|
Western swing is dance music with an up-tempo beat and a decidedly Southwestern US regional flavor. It
consists of an eclectic combination of country, cowboy, polka, and folk music, blended with "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 pedal 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 from the early era included:
- The Light Crust Doughboys
- Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys
- Milton Brown and his Brownies
- The Southern Melody Boys
- The High Flyers
- The Tune Wranglers
- Adolph Hofner and his San Antonians
- Bill Boyd and the Cowboy Ramblers
- Spade Cooley 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)
This is an incomplete list. You can help
Wikipedia by expanding or completing it.
Later bands and artists of the genre (or influenced by it):
This is an incomplete list. You can help
Wikipedia by expanding or completing it.
See also: List of swing/big band
musicians
External Links:
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
|