Lone Star Swing [Paperback]

Duncan McLean (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 1998

High Fidelity meets Blue Highways in this gloriously offbeat quest for the true roots of Texas Swing.

Using the prize money from his Somerset Maugham Award, Duncan McLean traveled from Orkney, Scotland, to Texas in search of the extraordinary mix of jazz, blues, country, and mariachi that is Western Swing.

This account of his travels takes in barbed-wire museums, onion festivals, hoe-downs, ghost-towns, dead dogs, and ten thousand miles of driving through the Lone Star State. A constant soundtrack of vintage music from bands like the Texas Top Hands, The Lightcrust Doughboys, and the Modern Mountaineers cheers McLean as he tries, with great difficulty, to track down any trace of his greatest heroes: Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

Both a quest for a musical grail and a wildly funny travelogue, Lone Star Swing captures the singular wonders of Texas and its maverick inhabitants, its staggering 100-in-the-shade heat, its mouth-blistering chilies. . . . Above all it captures the spirit of the glorious mongrel music-once incredibly popular, now all but forgotten-that he crossed the world to hear.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Duncan McLean has a dilemma. He's head over heels for a music that's not only going out of style, but is found most prevalently in Texas--a long way from his home in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. After exhausting Scotland's supply of western swing, in 1995 McLean travels to America, rents a Chevy Cavalier, and heads west to explore the birthplace, meet the makers, and dig up the roots of the sounds with which he's fallen in love. As he describes it:

"This is the hottering chili-pot of New Orleans Jazz, old country fiddling, big-band swing, ragtime, blues, pop, mariachi and conjunto that dominated Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and beyond--all the way to San Francisco in the west, Memphis in the east--from the mid-Thirties till mid-Elvis. This is western swing."

Lone Star Swing is both musical pilgrimage and witty travelogue. As McLean trails his favorite music over the back roads of Texas, his adventures make for interesting reading. He has a way of making you feel you're riding along in the passenger seat as he finds the top 10 things to do in Turkey, Texas, on Bob Wills Day (Bob is McLean's western-swing hero), learns how to nibble an onion cooked up sunflower style at the Presidio Onion Festival, gets lectured for cussing in front of ladies after his Chevy gets its doors rehung by a hit-and-run driver, and suffers the wrath of Gulf Coast prawns eaten too far from their home waters. And although he's far away from the Orkney Islands, McLean has a way of making himself at home in just about every place the music takes him.

From Booklist

Touring Scotsman McLean focuses on the underappreciated western part of what used to be called country-and-western music. As he searched for the roots of the western swing music of, most notably, Bob Wills and his band, he also took in other manifestations of the glorious cultural wonderland known as Texas. His initial encounter with Texan fried cuisine leaves him confused as to which platter deposit is the catfish and which the hush puppies, and that sets the stage for bemused commentary on the cultural landscape displayed on the Lone Star's seemingly endless highways. Of a Pink Panther mural at the Roy Orbison museum in Wink, McLean ventures, "Why the Pink Panther? . . . Why the pink 100 lb. weight at his feet? Why the pink three of clubs?" Haunting questions, indeed. Much to his consternation, McLean found precious little contemporary interest in classic western swing. The style reached its zenith in the 1940s and is periodically revived, without much effect. Oh, well. McLean's rollicking journal is immensely good fun, anyway. Mike Tribby

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393317560
• ISBN-13: 978-0393317565
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #616,958 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Texas! Music!, November 6, 2004

By 

M. T. Vancampen (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lone Star Swing (Paperback)

McLean, a Scottish writer, discovered an old, scratchy LP of Bob Wills and was instantly became a fanatic for western swing, a music that dominated popular radio in the '30s and '40s and is now close to forgotten. After winning the Somerset Maugham Prize for his book of short stories, he decides to spend the money on a tour of Texas tracking down the surviving musicians who played western swing. On his journeys, he finds the Texas Wills and his associates sang about (in small towns) and a Texas overwhelmed by newer Trends (Austin, Fort Worth, etc.). An interesting tale of another guy obsessed with music.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A pleasure, April 23, 2003

By 

aliled "aliled" (Austin, TX, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Lone Star Swing (Paperback)

Some people, judging from their reviews, just didn't "get" the book. That's okay, I can understand it. It's probably best for people like myself, folks too young to have heard Wills' music any normal way, but who somehow stumbled across it and fell in love. If you're a long-term fan of the music, or have never heard it at all, well, I can imagine the book may seem lacking - though personally, I liked the tales of McLean's efforts not to seem too alien to his surroundings, and his disappointment in finding that mid-1990's Texas is not quite the wonderland of Western Swing he'd hoped. That reviewers point out the book seems to be too much about McLean is rather the point - it's a lonely journey and he only catches a few faint echoes of the subject of his search.

The part where McLean attempts a phone interview with an absolutely befuddled Floyd Tillman is fabulous. Tillman's importance to country music is huge, but the peak of his career is several decades past. Tillman can't seem to wrap his head around the idea that some guy from Scotland would even want to interview him - told the title of the book, Tillman thinks it's "Lone Star Swig", which he assumes will be a book about beer!

The question isn't asked too directly, but the book really does make one wonder about how much we appreciate the heroes of our past and the innovators and originators of our cultural history. That the book is written by a Scottish guy looking for the answers to questions most of the "native" people in his book seem to care not a whit about really drives the concept home.

It's a well-written book with a lot of cool tales and McLean comes across as the sort of guy you wouldn't mind joining on a road trip. On that basis, this book works for me.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book for a beginner, and a wonderful homage, July 31, 2000

By 

C. Hurley "Zoonie" (London) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lone Star Swing (Paperback)

So I'll admit, I find country and western music a drag, but I always loved the crossover jazz of Duke ellington, or the early 20th century trumpet sounds of the great swingers, and could always find a good word to say about the Burrito Brothers, The Byrds or even Hank Williams senior.
Duncan Maclean wrote a very good first novel whose last few pages were a bit ropey - never mind, says I, the good ideas were there, the beautiful imagery: this lad could well turn in the goods one day. So I bought Lone Star Swing, and then kept it on the shelf for a year and a half. Having run out of things to read, I took it down one day and was entranced.
Yes, it's very, very "boy obsessed with music" with it's ridiculous lists and obsession with detail (anyone who has any doubts only has to to read the Nick Hornby Book, "High Fidelity" to know just how obsessive some blokes can be - er, and women, but this is not the place to discuss my A-Z'd old vinyl collection). But here is a man passionately in love with this music, enthusiastically staying in touch with ancient DJ's who live their last years in shacks filled with old tape recordings, who goes all the way from Orkney to Texas on the longest journey of his life to taste such alien and delicious treats as the Texas Rose and stand, in awe, like a small boy, at the feet of the elderly Texas Playboys as they stomp their way through their old standards....
Then came amazon. Then came the opportunity for this English girl living in London to find out just what on earth this Maclean guy found so alluring about some old Texan fiddler and his bluesy, jazzy, folksy playmates. More Cd's than I could possibly buy and they're brilliant. all of them.
Respect. Thank you Duncan. This book has more pure love and tender, respectful energy in it than any other music book I've read. Hurrah for decent music not being pigeonholed in to history and obscurity, but celebrated! Well done, well done. Read it - particularly if you're not sure.