Western swing took root in clubs, on radio and on records in the late 1920s, and then expanded during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl bands like the Light Crust Boys and the East Texas Serenaders bust their instruments from San Antonio to Tulsa to Shreveport. Northwest Arkansas and Western Arkansas venues hosted the bands as well.
("Stay a Little Longer" by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys plays.)
Kyle Kellams: And the airwaves from KVOO radio in Tulsa lingered into this part of the state, too, and brought the legendary Bob Wills daily radio show into homes here. The Fayetteville Public Library will celebrate the legacy of western swing Sunday afternoon from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m., with the Western Swing Rules Band.
The program acknowledges the greats like Bob Wills, but will also highlight unsung heroes of Western swing. Some of them are based right here. Robert Houston, band leader for the Western Swing Rules Band, and Leah Freeden, assistant manager of the adult and reference department at the library, came to the Anthony and Susan Hui News studio this week.
Robert Houston says Western swing is an integral part of this region's cultural DNA.
Robert Houston: I like to say what the blues is to Eastern Arkansas, western swing is the music of our part of Arkansas. Because of the broadcast reach of KVOO radio and daily broadcast by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys back in the 1930s and 40s. This bled over into northwest Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas. Many people remember it. It was the popular music of the day.
And so we as an organization, a band, we have taken it upon ourselves to try to help perpetuate this genre of music because no one plays it anymore. No one plays it. And you don't ever hear it on the radio. But the elements of Western swing are in most recordings today of rock and roll, rockabilly, everything.
So we feel like it's important to help people understand the significance and the importance of this music from a cultural and historic standpoint. So we think that this is an opportunity for people to come and experience this. We will not only play music, we have a big ten piece western swing band, the only one in the state. But we also will be telling some stories about significant contributors to western swing's development and creation and popularity, who were from western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma.
Kellams: Now you're too young to remember Bob Wills and his radio show.
Houston: Correct.
Kellams: Right. So you didn't hear that. What inspired you to not just be interested in the music, but play it?
Houston: It started when I was very young. My mother kept talking about- who grew up in Waldron, Arkansas- grew up listening to Bob Wills every day on KVOO radio. Um, And she would tell me stories when I was a boy about how, you know, what Bob did and a lot of the stories about that. So it kind of- I didn't know anything about him- you know, I was about ten years old. So one day for, like, a mother's day present, I bought her a Bob Wills album. And when I heard it, I thought, man, what is this? This is incredible. Because there are elements in Western swing of every American genre of music.
I mean, there's polkas, waltzes, there's, you know, there's fiddle tunes, there's big band songs, there's dixieland. I mean, it's all in this one form of music. And so it inspired me, I played a little piano when I was a kid. And so I've just had a lifelong affection for it because of that that first time. And I feel that it's significant. Once I discovered the number of individuals who were from this area, many of whom I knew as growing up, that were significant in the development and creation and popularity of this music. I just think that it's wonderful stuff.
Kellams: Leon McAuliffe, who is the steel guitar player for Bob Wills. He was connected to this area, right?
Houston: Oh, absolutely. He was. And there were so many others. Leon's just one example. Leon was not born in Arkansas, but he moved here. He started with Bob Wills in 1935 . Uh, Bob hired him away from the Light Crust Doughboys, which was Leo Daniel's program down at WBAP in Fort Worth, Dallas. Uh, Bob hired him and took him away from O'Daniel and brought him to Tulsa to KVOO.
And of course, one of the big vernacular terms back during those days was take it away, Leon, which was what Bob would say when he'd call on Leon to take a solo chorus during the song.
But Leon, in the 1950s, built along with another gentleman, KAMO radio in Rogers, and lived out the rest of his life in northwest Arkansas and in Tulsa as well. Ironically, I got to meet and befriend Leon McAuliffe. My gosh, it was like meeting Elvis for me, you know?
And there are many other connections in addition to Leon. There's, you know, there's people who were fiddlers, people who were guitarists, people who were drummers. I mean, it was just incredible. And I think, I think people will find this fascinating because most people have never heard of these individuals, but they were hugely significant in the field of music.
Kellams: This kind of plays right into the library's mission, doesn't it?
Leah Frieden: Yeah, it's really exciting. We have had music programs. We have had lectures, fantastic ones over the years, but it's very rare that we get to combine both of them together. So I'm very excited about this program and the opportunity for the community to get to hear music and learn about music.
