Customer Reviews

Take Me Back to Tulsa

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This is another one of those incredible deals floating around the Internet that sounds simply too good to be true: a four CD box set of the incredible Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys -- 109 tracks in all -- for $21.99? You're putting me on! Well, it's all true. These four CDs contain superb quality versions of all the songs; I've never heard Bob Wills sound so clear and clean. The CDs present his musical career from 1932 to 1948, a treasure trove of Western Swing of all varieties, in roughly chronological order. The four CDs come in a sturdy library case jacket, not some cheap cardboard sleeve, and also come with a beautiful 52-page booklet loaded with pictures, a full history of the band, and detailed personnel and session date information for every piece on the four CDs.

And just what kind of music did Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys give us? A good question. Wills's music is neither straight country, nor straight jazz, but a wonderful gumbo mix of nearly everything: folk, blues, ragtime, jazz, Dixieland, country, gospel. But above everything else, it swings! And so the label "Western Swing" stuck. Bob Wills took his love of jazz and blues he had learned from black musicians, and applied the instruments of country folk to it: fiddles, banjos, and especially the distinctive sounds of the steel guitar. Even people who don't like modern country music (and I'm one of those people) will find it hard to resist the hard swingin' power of Bob Wills and those crazy Playboys of his. Fans of big band swing of the era will go nuts over Bob Will's down home Texas interpretation of their favorite music.

Wills had some incredible musicians in his stable, such as singer Tommy Duncan, banjoist Johnny Lee Wills (Bob Wills's younger brother), and piano player Al Stricklin, but most importantly he had steel guitar genius Leon McAuliffe, whose tune "Steel Guitar Rag" is one of the masterpieces from the Texas Playboys. Wills himself played the fiddle and sung a few lead vocals, such as the delightful "Sugar Blues," but his strongest force in the band was as the "caller," a constant voice that propels the band on and teases the singer and the soloists with encouragement ("All right, cut it down boy, cut it down! That's telling `em! Take it away Mr. Leon!")

The first two tracks on this collection are actually by the immediate predecessors to the Texas Playboys, The Fort Worth Doughboys. With the third track, "Osage Stomp," The Texas Playboys proper tear into the music and never stop. The variety of music you'll hear over the four CD is stunning. The band stomps and fiddles up a storm on "Get with It," "Who Walks out When I Walk In," "Playboy Stomp," "Texas Playboy Rag," "That's What I Like about the South," and "Roly Poly." They get very jazzy and big band with "Big Beaver," "New San Antonio Rose" (Wills's biggest hit), "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy," "Dinah," "Fan It" (my personal favorite piece), "A Little Bit of Boogie," and "Crazy Rhythm." And there are some country novelties as well, like "Take Me Back to Tulsa," "Stay a Little Longer," "Frankie Jean," and the beautiful "Along the Navajo Trail." My pick for the most unusual piece is the twin-female vocal of "Hawaiian War Chant."

There's so much variety here that everyone is bound to find something they love, and probably many surprises as well. And at this price, it's easy to take the chance.

This boxed set is amazing for the sheer volume of wonderful music it proffers at a fraction of what one would expect to pay for it. Concentrating on the early years, it presents Bob Wills at the dawn of his recording career and continues through the height of his creativity. This is the cream of early Bob Wills, and contains about 60% of his very best material (I am long of the opinion that Bob Wills never made a bad record in his life, and he continued to be productive through his so-called "lean years" of the 1950's, 1960's and beyond). But these tracks are the classics that most fans cherish above all.

Tommy Duncan, Wills' favorite featured vocalist, appears here on many sides, including Time Changes Everything (my personal Bob Wills favorite) and many others. Besides the early Columbia sides, there are examples of his Decca years and other smaller labels. A few of my own favorites include My Little Cherokee Maiden (close runner-up to Time Changes Everything as my favorite Bob Wills record) Sunbonnet Sue (recorded with Milton Brown and His Brownies before Bob formed the Playboys) Maiden's Prayer, Steel Guitar Rag, Basin Street Blues, San Antonio Rose, Silver Bells, Lone Star Rag (an overlooked masterpiece, and one of the catchiest instrumental tunes you've ever heard), Take Me Back To Tulsa, Miss Molly, My Confession, Roly Poly, Hawaiian War Chant, Sugar Moon, Bubbles In My Beer, Deep Water, Faded Love (which Bob wrote and Patsy Cline had a monster hit with) and I Laugh When I Think How I Cried Over You (what a great title!).

