Western swing
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.
*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
*
Cami Stinson and the 'Round Town Riot*
Don Walser and the Pure Texas Band
*
The Bebop Cowboys*Wylie & The Wild West
List of swing/big band musicians# Boyd, Jean Ann.
Jazz of the Southwest: An Oral History of Western Swing. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998. ISBN 0292708599# Kienzle, Rich.
Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers of Honky Tonk, Western Swing, and Country Jazz. New York: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0415941024
*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.
*
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*
Wylie & The Wild WestListen
*
Swingin' West radio-online Mike Gross-Fairfield University Student Radio 1-4pm EST Friday afternoons.
*
Swingin' West Hour -
Swingin' West — Hosted by
TwangTownUSA ; available 24 hours-requires RealPlayer (two minute commercial introduction).
*
The Western Hour—Western & Western Swing -
Golden Graham — Hosted by
TwangTownUSA ; requires RealPlayer (two minute commercial introduction).