Kellams: Give us the details. When, where, how to participate.
Frieden: So it's this Sunday, Nov. 16 at the Fayetteville Public Library will be in the Event Center. It starts at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, but it's going to run till 4 p.m. So if you can't get there right at two, that is okay.
We are going to have a dance floor if folks want to wear their dancing shoes and join in, and it is going to be live streamed and recorded. So if folks aren't able to make it on Sunday or need to catch it later, they can.
Kellams: I'm going to throw a name and I don't know if this name is connected to Bob Wills, western swing, but certainly a fiddle player. And that's Frankie Kelly.
Houston: Yes, Frankie Kelly. He is one of the individuals that we talk about in our program because I had the opportunity to play with Frankie on a couple of occasions before he passed away, and he had a place in Fayetteville, from what I understand, called Frankie's Barn.
I know I've played Western swing gigs with Frankie years ago. Great guy. He was one of them. I don't want to give the entire program away, but I'll give you an example.
South of Fort Smith, just south of Fort Smith, there is a pocket. A coal pocket. It was a big coal mining area down in around Hartford and Mansfield and Huntington and stretched all the way into Eastern Oklahoma. I don't know if this had anything to do with it or not, but maybe. But there were a lot of individuals who grew up in that particular area who were very significant in the field of western swing.
I think it was because of the proximity to the broadcast signal of KVOO because, you know, Bob broadcast every day at noon and I mean, during the Great Depression. And it was joyous, upbeat, up tempo music that gave people hope to carry on during the depths of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
So, I think that maybe that's sort of significant there. And I'll talk about each of those individuals from that little pocket just south of Fort Smith, and it extends all the way up into northeast Oklahoma. All the way up into southwest Missouri.
I really think that people are going to find this fascinating. And these people were hugely influential, not just with Western, with the Western swing crowd, but people of the names you might recognize now, like Merle Haggard, George Strait, Patti Page, Patsy Cline. But, I mean, all these people were influenced heavily by Western Swing and by Bob Wills, and those musicians who played with Bob provided each day on, on the radio.
Kellams; So Bob Wills was a bandleader.
Houston: Yes.
Kellams: Was legendary for calling out a tune that no one was expecting. I mean,
Houston: He never had a set list.
Kellams: Right? And if you were going to play with Bob Wills and stay with Bob Wills, you had to be very flexible.
Houston: Yes.
Wills (Recording): And we're really glad to be with all of you. And thanks for that applause. And we're going to get things on the way here with Brother Joe Andrews this time. Sing a little song. It's going to probably surprise you. We're going to sing a brand new one called Ida Red.
(“Ida Red” by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys plays.)
Kellams: Does that describe you as a band leader?
Houston: Yes, to a degree. We do not have any written score at all. We play strictly- we just play. We just play. And I actually lead the band, but our fiddle player, just like Bob did, he points to who's going to do the solos. So I tell the sound guys whenever we play somewhere. At the library, David over there is going to help us. And he asked me the other night when we rehearsed, he said, “Well, how do I know what to do?” I said, “You watch the fiddle player.”
It was a law when you played with the Texas Playboys, you keep one eye on Bob and the other eye on the audience. Period. You didn't look. And if you look at those guys, they never use sheet music or anything like that. They just played because Bob wanted that interaction between the band members and the audience. You don't stare at a sheet of music. That's not what you do.
But you had to keep one eye on Bob at all the time, because if you missed Bob nodding to you or pointing his bow at you, or pointing his finger at you or his cigar or whatever, and you'd miss that, you got chewed out on the way home. So, I mean, everything was very, very spontaneous with Bob. And thus the fact that western swing, in my opinion, is not like anything else.
It is not country music, it is not jazz, it is not big band. It's all of those things. And that's what makes it so unique. And that's why you don't hear a lot of it anymore. First of all, it takes more musicians to do that. It takes a knowledge of jazz. Everything from jazz to blues and Dixieland- I mean, you got to know all that stuff- because they were trying to keep the dance floor filled, which was a cheap form of entertainment back in the Depression, during the Dust Bowl years.
So, yes. So our band is very spontaneous in that way too. We have things that we know that we're going to do at a, at a certain time in a song kind of sort of arrangement, but for the most part it's kind of free wheeling. And we like it that way. We like it that way.
Kellams: Do you do the little “Ah, uh!”
Houston: Sometimes I'll do a little “Ah!” But I, you know, no one could do that like Bob.
