Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Sunbonnet Sue - Fort Worth Doughboys
2. Nancy Jane - Fort Worth Doughboys
3. Oh You Pretty Woman - Milton Brown & His Brownies
4. Brownie's Stomp - Milton Brown & His Brownies
5. Osage Stomp - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
6. Who Walks in When I Walk Out - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
7. Boyd's Blue - Bill Boyd & His Cowboy Ramblers
8. I Want to Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart - Patsy Montana & the Prairie Ramblers
9. Sadie Greee (The Vamp of New Orleans) - Roy Newman & His Boys
10. Who's Sorry Now - Milton Brown & His Brownies
11. Down by the O-H-I-O - Milton Brown & His Brownies
12. Barn Dance Rag - Bill Boyd & His Cowboy Ramblers
13. Never No More Blues - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
14. Too Busy - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
15. Rambler's Stomp - Doug Bine & His Dixie Ramblers
16. Eyes of Texas - Milton Brown & His Brownies
17. Yellow Rose of Texas - Milton Brown & His Brownies
18. Red's Tight Like That - The Tune Wranglers
19. Buster's Crawdad Song - The Tune Wranglers
20. Big Daddy Blues - Jimmie Revard's Oklahoma Playboys
21. Feather Your Nest - Lem Fowler's Washboard Wonders
22. Dirty Dog - Jimmie Revard
23. My Galveston Gal - Milton Brown & His Brownies
24. El Rancho Grande - The Tune Wranglers
25. Texas Sand - The Tune Wranglers

Disc 2:

1. Women Women Women - Shelly Lee Alley
2. Mean Old Lonesome Blues - Buddy Jones
3. Bring It on Down to My House - Derwood Brown & His Musical Brownies
4. Corrine, Corrina - Cliff Bruner
5. One Sweet Letter From You - Cliff Bruner
6. Fort Worth Stomp - The Crystal Springs Ramblers
7. Women ('Bout to Make a Wreck Out of Me) - Buddy Jones
8. Streamlined Mama - Buddy Jones
9. Blue Guitars - The Light Crust Doughboys
10. Dirty Dog Blues - Mountain Mountaineers
11. Mississippi Sandman - Modern Mountaineers
12. Hot Tamale Pete - Bob Skyles & His Skyrockets
13. Married Man Blues - The Nite Owls
14. There'll Be Some Changes Made - W. Lee O'Daniel & his Hillbilly Boys
15. Dirty Hangover Blues - W. Lee O'Daniel & his Hillbilly Boys
16. Lose Your Blues and Laugh at Life - Jimmie Revard's Oklahoma Playboys
17. Range Rider Stomp - The Range Riders
18. Hold That Critter Down - The Sons of the Pioneers
19. Chicken Reel Stomp - The Tune Wranglers
20. Playboy Stomp - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
21. Moonlight in Oklahoma - Smokey Wood
22. Keep on Truckin' - Smokey Wood
23. I'm Confessin' (That I Love You) - Derwood Brown & His Musical Brownies
24. Just Once Too Often - The Light Crust Doughboys
25. Loudmouth - Modern Mountaineers

Disc 3:

1. Kangaroo Blues - Cliff Bruner
2. Pine State Honky Tonk - Claude Casey & His Pine State Playboys
3. Better Quit It Now - Adolph Hofner
4. Pussy, Pussy, Pussy - The Light Crust Doughboys
5. I'll Keep My Old Guitar - Adolph Hodner His Texans
6. Cowboy's Swing - Hank Penny & His Radio Cowboys
7. Lonesome Road Blues - W. Lee O'Daniel & his Hillbilly Boys
8. Liza Pull Down the Shades - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
9. Truck Driver's Blues - Cliff Bruner
10. My Untrue Cowgirl - Jewel Cowboys
11. San Antonio Rose - Cliff Bruner
12. Gonna Get Tight - Sunshine Boys
13. Let's Make Believe We're Sweethearts - The Light Crust Doughboys
14. Mississippi Muddle - Hank Penny & His Radio Cowboys
15. Billy Boy - Louise Massey & Her Westerners
16. Good Gracious Gracie - The Light Crust Doughboys
17. Mean Mean Mama (From Meana) - The Light Crust Doughboys
18. Jones Stomp - Port Arthur Jubileers
19. Rockin' Rollin' Mama - Buddy Jones
20. Blue Steel Blues - Ted Daffan's Texans
21. New San Antonio Rose - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
22. Bob Wills Special
23. Pussywillow - Port Arthur Jubileers
24. Tobacco State Swing - Hank Penny & His Radio Cowboys

Disc 4:

