Customer Reviews

Lone Star Swing

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is a five-star book for readers who enjoy fish-out-of-water accounts of travel, where the writer's eye (ear, nose and throat, for that matter) seems to encounter only the completely incongruous and absurd. The jokes go both ways, of course - on the inhabitants of the place traveled through as well as the credulous author, whose expectations are wildly different. Paul Theroux does this in (to me) a cranky and irritating way ("Kingdom by the Sea"), but Duncan McLean, a Scotsman from little Orkney, plays it for belly laughs, and there's a lot of fun to be had along the way.

A caveat or two. Texans may find his jaundiced view of Texas grating, and lovers of Bob Wills and western swing may find the book something of a hodgepodge on those two subjects. Onion festivals, scary encounters with border patrol, and his opinion of Rush Limbaugh will seem beside the point. Likewise, readers not into western swing will find his enthusiasms, knowledge of music trivia, and references to musicians and songs a bit of a yawn.

But if you've read Charles Townsend's biography of Bob Wills and love the music, this slaphappy mix of travel writing and musicology can put a big smile on your face. Also, McLean's difficulties in finding and interviewing the old-timers who once played with Wills will give you an appreciation for the monumental effort of research that went into the writing of the biography. Best advice: Read Townsend first, then pick up McLean and be prepared to laugh.

A poorly planned book about a poorly planned trip through Texas. The writer has a great love for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, but comes up empty on his search and in his book. I read everything I can find on Bob and His Texas Playboys, and this book was the most disappointing.

The only two great books are: San Antonio Rose (by Charles Townsend) and My Years With Bob Wills (by that ol' piano pounder, Al Stricklin)

Skip this one. Save your money for the Bear Records box set.

Duncan McLean can tell a good story, but mostly about himself. He's an interesting sort, but Bob Wills gave us an indigenous art form. If you want to learn more than the outlines of Bob's life and times, you'd best look elsewhere. Free Tip: If you do read the book, you'll get a lot more out of it by listening to a CD of Texas swing at the same time. In fact, if you have to choose between the book and the CD, opt for the CD.

McLean spends all his literary prize money and sets out to discover the sources of Texas swing, an amalgam of music that layered English folk, New Orleans jazz, East Texas blues, Mexican norteno, too much whiskey, lots of energy, and huge talent.

Names that have fallen into dusty silence are brought to life and lyrics that need a driving beat to save them from silliness are transcribed. Texas swing never took itself seriously, and the fun that McLean creates for us is that of a witty man scrutinizing with fascination the ephemeral and the entertaining.

On his virgin tour outside Orkney, the Scottish island, McLean is flummoxed by the traffic in Wichita Falls and is left disappointed by the modern music scene in 6th Street in Austin, the world's live-music capital. He has a chilling interlude with a Border Patrol battalion and writes a beautifully sensitive description of an aging band gradually finding its voice in a retirement home.

Anyone who has been to Turkey, McLean, Wink, Palo Pinto, and Presidio knows that McLean can be trusted. He asks us to climb aboard the van, as we set out on one of those interminable straight arrow highways across West Texas; he slips a tape of Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies into the tape deck; and in the hypnotic gloom of an evening we talk and listen our way into the 30's and 40's.

Buy the book. Buy some tapes. Turn up the volume, pass the salsa, and enjoy.

Except for the fact that Duncan McLean has won a major literary award (which the readers are reminded of to often), there is little to indicate that he can rise above any bemuxed travelogue cliches.

His "dialogues" with the stars and near-stars of western swing are poorly conceived and executed. It's a shame really, the idea is so wonderful and the music which should have been forefront in this telling, is instead left mainly to McClean's tape cassette and "No I'm not English and Gosh I love my New Big Hat" jokes.

What is most perplexing, is that he never seems to touch either the people or the landscape which is Texas, but instead floats above or through the land. I expected more could have been had, by exploring the Scot homesteading history in greater detail and emotionally connecting through this to the music he avowedly loves, but instead we are given fleeting glispses and must end in McLean, TX like any another self-absorbed tourist.

I was most touched by the acknowledgements at the end with the list of those musicians who had died, even the phrasing had a gentleness that wasn't evident in the book.

Well, to think of a different book...is a different book: one that does justice to the music of our past and the aging musicians and listeners that made it come alive. This isn't it the one.

Duncan is an odd, brilliant man. His obsession with the minutiae of a fairly obscure branch of popular music is truly amazing. I had no interest in this music when I bought the book, and don't have much more interest now after reading it. But I still found the book fascinating. This is not a book just for fanatics of western swing. What kept my interest was the stories of the lives of the people involved in the music, which is given much greater emphasis than the music itself. Secondly, the book is just a teriffic travelogue about an interesting, rich, wild part of the U.S.A.. I love hearing the impressions foreigners have of our country -- they reveal much about our culture that we cannot see. If you like Michael Palin's travel series on PBS (Pole to Pole, etc.) you will love Duncan MacLeans' book. He is smarter and just as funny.

I like most travelogues, and I love McLean's fiction (Blackden, Bucket of Tongues, Bunker Man), so, even though I've never even heard of Western Swing music, I thought I might like McLean's account of his journey to Texas in 1995 in search of the remnants of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. After reading half the book, I'm forced to admit that I was wrong. While McLean's enthusiasm brims from every page, it's hard for the outsider to care about his descriptions of obscure artists and their tunes.

And while McLean is an excellent writer of fiction, he is alas, only a workmanlike travel writer. He dutifully chronicles his trials and tribulations, but there's a certain zing missing-a lack of true insight perhaps. There is plenty in Texas to remark on, and he does, but having driven across the state several times myself, I never felt I was learning anything new. So, while I love his fiction, I'd have to recommend giving this a pass unless you're a fan of Western Swing.