For anyone who doesn't know, Bob Wills was a fiddle player who played his first professional gig as a young boy, substituting for his father at a barn dance. Although he grew up around Western music, the Wills family lived in a poor area where there were many black families, and very early he was exposed to and grew to love the Blues and other forms of traditional African-American music. Legend has it that he once rode fifty miles on horseback to attend a Bessie Smith recital, and was the only white person in the audience. He was one of the founding members of Milton Brown and His Brownies, the band credited with creating the style of music now known as Western Swing. When he started his own band, the Texas Playboys, he took a cue from Count Basie and included Brass, Horns and rhythm instruments, and if he couldn't claim to actually invent Western Swing, he certainly perfected it. In the 1940's he was one of the highest paid bandleaders in the US.

Bob was most famous for his "calls" or "hollers". When the band got hot, he would frequently holler "Ahhhhh-hahhhh" or prod them along with such exclamations as "Take it away, Leon" or "Here's that old piano pounder". Or, if the band was playing below his expectations, he would shout, "Johnny in key, please" or virtually anything else that came into his mind.

For many years during the height of his popularity, Bob and his music were rejected by the orthodox country music establishment for being too "jazzy" and ignored by the jazz world for being too "hillbilly". Western Swing is a blend of jazz and western music - it is primarily dance music, with a strong emphasis on vocals (like country), but it also includes jazz instruments like saxophone and trumpets. What makes it most unique are instruments that are traditionally associated with country music (like fiddles and steel guitars), being employed in a "swing" or jazz fashion. Any performance by Bob Wills Texas Playboys incorporates spotlight solos, improvisation and other musical trademarks generally associated with jazz. In other words, his band and his music are totally unique.

Fortunately, there was a revival of interest in Bob Wills and his music which started in the 1960's and continues to this day. After his death in 1974, there was an explosion of new Western Swing bands, with young admirers anxious to copy the Bob Wills sound and keep Western Swing alive. Even country music has finally paid him his due, for today Bob Wills is proudly embraced and revered in country circles as a pioneer and a true original. He is now acknowledged as one of the first to incorporate African American rhythm and Jazz into country music, and his influence has been acknowledged by such diverse artists as Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and even Elvis Costello.

If you are not familiar with Bob Wills, you can't go wrong with this set as an introduction, especially at this price.

Asleep at the wheel have kept Bob's music alive by recording two tribute albums with star-studded guest lists, both of which I've already reviewed. Patsy Cline, Ray Price and Willie Nelson are among many country singers who have had hits with covers of his songs. Furthermore, Waylon Jennings famously sang about Bob Wills, who may have still been king when Waylon recorded that song in the seventies, but I wonder how many young people these days - even in Texas - know or care whom Bob Wills is. This collection makes it very clear.

Like so many greats from whatever era, Bob's music had a variety of influences. In his case, there were the swing band that dominated the pop charts of the thirties and the primitive country music, just escaping from its folk roots. The fusion of these two styles might have been called country swing but was actually called western swing and that's the name that stuck.

This collection covers the period 1935 to 1950, although it begins with a couple of Milton Brown tracks from 1932, when Bob was a member of Milton's band. It took a while for Bob to really hit his stride, but he wrote several classic songs. Here, you can find his original versions of San Antonio Rose, Stay a little longer, Cotton eyed Joe (an unlikely number one UK hit for Swedish disco group Rednex), Sugar moon, Bubbles in my beer, Deep water, Don't be ashamed of your age (covered as a duet by Ernest Tubb and Red Foley) and Faded love (which Patsy Cline made her own - most people think Patsy's version is the original - of course, it isn't).

