It seems wholly unnecessary to note that Bob Wills was an important and influential country artist who has inspired a legion of followers. As Rich Kienzle points out in his informative if dry liner notes to the 4xCD Legends of Country Music, Wills was ahead of his time in almost every step of his four-decade career. In the 1930s, he incorporated horns and reeds into his raucous brand of Texas Swing, punctuating songs like "My Confession" and "New Spanish Two Step" with bursts of brassy rhythms. In the 1940s, he added live drums, electric guitar, lap steel, even electric mandolin-- you just didn't do that and expect to play the Opry. And yet, Wills got a standing ovation when the Texas Playboys performed there, after smuggling a drum set on stage. Later songs like "Fat Boy Rag" and "Hometown Stomp" percolate with percussive rhythms and steely riffs, although these sounds have been so thoroughly absorbed into popular music that it's difficult-- if not downright impossible-- to grasp how subversive these additions would have been at the time.
By all reports the Texas Playboys also put on one hell of a live show. Kienzle describes Wills dancing around the stage and in between the musicians, all the while playing his fiddle and calling out soloists. That would have been a sight, and it's likely his enthusiasm proved infectious to his band members and his audiences alike. Even on these studio and radio tracks, though, you can hear him verbally high-stepping around the songs, commanding solos (steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe never recorded a dull one), answering Tommy Duncan's unflappable vocals with his own ad libs (effectively establishing a straight-man/fall-guy dynamic), and letting loose one of his signature ah-haaaaaa's whenever the mood struck. And it struck often. That ah-haaaaa, sung in a versatile falsetto, became his trademark, comparable to contemporary catchphrases like "What's up, Doc?" or "Play it again, Sam". (I know, I know: Rick Blaine never actually says that line.)
A century after his birth, more than 50 years after his heyday, and 30 years after his death, the Texas Playboys' feats of musical derring-do have lost none of their excitement, as Legends of Country Music persuasively attests. These four discs cover the era between 1934, when Wills' band, the Light Crust Dough Boys, was a permanent fixture at KFJZ in Fort Worth, and 1971, when he performed his final sessions in a wheelchair. He had bases in three states and recorded for a handful of labels, but the styles he commanded were innumerable. Voraciously, the Texas Playboys consumed and performed stomps and rags, blues and swing, hot jazz, country, jug band, Zydeco, even rock'n'roll, cramming each song full to bursting with contrasting sounds and rhythms. Bolstered by strong melodies and Wills' graceful, ingenious fiddling, songs like "Miss Molly", "Stay a Little Longer", and "Sarah Goodin'" are filled with cartoon imagery along the lines of "Sittin' in the window singin' to my love/ Slop bucket fell from the window up above/ Mule and the grasshopper eatin' ice cream/ Mule got sick so they laid him on the green". Not to consign Wills to the children's music ghetto, but that sure beats the Wiggles.
By showcasing the excitement of Wills's music, Legends of Country Music also argues for its durability and I suppose even its universality. And yet, it's impossible to hear any of these songs in their original context. Radio stations now employ DJs and marketers, not house bands. Besides, Los Angeles-- where Wills and musicians like Spade Cooley and Tex Ritter put the Western in Country & Western-- doesn't even have a country radio station anymore. What's more, the Texas Playboys developed their madcap style on dancehall stages in front of hundreds of local fans. It was a social music. Since World War II, however, America has become increasingly less social, preferring to stay in and watch television. There are still concerts, but not of the type that made the Texas Playboys famous. The music hasn't changed over the years, but the way we hear it and pass it along certainly has. It sounds far removed from most contemporary popular music today, especially radio country. Even the lascivious double entendres sound tame, surprising only because we don't expect hits from this period to address sex ("Oozlin' Daddy Blues") or drugs ("Ding Dong Daddy (from Dumas)").
History can be a little dry and lineages of influences positively arid. To its considerable credit, Legends of Country Music isn't one of those good-for-you box sets that comes across like four servings of brussel sprouts. The music sounds just as lively and infectious as the day it was created, even if its audience has changed dramatically. This set portrays Wills as more than a band leader: Both in the recording booth and on the stage, he was a masterful fiddler, a demanding coach, a persuasive salesman, an endearing cartoon, and a tireless pioneer. Even toward the end of his life, after lone performers like Hank Williams had overthrown big bands like the Texas Playboys-- and after a stroke left him with a shake in his voice and unable to play the fiddle-- on his final tracks he sounds surprisingly strong, his falsetto irrepressible and incorrigible. Thirty years later, it remains relevant and still retains that edge, if only digitally.
