The Birth & History of Western Swing is an ambitious film project that seeks to document an important development in 20th century popular music that has yet to be examined in a feature-length study. The reasons why such a project hasn’t yet been attempted, after nearly a century since its birth, are what make it uniquely important in American music history. Western swing combined elements of black, white, and ethnic musical styles in a way that historians have never known where to place it. Is it jazz? Is it country? Is it folk? The answer to all of these questions is yes, but western swing’s marginality to each of those genres has sadly kept it in relative obscurity, leaving it on the back burner of historic musical recognition.

 

In a 1997 review of the “The Complete Recordings of Milton Brown & his Musical Brownies,” the late journalist Robert Palmer said, “Their music has proved too jazzy and swinging to win them a prominent place in the annals of country music, too “hillbilly” to be taken seriously by jazz scholars, too full of regional quirks to be accepted as mainstream pop.” The absence of studies of western swing is a dereliction of duty by today’s documentarians, which The Birth & History of Western Swing endeavors to rectify.

 

In the Ken Burns 2019 documentary on country music, western swing was mentioned merely as a sub-genre, defined and disseminated by Bob Wills alone. Burns’ segment in the film on western swing was thorough and complete with regard to Wills’ legendary career, however, much important history was not included. Although Wills deserves the accolades bestowed upon him as the "King of Western Swing" -- and his bringing the genre to national prominence during the 1940s, research has shown that not only did he not “invent” the music, as many of his proponents still insist, but that the growth of western swing throughout the Southwest was much more complex, organic and gradual. From its humble beginnings in rural Texas house dances, featuring a simple fiddle and guitar, to the explosive influence and growth of 1930s big band swing, it would begin adding sophisticated instrumentation to rival some of the most successful orchestra figures of the day like:  Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmie Lunceford, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.

 

In The Birth & History of Western Swing, the producers show how founding fathers Bob Wills and Milton Brown literally brought the country to the city, combining frontier fiddles and guitars together with urban influenced jazz, pop, and blues tunes of the day, serving as a salve for Depression-weary Texans, Okies and Arkies. With Brown’s pioneering Musical Brownies serving as the first prototype, bands sprang up like weeds throughout the Southwest, beginning in Fort Worth, and then spreading to Dallas and other Texas cities, plus more in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. The growing size of audiences that came to dance to this exciting new music in the large size Texas dancehalls, required a louder form of stringed instrumentation to to be heard over the shuffling noise of dancing feet. This would lead to creating the world’s first amplifed steel & electric guitars, populating every important band such as the Light Crust Doughboys, Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys, Cliff Bruner’s Texas Wanderers, Bob & Joe Shelton’s Sunshine Boys, Roy Newman & his Boys, Bill Boyd & his Cowboy Ramblers, Adolph Hofner’s Pearl Wranglers, the Tune Wranglers and Jimmy Revard’s Oklahoma Playboys, each possessing singular personalities and definable sounds of their own, all tuned to their own respective territories and ethnic influences.

 

Western swing presided over a boon in radio broadcasts thanks to W. Lee O’Daniel’s pioneering Texas Quality Network along with Tulsa’s powerful 100,000 watt KVOO, which spread the music to the farthest reaches of America. Jukeboxes and electrical transcriptions, introduced in the late 1930s, enabled the music to travel even further, coupled with the migration of Dust Bowl Americans to the West Coast, pursuing agricultural jobs and defense employment during World War II. Western swing moved with this migration and spread like wildfire, with Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys and Spade Cooley & his Orchestra leading the way. In the 1940s, the music moved to film, and became an even more pervasive presence in theaters across America. Honky tonk music would rise in the latter half of the 1940s, heavily influenced from the pioneering amplified electric sound of western swing. By the 1950s, television added another dimension to western swing, as the music’s evolving Bakersfield and rockabilly sound helped fuel the fire that would eventually become rock & roll. Prime examples of this influence were how Bill Haley & his Four Aces of Western Swing transformed into rock & roll’s iconic Bill Haley & the Comets, and Chuck Berry’s first national hit "Maybellene" was inspired by the 1938 Bob Wills recording of "Ida Red."

 

The Birth & History of Western Swing gathers voices from the genre’s past and present, including never-before-aired interviews and archival clips of some of its first generation of musicians, as well as founding father Milton Brown’s late brother Roy Lee Brown, the last survivor who actually witnessed the history-making Musical Brownies in action from the bandstand. In addition, it utilizes analysis from major scholars: Brown biographer Cary Ginell, Wills biographer Dr. Charles Townsend and the author of Jazz of the Southwest, Dr. Jean Boyd, as well as other keepers of the flame, including Jason Roberts, leader of the current incarnation of Wills’ former group, Bob Wills' Texas Playboys, and Barbara Martin, longtime editor of Western Swing Monthly, the genre’s literary meeting place. Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel also lends an insightful voice to the film with stories of Merle Haggard’s revival of the genre that Benson and Jody Nix helped spearhead nearly 50 years ago after the passing of Wills in 1975. Nix also provides emotional memories of he and his father Holye Nix recording with Wills on his final 1973 Grammy Award-winning album, For The Last Time - Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys.

 

To produce such a sweeping documentary that spans nearly a century of sounds, images, and artifacts, the producers and director are doing double-duty as preservationists. Many of the vintage interviews they have collected were recorded on obsolete media such as analog cassettes, reel-to-reel tapes, and VHS videos, all of which are deteriorating and need careful restoration in order to preserve the historic memories of the genre’s informants. Many of these interviews are unique, with the performers not interviewed anywhere else. Rare photographs, advertisements, and radio broadcast transcriptions are some of the other valuable artifacts that need to be included, but also require careful restoration.

 

The producers of The Birth & History of Western Swing realize there is likely only one opportunity to produce such a comprehensive documentary and want to ensure all elements necessary to the accurate representation of western swing’s storied history are made available to the production. It is therefore critical to pursue valued sponsor funding to help complete this important project. Tax-exempt donations to the film and annual CBWS music festival will help our 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization create a lasting tribute to this music, with the end-goal of establishing The Birthplace of Western Swing Museum in the city where it all began nearly a century ago.

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THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WESTERN SWING & COUNTRY MUSIC

by Curt Ryle

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Western swing features country music instrumentation with fiddle and guitar; however, traditional country music on a steel guitar is always played on an E9th tuning, while western swing is typically played on a C6th tuning. The C6th tuning was created primarily for jazz. The great steel guitarist for Ernest Tubb, Buddy Emmons, released a very important album in 1960 called 4 Wheel Drive that was pure jazz, and it featured the C6th tuning together with jazz guitarist Leon Rhodes. The difference in country & bluegrass fiddle versus western swing is the use of improvised jazz solos played in swing, which are not allowed in country. Country music has very simple chords and notes on fiddle and guitar, featuring pentatonic notes on the scale, whereas western swing fiddle and guitar have influential jazz notes and progressive chords of sharps and flats heard only in swing and jazz. Only lyrically do I see western swing’s resemblance to country music. The lyrics in swing tell stories and ballads much like country music. In summary, western swing is clearly it’s own genre and deserves to be in a league by itself. As a studio musician, I have played on thousands of songs and can tell you there are very few stringed instrument players in Nashville, Tennessee who have the skill or understanding to play improvised western swing, and I’m talking about some of the best musicians Nashville has to offer.  Just my two cents!