, California The Triple B Ranch in Fresno, California, Bob Wills's home in the last half of the 1940s, is to be demolished and replaced with a housing subdivision, despite...
Johnny Cuviello, "Texas Drummer Boy," RIP
In the last year or two we've lost several Texas Playboys from the 1940s: guitarist Jimmy Wyble, singing sisters Dean McKinney Moore and Evelyn McKinney Wills, and now Johnny Cuviello. Johnny Cuviello, drummer for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys in 1946 and 1947 and one of the last surviving...
Tiffany Transcriptions website updated
The Tiffany Transcriptions, discs recorded in 1946 and 1947 for radio use, contain some of the best material ever recorded by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Tom Diamant, whose Kaleidoscope Records made that material available to the general public on a series of LPs in the 1980s, has a...
Dan Boren among 19 Demo speaker-vote dissenters
Oklahoma 2nd District Congressman Dan Boren proved me wrong. Rather than vote a fourth time for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House (he voted for her in 2005, 2007, and 2009), the Democrat joined 10 colleagues in voting for North Carolina Democrat Heath Shuler for speaker. Another eight Democrats...
Democrats in key congressional races, part 1
Travis Childers Dina Titus Carol Shea-Porter Ann Kuster Harry Teague John Hall Michael Arcuri Larry Kissell Earl Pomeroy Steve Driehaus Mary Jo Kilroy Zack Space Kathy Dahlkemper Bryan Lentz Patrick Murphy Chris Carney Paul Kanjorski John Spratt Stephanie Herseth Sandlin Roy Herron Chet Edwards Ciro Rodriguez Glenn Nye Tom Perriello...
Wichita WiFi and coffee
Business has had me in Wichita fairly often over the past few weeks. I was telling a friend about my recent sojourn, and she replied that she'd driven through Wichita a few times and couldn't "get on board with the whole Kansas thing." I'll admit that I didn't have a...
Dean McKinney Moore learns the answer to her musical question at last
I received an e-mail today with a question about Billy Jack Wills, youngest brother of Bob Wills and a great western swing band leader in his own right. A search for the answer turned up the sad news that Billy Jack's sister-in-law, Dean McKinney Moore, had passed away on November...
Ken Burns seeks first-person Dust Bowl stories
Just saw a promo on OETA: Documentary-maker Ken Burns is planning a series on the Dust Bowl, in the same vein as his works on the Civil War, jazz, and baseball, and he's looking for help from Oklahomans: Hello, I'm asking Oklahomans to help me with a new public television...
Happy Birthday, Bob Wills
An edited version of this column was published in the March 1 - 7, 2007, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Posted April 11, 2024. Happy Birthday, Bob By Michael D. Bates It looked like a typical scene in an...
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