Bob Wills

That Bob Wills was one of the architects of American music is a given, but his particular creation -- he didn't name it Western swing, but that's what it came to be called -- did not arise from the dust. Wills, refusing to be restricted, subsumed virtually every genre available to him at the time, from blues to big band, popular song to old-timey, and forged something new and exciting, something uniquely of the American South yet universally accessible. Among the first bands of its kind -- the term country music had not yet been applied to white Southern music, and Wills detested the "hillbilly" tag -- to incorporate drums and electric guitars, as well as jazzy brass, Wills and his musicians, whom he gave unprecedented creative leeway, were as vital an American musical institution as any. Yet with dozens of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys compilation albums on the market, ranging from single-disc primers to encyclopedic collections of radio transcriptions, the consumer, particularly the initiate, might understandably be flummoxed. Where to begin? Rhino's two-disc Anthology, released in the early '90s, remains the single tidiest summation of the Wills oeuvre, but for a next step up, Legends of Country Music is the way to go. A four-CD box set, it focuses on the bandleader/fiddler's key recording years (mid-'30s to mid-'40s) for the OKeh and Columbia labels, before winding up with later sides cut for such labels as MGM, Kapp, and Liberty. Legends of Country Music packs in 105 tracks, among them all of the original recordings that established Wills as an icon.

To set the scene, it kicks off with a pair of tracks Wills made in 1932 with the Fort Worth Doughboys, before skipping ahead a few years to the earliest Texas Playboys sessions. The band takes a while, but not too much of a while, to find its groove. Seriously stellar musicianship is present from the start, but by the late '30s, when Wills' fiddle meets up with Leon McAuliffe's steel guitar, Eldon Shamblin and Herman Arnspiger's guitars, Johnnie Lee Wills' banjo, and Al Stricklin's piano, this band was making sounds like no other. Lead vocals alternate, Tommy Duncan or McAuliffe taking the lion's share, but history will probably note that Wills' constant between-lines banter, and his frequent "ah-haaaa"s, adding levity to the performances, ultimately became the vocal trademark most often associated with the Texas Playboys. The set dutifully features all of the cornerstone Wills recordings -- "New San Antonio Rose," "Faded Love," "Bubbles in My Beer," "Take Me Back to Tulsa," "Steel Guitar Rag" -- and, by necessity, many known mainly to converts. But there's much more to be discovered beyond the basics, particularly on the second and third discs. By disc four, as Wills leaves Columbia Records and American music begins heading in radically new directions, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys can be heard becoming less prolific and, for some time, less important. But he was never quite forgotten. The set follows through, into the '50s, '60s, and even his final session in 1973, by which time Wills had influenced a generation of acolytes, some of whom (Asleep at the Wheel, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard) continued to honor him decades after his death. ~ Jeff Tamarkin, All Music Guide