Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Oh You Pretty Woman
2. Garbage Man Blues
3. Joe Turner Blues [Instrumental]
4. Brownies Stomp [Instrumental]
5. Do the Hula Lou
6. My Precious Sonny Boy
7. Swinging on the Garden Gate
8. Four Five or Six Times
9. Get Along Cindy
10. Where Have You Been So Long Corrine
11. Girl of My Dreams
12. Talking About You
13. Loveland and You
14. Take It Slow and Easy
15. Sitting on Top of the World
16. This Morning This Evening So Soon
17. Trinity Waltz [Instrumental]
18. Loveless Life
19. Sweet Jennie Lee
20. Object of My Affection
21. I Love You
22. Pray for the Lights to Go Out
23. Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet
24. In el Rio Grande
25. Good Man Is Hard to Find
26. Down by the O-H-I-O

Disc 2:

1. St. Louis Blues
2. Brownie Special
3. Copenhagen [Instrumental]
4. Chinatown My Chinatown
5. Wabash Blues
6. Some of These Days
7. Who's Sorry Now
8. Just a Dream
9. Cheesy Breeze [Instrumental]
10. Beautiful Texas
11. House at the End of the Lane
12. In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree
13. Shine on Harvest Moon
14. Love in Bloom
15. My Mary
16. You're Tired of Me
17. Wheezie Anna
18. One of Us Was Wrong - Milton Brown & His Brownies
19. You Rascal You
20. Sweet Georgia Brown
21. You're Bound to Look Like a Monkey
22. Dark Town Strutters Ball
23. Taking Off [Instrumental]
24. Black and White Rag [Instrumental]
25. Crafton Blues [Instrumental]
26. Little Betty Brown

Disc 3:

1. Going Up Bushy Fork [Instrumental]
2. Beale Street Mama
3. Sheik of Araby
4. Mexicali Rose
5. Somebody's Been Using That Thing
6. Mama Don't Allow It
7. I've Got the Blues for Mammy
8. Texas Hambone Blues
9. Eyes of Texas
10. Easy Ridin' Papa
11. Stay on the Right Side
12. If You Can't Get Five Take Two
13. Cielito Lindo (Beautiful Heaven)
14. Waltz You Saved for Me - Milton Brown & His Brownies
15. I Had Someone Before I Had You
16. Am I Blue
17. Our Baby Boy
18. Under the Double Eagle
19. Washington and Lee Swing
20. Wheel on the Wagon Is Broken
21. Memphis Blues
22. Somebody Stole My Gal
23. When I'm Gone Don't You Grieve
24. Hesitation Blues
25. Sweetheart of Sigma Chi
26. Old Watermill by a Waterfall
27. Avalon

Disc 4:

1. Sadie Green (The Vamp of New Orleans)
2. Show Me the Way to Go Home
3. Yellow Rose of Texas
4. Roseland Melody
5. My Galveston Gal
6. Yes Sir
7. Golondrina
8. When I Take My Sugar to Tea
9. Song of the Wanderer
10. Right or Wrong
11. Chinese Honeymoon
12. Alice Blue Gown
13. Fan It
14. Tired of the Same Thing All the Time
15. I'll String Along With You
16. Goofus - Milton Brown & His Brownies
17. Ida Sweet as Apple Cider - Milton Brown & His Brownies
18. When It's Harvest Time Sweet Angeline
19. Carry Me Back to the Lone Prairie
20. Thousand Goodnights
21. Keep a Knockin'
22. Baby Keeps Stealin'
23. Old Grey Mare
24. Bring It on Down to My House Honey [*]
25. High Geared Daddy [*]
26. Honky Tonk Blues [*]
27. Louise Louise Blues [*]

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #100463 in Music
• Released on: 2003-05-05
• Number of discs: 4
• Formats: Box set, Import

Album Description
With his Musical Brownies, Milton Brown was one of the first musicians to combine jazz, blues, & country music to come up with the exciting musical hybrid that was western swing. Milton Brown & his Musical Brownies will always remain the original source that informed this music, he was the true daddy of the genre. 106 slices of the man's art are on four CDs. Includes 60-page booklet. Proper. Standard jewel cases housed in a box. 2003.

Customer Reviews

Stars but buy the authorized collection
I am a big fan and a kind of minor expert on Bob Wills Music. Milton Brown's Brownies were the first and one of the greatest Western Swing Bands of all time. Musically if you compare the work that Brown and his band did with the first string of Wills recordings which were contemporary with the last of Brown's records, the Brownies were better.

