1932-1950 Take Me Back To Tul [Box set, Best of]

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.

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.