Kellams: No.
Houston: Certainly we pay homage to him with telling the story of his music. And being a western swing historian also, you know, you have to give credit also where credit is due. Bob Wills did not single handedly create western swing.
There were a lot of guys doing the same sort of things down in Texas about the time that Bob came along, but the guy that probably is, well, the guy who is considered to be the father of western swing was a guy named Milton Brown.
(Keep A' Knocking, but You can't come In" by Milton Brown plays.)
Houston: The story of western swing is just incredible as far as how it developed. A lot of the side stories that went on. And the legend that Bob Wills actually became after the death of Milton Brown, you know, very soon after his career began. Bob just took off and everybody shot at his tail lights because he hired the best musicians.
He was the innovator in so many different ways. And so everybody else followed him, even all the way to the west coast. So, it's just incredible to hear the story in his legends. I mean, legends, you know, of the last recording session that he had in December of 1973, he, the first day of a two day recording session, he was there with his band, hadn't seen him in years, and he was in a wheelchair. He had several strokes, and could hardly do anything. He went home that night, had a massive stroke and went into a coma and never recovered.
So the second day of the recording session, that legendary session called "Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys for the Last Time", he suffered a stroke. So the next day, the second day of the recording session, was a very sad occasion for the band members, even though they had to put on a good face for it.
So many stories like that are integral to this music, and most people either don't know about it, or have never heard it. And so that's one of the reasons why I do what I do. To try to make people understand how cool this music really is. Because if you listen, if you put on a Bob Wills record from 1935, from one of his first recording sessions, it sounds as fresh today as it did then because there's always going to be something new that you find in that music.
Kellams: Is there a song that you feel you have to do every performance?
Houston: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's we're saving those two songs for our special guests, the kids from from the high school.
And here's what's interesting. Okay, another little story. You know, Fayetteville has different activities. And so the school system, they have volleyball, they have football, basketball, you know, the typical things.
So I stole one of their little logos from one of their other activities and created one of my own. And I didn't know what to call these kids. There's no organized, you know, group of these folks. We just thrown them together at the last minute. So I created the Fayetteville Fiddlers.
So when you see the show, they'll have a big logo up there that, you know, I hope the school doesn't mind. Anyway, I put Fayetteville fiddler bulldogs you know, Fayetteville Bulldog fiddlers.
So we're going to call them the Fayetteville Fiddlers. And I tell you- we rehearsed last Tuesday here at the library and we were blown away. My man and I were blown away at how, not only professional and well-behaved these kids are, but how talented they are. Aow they picked up this music. We're very excited to give these kids an opportunity to play something that is really a gumbo of all great American music styles. They're going to get to play two of Bob Wills biggest hits with us on stage.
Kellams: What do we have to do to be there?
Frieden: Just come to the Fayetteville Public Library Event Center this Sunday, Nov. 16 at two o'clock in the afternoon. It is totally free.
Kellams: Is there a way that we can find out you've got a web presence, right, that lets you know everything that's happening at the library?
Frieden: We sure do. You can visit FayLib.Org for more information about this program and all the other great programs we have going on at the library.
Houston: And I would like to add one other special thing. We are sponsored in part by the Arkansas Arts Council. Several years ago, and I give tribute to the Fayetteville Library, because once we played here a couple of years ago on the Mountain Street stage, it propelled our band to a whole another level. Immediately after we played at the library, we were contacted by the Arkansas Arts Council. We were accepted to be part of the Arts on tour roster of performers, which opened so many doors for us to expose more people to this music.
We've played at the Tontitown Grape Festival, we've played in casinos in Oklahoma, we've played in Fort Worth, Texas, in a couple places down in the stockyards and at a big Western swing festival down there, but I attribute all of that to the beginning that we received from the fine folks at the Fayetteville Library. And so the Arts Council picked us up. They are one of our sponsors for this weekend, as is the library, and also the Western Swing Music Society of the Southwest, whose president will be playing on stage with us on Sunday.
Kellams: Robert Houston is the band leader for the Western Swing Rules Band. They'll be performing at the Fayetteville Public Library Sunday afternoon from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. The performance is free. We also heard from Leah Frieden, assistant manager of the adult and reference department at the library.
This is Big Balls in Cowtown, as recorded by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys from that final recording session that Robert mentioned. The album "Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys for the Last Time". It was recorded in December 1973.
(“Big Balls in Cowtown” by Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys plays.)
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