1. Draftboard Blues - Cliff Bruner
2. Whatcha Gonna Do - The Hi-Flyers
3. Cotton Eyed Joe - Adolph Hofner
4. Sally's Got a Wooden Leg - The Sons of the West
5. What's the Matter With Deep Elem - Sunshine Boys
6. Li'l Liza Jane - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
7. Pistol Packin' Mama - Al Dexter
8. Forgive Me One More Time - Spade Cooley & His Orchestra
9. Shame on You - Spade Cooley & His Orchestra
10. Steel Guitar Stomp - Hank Penny
11. Boogie Woogie Boy - Porky Freeman Trio
12. That's What I Like About the South - Cliff Bruner
13. Stay a Little Longer - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
14. Oklahoma Blues - Zeke Clements
15. Oklahoma Stomp - Spade Cooley & His Orchestra
16. Nails in My Coffin - Jerry Irby With His Texas Ranchers
17. Bob Wills Two Step - Luke Wills Rhythm Busters
18. I Got Texas in My Soul - Tex Williams & the Western Caravan
19. Wildcat Mama - Hank Penny
20. Betty Ann - Jesse Ashlock
21. One Year Ago Tonight - Don Churchill & Texas Mavericks
22. Oakie Boogie - Johnny Tyler
23. Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette) - Tex Williams & the Western Caravan
24. Square Dance Boogie - Johnnie Lee Wills
25. Humpty Dumpty Heart - Hank Thompson

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76923 in Music
• Released on: 1999-12-14
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Box set, Import

Album Description
Budget-priced four disc set with 99 tracks from the golden years of Western Swing, including cuts by Light Crust Doughboys, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, Bill Boyd & His Cowboy Ramblers, Tex Williams, Adolph Hofner, Hank Thompson and Cliff Bruners Texas Wanderers. Tracks include 'Pussy, Pussy, Pussy', 'Smoke, Smoke, Smoke'. 'Humpty Dumpty Heart' and 'Kangaroo Blues'. The tracks tell the story of this vibrant musical form that blended jazz with string bands, took in pop music & the blues, and pioneered amplification. Beautifully packaged, each disc also includes an illustrated booklet with a discography, photos and extensive liner notes. Each disc comes in a separate standard jewel case & together they are coralled up in a colorful & sturdy CD-sized slipcase box. 1999 release.

Customer Reviews

Western Swing is Western Folk Jazz no Hillbillies here!
This is a great panorama of Western Swing from its origins with Bob Wills and Milton Brown working together inthe Original Light Crust Dough Boys in the early 1930s to Tex Williams' great electric swing band from just after WWII. I've had these sides since Columbia issue an earlier version on LP more than 20 years ago.

This music has little to do with what was considered Country music at the time or its emasculated mutant descendants in Nashville.

This was not marketed as Country music. In fact in 1945 when Bob Wills, the acme of Western SWing, was the biggest grossing public attraction in the entertainment business, he had his sole invitation to the Grand Ole Opry, and then he almost walked out of there before he played a song because the hayseeds wouldn't let him bring on his drums and horns (not allowed onthe Opry until the late 1950s!).

Western Swing comes from Jazz from the pop Jazz of the 20s and early 1930s, included people who went back and forth between bands like Wills and Spade Cooley to the white big bands (though Bob Wills once tried to hire a black alto player[against the law in Oklahoma] and of late Les Paul has taken to claiming he saw Charlie Christian sit in with the Playboys at Cains and there are pictures of the Playboys having drinks in Chicago with black Jazz greats like Ben Webster!!). Townsend Wills' biographer interviewed many Playboys and none of them felt they were part of Country, but part of Jazz.

Basically it begins with people trying to play Jazz and Blues influenced music with the instruments of the old Southwestern Barn dance bands: guitar, fiddle, piano, adding in drums, and in many bands all the instruments of the Jazz orchestras. Very quickly Bobby Dunne added in the electric Hawaii, pedaless steel guitar and Leon McAuliffe who replaced him in the Doughboys and went with Wills was so well known that Bob Wills' introduction to him "Take it Away Leon" became a catch phrase in the whole country and beyond in the 1940s!

At its most hyperbolic height (captured here in the Space Cooley Orchestra's Oklahoma Stomp, a recording anyone with a set of ears should treasure) you had 16 and 18 piece orchestras with full fiddle sections (in the early 1960s Wills even rounded his fiddles with a violist from the Lawrence Welch band!), complete reed sections, and more brass than they needed, and exotic additions like the Harpist who kicks off The Oklahoma Stomp.

