The Hot Club of Cow Town is a great band. Particularly on the initial records, we are seeing straight up Bob Wills music. The sound and most of the selections come from Bob Willis's great Tiffany Transcriptions of the mid 1940s. The Tiffany transcriptions were records made to be played on radio stations (back when radio stations usually did not play regular retail sold records). They were hotter, looser, and with a fuller repertoire than the recordings they were making for Columbia during these years.
The Hot Club picks up this music so well, and in such a lively spirit without being directly imitative that on some selections here I expect to hear Bob Wills, Joe Holley, or Tommy Duncan singing.
Their musical achievement is to do this with a trio. They all were veterans of large real sized Western Swing aggregations in NYC and California and Texas. They were true to life Western Swing bands, but there aren't a lot of venues that are going to pay enough money for a 7, 8. or 9 piece bands to support its members, a factor that helped Rock and Roll get rid of lots of Western Swing, Big Band swing, and R & B groups in the 1950s, a trio or foursome is just cheaper to hire than a mini orchestra.
Being an inspiring wannabe baby steps fiddler, I really in love with Elena's work on all the albums. She takes a lot of her lead from the great Joe Holley's solos and obligatos with Wills in the 40s and when he rejoined the Playboys in the early 1960s. However, Elena gets a bigger richer more musically fluent sound. She stays hot, but puts a lot of bow into her fiddling and is the apparent star of this band.
However, the real greatness here is in the rhythm section. How do they do it? Just a guitarist and bassist. You'd swear there was the usual lineup in Western Swing with a rhythm guitarist playing behind the guitar leads, a drummer, and maybe a rhythm banjo player too and maybe people in a horn or fiddle section playing rhythm riffs when they aren't playing lead. Yet, it is just a bassist and a guitar player. Than rhythm is not merely good as what Wills had during his Tiffany recordings, it is much better. This almost reaches the quality of rhythm reached on the best Western Swing recording in history, the combined work of Eldon Shamblin, Smokey Dacus, and Tommy Allsup on "For the Last Time." That's saying something.
There is a guest appearance of the steel guitar genius Jeremy Wakefield that dazzles.
It is simply about which Hot Club CDs to get. Buy them all! Maybe you might even get one or two extra!
Apart from all the cultural and historicity and analysis this is just sooooo damn good that deaf people would probably love to hear it!