As ever with Proper boxed sets, the sound quality is brilliant and the liner notes extensive. If you only buy one Bob Wills collection, buy this one.

I have over 15 Bob Wills CDs and records, and this collection captured all of my favorites. There were a couple of mistakes in the liner notes, but overall the information included in the booklet was well researched and complete.
I always find it ironic that the European labels tend to have more respect for traditional American music then the American labels. JSP, Document, and others are doing a great job re-releasing thorough collections of this sort of thing. The nice thing about this release is that it is not the standard `import' pricing!

Seriously - there are 4 discs packed with almost 120 songs on this incredible boxset spanning Wills' entire musical career. There is enough Bob Wills music on this set to satisfy even the biggest "King of Western Swing" fanatic. Great packaging and a full-color booklet with liner notes included. The price? $22. Wow. A superb value.

Bob Wills is "American Roots" music at its best. This stuff is as real as it gets. Genius is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days, but this guy really had an ear for a tune. Once I became familiar with Wills, it was no surprise to me he's been cited as such an important musical figure.

Always the innovator, Wills incorporates and melds together so many different styles in his music - ragtime & tin-pan alley, blues, big band swing, country, folk, Mariachi - you can never really get tired of listening to it because its NEVER the same old stuff. Most importantly, he pulls it off. It works. He can play dirty blues, foot-stompin' fiddle music, down and out country, or an ol' timey "rag" with the best of `em.

No wonder they had to invent a whole new "genre" to put him in. They called it, for lack of a better word, "Western Swing." But there's a lot more to Bob Wills than big band music with steel guitars. His legacy, put together on this boxed set, will attest to that.

I own 2 other Bob Wills box sets - Anthology 1935 - 1973, which is a 2 CD set with a lot of good music on it, mostly old. I also have the box set "Encore" that has all Bob's newer stuff from the early 60's (when Tommy Duncan came back) to his recordings in the early 70's before his death (at this time in his career his band cosisted of a lot less members and no horns)both these sets are "pretty" good. But this set from Proper Records "Take me back to Tulsa" is one of the Best deals on the internet today. I paid about 18 bucks for this set "Brand New" and it has four CD's that are loaded with tons of great music going all the way back to when Bob was still playing with Milton Brown (Proper's box set "Milton Brown and his Brownies" is also pretty darn good,but it doesn't have that Wills Western Flair). Bottom line if you are a fan of Western Swing and can't afford at this time to put out about $700.00 for the two Outstanding Bear Family box sets then go for this one, over 100 Great songs you won't be disappointed....the price is right too! "Enjoy" Joe Kopeck - Parkville , MD.

I think people look at these sets from Proper, and think, Ah, too good to be true. Think again. This is great stuff, and cheap. It really gives you insight into the swing side of Bob Wills, rather than the Western. Bob Wills was a great jazzman.

Mix two parts twenties jazz, one part blues, one part swing, two parts honky tonk, and one part crooning music and what do you have? Bob Wills and His Texas Playboy Band! I was turned on to this band by their recording of "Too Busy," which sounds like a cross between early fifties rock and roll and dixieland jazz. These guys were hot! Bob Wills and his band were a perfect example of a group of musicians who played live several hours a day, perfecting their craft - not the talentless celebrities of today who rely on tape loops and beat machines. This set is an unbelievable value. You get four cds for 22$! And this isn't filler. Each cd has songs that you will want to download into your ipod. Excellent!

This is a must have for those who don't have the original 78s or 45s. If you are just getting into Bob Wills, you can't go wrong with this 4-disc CD... One way this collection could have been better, is if it had "So Long, I'll See You Later." Anyway it's still a wonderful collection....

Some of these songs aren't on any of the other CD's and if they are, they're different versions. A couple you will want to hear if you haven't already are "Fan It" and "Pray for the Lights To Go Out"- MAN, ARE THOSE OLD BUT GOOD!! "Cowboy Stomp" is another one I hadn't heard before that's in this collection. Anybody who loves Bob Wills should have this, it is worth every penny.