Western swing is, first and foremost, a style of jazz. It is dance music with an up-tempo beat and a decidedly Southwestern United States regional flavor. It consists of an eclectic combination of country, cowboy, polka, Mexican, and folk music, blended with a jazzy "swing", with a tip of the hat to New Orleans jazz and Delta blues, and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar.

It originated in the dance halls, road houses and county fairs of small towns throughout the Lower Great Plains in the 1920's and 1930's. With the advent of radio broadcasting, it gained a much wider following and reached its "golden age" in the post-WWII era of the mid-forties — reflecting the waxing and waning of the more mainstream big-band sound. Spade Cooley coined the term 'Western swing' in the early 1940's.

Notable bands and artists from the early era

• Al Dexter and His Troopers
• The Light Crust Doughboys
• Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys
• Speedy West
• Jimmy Bryant
• Milton Brown and his Brownies
• The Southern Melody Boys
• The High Flyers
• The Miller Sisters
• The Tune Wranglers
• Adolph Hofner and his San Antonians
• Floyd Tillman
• Bill Boyd and the Cowboy Ramblers
• Dude Martin and His Roundup Gang
• Spade Cooley and His Orchestra
• Deuce Spriggens and His Orchestra
• Tex Williams and the Western Caravan
• "Texas" Jim Lewis and His Lone Star Cowboys
• Hank Thompson and His Brazos Valley Boys
• Bill Haley and the Saddlemen (later - Bill Haley and the Comets)
• The Forth Worth Doughboys
• Doug Bine and his Dixie Ramblers
• Jimmie Revard and his Oklahoma Playboys
• The Washboard Wonders
• Cliff Bruner's Texas Wanderers
• Buddy Jones
• Sons of the Pioneers
• Smokey Wood and the Wood Chips
• Hank Penny and his Radio Cowboys
• W. Lee O'Daniel and his Hillbilly Boys
• Porky Freeman
• Carolina Cotton (yodeler who sang with several Western Swing groups)
• Ocie Stockard and the Wanderers

Later bands and artists of the genre (or influenced by it)

• Asleep at the Wheel
• Merle Haggard & the Strangers
• Willie Nelson
• Waylon Jennings
• Riders in the Sky
• Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen
• The Hot Club of Cowtown
• Wayne Hancock
• The Ditty Bops
• The Red Dirt Rangers
• Don Walser and the Pure Texas Band
• The Bebop Cowboys

See also

Endnotes

1. Boyd, Jean Ann. Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. ISBN 0292708599
2. Kienzle, Rich. Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz. New York: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0415941024

Resources

• Ginell, Cary. Milton Brown and the Founding of Western Swing. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994. ISBN 0252020413
• Ginell, Cary; Kevin Coffey. Discography of western swing and hot string bands, 1928-1942. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. ISBN 0313311161
• Wetlock, E. Clyde; Richard Drake Saunders (eds.). Music and dance in Texas, Oklahoma, and the Southwest. Hollywood, CA: Bureau of Musical Research, 1950.

External links

• Spade Cooley article in LA Times
• The Lucky Stars website
• Western Swing at Big Bands Database Plus
• Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys website
• Milton Brown bio at TSHA
• WesternSwing.com Links
• Popular Culture Excavation Site
• A Short History of Western Swing
• Swingin' West radio-online Mike Gross-Fairfield University Student Radio 1-4pm EST Friday afternoons

American folk dances | American styles of music | Crossover_(music) | Swing dances | Western swing | Culture of the American West

Western Swing | Western Swing | Western swing