Western swing
Western swing is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands.[1][2] It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat,[3][4] which attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma and California during the 1930s and 1940s until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre's decline.[5]
This article is about the musical subgenre. For the dance, see Lindy Hop. For other uses, see West Coast Swing.Western swing
The movement was an outgrowth of jazz.[6][7][8] The music is an amalgamation of rural, cowboy, polka, old-time, Dixieland jazz, and blues blended with swing;[9] and played by a hot string band often augmented with drums, saxophones, pianos and, notably, the steel guitar.[10] The electrically amplified stringed instruments, especially the steel guitar, give the music a distinctive sound.[11] Later incarnations have also included overtones of bebop.
Western swing differs in several ways from the music played by the nationally popular horn-driven big swing bands of the same era. In Western bands, even fully orchestrated bands, vocals, and other instruments followed the fiddle's lead. Additionally, although popular horn bands tended to arrange and score their music, most Western bands improvised freely, either by soloists or collectively.[12]
Prominent groups during the peak of Western swing's popularity included The Light Crust Doughboys, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies, Spade Cooley and His Orchestra, and Hank Thompson And His Brazos Valley Boys. Contemporary groups include Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Asleep at the Wheel, Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys, and the Hot Club of Cowtown.
According to country singer Merle Travis, "Western swing is nothing more than a group of talented country boys, unschooled in music, but playing the music they feel, beating a solid two-four rhythm to the harmonies that buzz around their brains. When it escapes in all its musical glory, my friend, you have Western swing."[13]
Origin of the name[edit]
The genre now called Western swing originated from the dance music of the 1920s–1930s, but lacked a coherent label until after the Second World War. The term swing music, referring to big band dance music, didn't come into use until the 1932 hit "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)".[53] Recording companies came up with several names before World War II trying to market the strain that would eventually be known as "Western" swing—hillbilly, old-time music, novelty hot dance, hot string band, and even Texas swing for music coming out of Texas and Louisiana.[54] Most of the big Western dance bandleaders simply referred to themselves as Western bands and their music as Western dance music, many adamantly refusing the hillbilly label.[55]
Bob Wills and others believed the term Western swing was first used for his music while he and his band were still in Tulsa, Oklahoma between 1939 and 1942.[56] The Los Angeles-area Wilmington Press carried ads for an unidentified "Western Swing Orchestra" at a local nightspot in April 1942. That winter, influential LA-area jazz and swing disc jockey Al Jarvis held a radio contest for top popular band leaders. The winner would be named "the King of Swing". When Spade Cooley unexpectedly received the most votes, besting favorites Benny Goodman and Harry James, Jarvis declared Cooley to be the King of Western Swing.[57][58][59]
Around 1942, Cooley's promoter, disc jockey "Foreman" Phillips, began using "Western swing" to advertise his client.[60][61] By 1944, the term had become solidified. On May 6, 1944, Billboard magazine contained the following: "Spade Cooley, who moved in with his Western swing boys several months ago, has released the Breakfast Club."[62] On June 10, 1944, the same magazine wrote: "...what with the trend to Western music in this section, Cooley's Western swing band is a natural."[63] A more widely-known "first use" was an October 1944 Billboard item mentioning a forthcoming songbook by Cooley titled Western Swing.[64] After that, the style became known as Western swing.