Bob Wills and Milton Brown were extremely close friends once they met in Fort Worth around 1929. They played and recorded together in one band with a variety of names until that band got the name Light Crust Doughboys because they were directly employed by The Burriss flour mill. In 1932, Milton and his brother Durwood left the Light Crust Doughboys because Burris Mills manager W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel (who like the character of the same name in "O Brother" became governor of Texas, not Mississippi) did not allow members of the Doughboys to do side gigs. The Browns need the side gigs to help support older relatives, whereas Wills couldn't leave O'Daniel because he had gotten a number of relatives working in the flour mill who would have been fired if he had left O'Daniel.

Wills and Milton Brown remained close friends after Brown set up his own group. Unlike the Doughboys, the new band features a pianist, a stride and jazz pianist named Papa Calhoun. It also featured a great standup bass player who played jazz style, rather than the bowed bass style then played by string band bassists. The twin fiddle style that became standard in Western Swing was born with the musical brownies. Often overlooked by those who don't know Brown, was the great never equalled and completely original steel guitar work of Bobby Dunne.

The Brownies were a tighter band musically than the Playboys were at least until the late 30s when when the efforts of ace musician and arranger guitarist Eldon Shamblin, and Wills' ability to hire better musicians with more money and noteriety. The singing on these records by Brown sometimes harmonized by band members is extraordinary.

To be sure, Brown's style is more jazz-oriented than Wills band, smoother, and Brown's singing is closer to Black jazz, than the crooning that the great Tommy Duncan had with Wills. Brown is also very closely influenced by Hokum Jazz players like the Washboard Rhythm Kings, several of whose tunes Brown covered very closely.

However, you can see a lot of similarity in both bands, usually in material that Brown recorded earlier than Wills that both groups did that show rather common interests. You had the sense that these were two close pals who listened to records together and shared recordings of people that they liked together.

Two particular influences both groups had were the jazz singers and last of the minstrel stars Emment Miller whose version of Right or Wrong the Brownies recorded first, as well as in a number of songs done learned from the Mississippi Sheiks such as Corrina, Corrina and Sitting on Top of the World.

In these cases, while anyone with ears should love the versions Wills cut of those songs, the Brownies versions of the songs were more lively, swinging, and seem more original, whereas Will's versions especially of Sitting on Top of the World seem quite close to what the Sheiks did not just in his initial recording in the 1930s but on up to his last recording for Liberty in 1960s (with Vicki Carr singing backup and viola player from the Lawrence Welch band in the fiddle section!).

Brown is a lot of fun in a smoother, more sophisticated way than the early Wills.

One reason this collection is so cheap is that it is essentially a pirated version done from individual records, not masters, and those in contact with the heirs of Milton Brown have announced they plan to sue them over this.

A much better edition authorized by Brown's family and with better pictures, recordings from masters, and many other goodies with the full Brownies discography is available in 5-CD Box Set Milton Brown set on TEXAS ROSE RECORDS. Buy that.

Oh Daddy!
After years of stumbling upon various cuts by Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies in compilations, it's a real treat to have over 100 of them in one place. It's a delicious blend of country,jazz and hokum blues that will never go stale. Somebody's Been Usin' That Thing, indeed.

This is Western Swing
au contraire,

FAO the reviewer who claims that the Brownies are not western siwng.

Milton Brown and His Brownies were the best band of their time and Brown deserves to be recognized as the true "inventor" of western swing. He and Bob Wills performed together in the orginal Light Crust Doughboys-- Brown went out on his own and put together his great band and changed everything.

His untimely death was both a great loss and a gift as the members of his band went their separate ways and created their own excellent groups.

If you don't know anything about Western Swing, or are apt to claim that anything that doesn't sound like Bob Wills isn't western swing, I'd suggest you start with a compiliation or two. There are a few wonderful short compiliations of the Musical Brownies that are available for people short on cash. Origin Jazz Library offers a very good one.

If you want an introduction to a variety of western switg or just want to listen to some really good music, check out some of the great compiliations from the Origin Jazz Library, Proper, and, especially, Krazy Kat labels (best, most informative liner notes anywhere).

But for my money the best compilation is Fremeaux & Assoc. FA 032 Western Swing -- Texas 1928-1944. Not cheap. But IMHO, still the best introduction out there.