Further on than these recordings go, you would have players like Tiny Moore and Johnny Gimble who incorporated Bebop styles in their solos.

Along the way, mostly during that war time period when recording bans and players going in and out of the army and different bands make following a little harder, the straight western swing style of combining a guitar, steel guitar, and sometimes electric mandolin trio alternating with fiddle choirs took hold as the paradigm for Western Swing. For some reason in most bands the horns seemed to disappear or roll down to just one after WWII.

One thing about this music is that a very high level of musical technique and education became more and more part of the Western Swing environment. We know that European Jazmen like Stephan Grappelli followed the recordings of Hugh Farr who played with the sons of the pioneers and later Spade Cooley, and that Down Beat magazine described Eldon Shamblin out of Bob Wills' band as the best rythm guitar player in the country (slighting Freedie Green who even Eldon probably acknowledge was better).

The other thing in contrast with much of what was being presented as country music contemporaneously is that this was not being presented as "old time music," craddling close to old conventions, but a new hot dangerous music, drawn as close as comfort would allow from Black sources, from the dangerous white swing bands, and from the part of down home music involved in drinking, dancing, cheating, and other things not permitted in the Baptist Southeast.

WSM Grand Old Opry Stars toured the deep South playing in school auditoriums, church houses, and public squares. From the beginning Western swing belonged in barrooms, in dance halls, and other places where "the wine and liquor flow." Even Hank Williams wasn't allowed to use the word "beer" when he sang "My Bucket's got a hole in it" on the Opry. Meanwhile Western Swingers like Wills and Brown were singing about Cocaine and Opium, whiskey and beer back in the early 1930s.

And Smokie Woods wasn't called smokie cause he liked Tobacco. LOL. In fact his tune here called "Everybody's Trukin," about what is done "up in Harlem" includes much use of a word that does sound like truckin', but does not contain an r or a T but does start with an F!!

No this is not Nashville Country or even old time country music. This is Western guys and gals trying to be jazzy, bluesy, wild, whiskey soaked, drug high, hip to the secrets of Negroid nights of "truckin," playing their hearts out fast hot and heavy!

Anyone with ears should own this collection!

ps another wierd side note to this is on the great Hit\
"Smoke, Smoke, Smoke (That Cigarette)" both Tex Williams who sang it and Merle Travis who wrote it died of lung cancer!

I Hate Country Music But Love This Stuff
This comes from a listener who hates what has become of country music and what passes for country music nowadays. It literally makes me sick, as do the "artists" who perform it, with their poofy hair, phony cowboy hats, phony twangy guitars and phony "country" accents. It is the worst music on the face of the earth--worse even than rap/hip hop (and that's saying something). The only thing as bad was that so-called "hair metal" from the 1980's, which is thankfully now a dead genre, while country music still lives on as the champ of awful musical garbage.

I do like to listen to the old, REAL country music from early recordings. I don't know how genuine this is as "mountain music", or if it's considered real country, as it is a meshing of different styles of music. In a way it sounds a lot like Cajun music, without the accordions, and in English. Since they originated in close geographical proximity (Louisiana and Texas), I guess there was a lot of trading influences back and forth. But I really dig this set. There is so much at such a great price, most of it being top-notch entertainment, that anyone interested in American music owes it to themself to buy this set.

The best recording in the set is Bob Wills's "Stay A Little Longer", but a many other songs are nearly as good. Highlights are the original recording of "Pistol Packing Mama" and "I Wanna Be A Cowboy's Sweetheart". "Buster's Crawdad Song" is a real gas, though if you're sensitive to politically incorrect lyrics, you shouldn't listen too closely to the words. "Who Walks In When I Walk Out", "Smoke Smoke Smoke (That Cigarette)" and the Light Crust Doughboy's hilarious, and very swingy "Pussy Pussy Pussy" are additional highlights, as are the countryfied versions of standard pop hits like "Who's Sorry Now", "There'll Be Some Changes Made" and "I'm Confessin"".

Get this record throw that Tim McGraw and Garth brooks stuff in the incinerator.

The Real Deal: It doesn't get any better, a real bargin too!
A huge slice of 20th century Americana, this 4 cd collection is a bargin too. This set from the UK beats anything available in the USA for an all around review of western swing music. All the bases are covered, and in chronological sequence. You can hear the progression from a jug band and string band sounds of the 30's to where it blended into honky tonk in the 50's. If you're only familiar with Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys, this is a real treat. Nobody here beats him, but this provides a great context of where he came. You can hear the roots of honky tonk and rock and roll on these four sides, but this is great music that stands on its own. Recommended! All the people buying O Brother should pick this up, its the real deal!