A Very OK Podcast
Episode 23: “Live Episode: The Life and Legacy of Bob Wills”
March 21, 2023
Episode Transcript
(fiddle music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. (cheering) It is so great to have a room full of people at the lively Ponyboy Bar, right here on 23rd Street in Oklahoma City, right next to the Tower Theatre, and we have an incredible group of folks with us here tonight to talk about “the King of Western Swing,” Bob Wills.
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Yeah, Trait, it’s so good to see everyone here and share this enthusiasm for an Oklahoman, and we claim him, even though he may not have been born on the right side of the Red River, but close by. I always said he was Red River culture, and so we can claim him, and it’s so good to know that his legacy is still alive. We’re part of making sure that his memory is alive and will be forever, and to hear the music just makes you happy. And the world needs more Bob Wills right now.
Thompson: I think so, you know, I was remarking to a friend of mine (applause) earlier today in the rotunda where we had Bob Wills Day. And I said to my friend, I said, it’s really impossible to feel bad listening to a Bob Wills song. Even the sad songs kind of put a little pep in your step. So it is, western swing music is just so fun. So I want to introduce our panel that we have here tonight. First of all, to Bob’s left, we have Carolyn Wills. Carolyn is Bob Wills’ daughter. And Carolyn, so great to have you here with us tonight.
(applause) Right next to Carolyn we haveBrett Bingham. Brett was—even before he was in high school—he was, he started the national fan club for Bob Wills’ Original Texas Playboys. He is a manager and a booker, booking numerous acts, including the Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys under the direction of Jason Roberts. And he is the co-author of Twentieth-Century Honky-Tonk, the book about Cain’s Ballroom with John Wooley. And speaking of John Wooley, sitting right next to Brett is John Wooley. (applause)
John has been a fan of Bob Wills since he was a kid. He was a radio host of the “Wooley Wednesday Show” on KVOO from 1991 to 2002. Since 2003, he has hosted the show “Swing on This” every Saturday night on KWGS in Tulsa. He was an entertainment writer for the Tulsa World for over 20 years. He was the first writer inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame, and he is also the co-author of Twentieth-Century Honky-Tonk with Brett Bingham. Yeah. (applause)
And our final last, but certainly not least, panelist tonight is Jeff Moore. Jeff has worked for the Oklahoma Historical Society for 29 years, which makes him really, really old. But I’ve been so thrilled to work with Jeff in my two years at the Oklahoma Historical Society. Jeff has such a passion for Oklahoma pop culture, and that’s good because he’s been the director of OKPOP for 13 years. He’s worked since OKPOP was just an idea to get it off the ground. Now we have a big, new beautiful building in downtown Tulsa, across the street from “the mother church,” which is Cain’s Ballroom. And Jeff has done such a good job. Jeff, we are so thrilled to have you here today. (applause)
But before we get started, we’re going to bring up one of our favorite Oklahoma musicians, Kyle Dillingham, and he’s going to get us in the right mood to play a little fiddle music for us.
Kyle Dillingham: Absolutely. What an honor to be here. Thank you very much, Trait. Here we go!
(fiddle music playing)
Dillingham: (singing) Well, working on the railroad, sleeping on the ground, eating saltine crackers, ten cents a pound, The Big ball’s in Cowtown We’ll all go down. Big ball’s in Cowtown we’ll dance around. Heyyyyyyyy! Come in momma, the hog’s done got me.
Well, I’ll stay in Cowtown. I’ll stick around. Board up your windows, Big ball’s in town Big ball’s in Cowtown. We’ll all go down. The Big ball’s in Cowtown, we’ll dance around Heyyyyy, soooueeeeeeyyyyy!
(fiddle music playing)
Well, put on your new shoes, put on your gown. Shake off those sad blues, Big ball’s in town. Big ball’s in Cowtown, we’ll all go down. Big ball’s in Cowtown, we’ll dance around. Big ball’s in Cowtown. We’ll all go down Big ball’s in Cowtown.
(fiddle music playing) The Big ball’s in town. (applause)
Thompson: You know, Kyle, if you keep practicing, someday, you just might be something (laughing). Kyle, that was phenomenal. We are so thrilled to have you with us here tonight. Oh, Kyle’s going to come back. We’re going to have a little intermission, and he’s going to come back and play for us again. So look forward to that. But let’s get into talking about the reason we’re here today, and that’s to talk about “the King of Western Swing,” and that’s Bob Wills.
And I really want to start out, Carolyn, with you. And I want to hear, I really want to hear about Bob Wills’ early years, what you know about him growing up, and his family. And where did he get that itch? Where did he get that drive to become a musician?
Carolyn Wills: I think he got it in the genes. He came from a family of champion fiddlers, and he was the oldest of nine surviving children. He was adored by his parents and his brothers, and sisters. So, he kind of naturally became a leader. Maybe it was there in the first place, but he didn’t have a choice. He was the one in charge. And, interestingly, he didn’t take up the fiddle in the beginning. He played the mandolin, and he wasn’t really that interested. But, I guess he had a contest with a cousin who challenged him, and the cousin couldn’t play very well. And Bob picked up the fiddle and so outplayed him. That became his instrument. And when he was 10-years-old, his father was supposed to play, I believe it was a ranch dance, because that’s there were lots of them. They were, at that time, living in Hall County in west Texas. They had moved from Kosse and, so Bob shows up—actually he was Jim Robb then. He shows up to the dance, and papa doesn’t show up. And so finally he says, you know, I think I can play some. And the rancher said, well, go for it. And he played the seven, he played the same seven songs over and over again, but it was a huge success. Everybody danced. It was a great, great experience, and I think that showed him a path.
He did try a lot of different things in his life. He, before he accepted music was his way, he was a barber. He talked about being a preacher, but then ultimately he went to Fort Worth and it kind of started from there with the Light Crust Doughboys, He was the first with Pappy Lee O’Daniel and then eventually made his way to Oklahoma, first in Oklahoma City, but then Tulsa, where KVOO took a chance, hired this ragtag young group of musicians who just immediately became so popular, and then the glory years.
Thompson: Carolyn, what kind of dad was he? You know, what was his temperament? What was he like as a father?
Wills: It was really, you know, when you’re a kid, you kind of think this is just life. And it took me a long time to kind of look back. And in ways, what helped was a recent project I did for writing some content for OKPOP, and oh my gosh, it was so profound going back and looking at life. We moved a lot. People used to say, where did you grow up? And I would always say Route 66. And, well, I guess I should back up and say the love story. He had been married a few times.
Thompson: He kept going until he got it right. Right?
Wills: He kind of did. (laughing) And of all things, it was a very young, vivacious, petite woman named Betty Lou Anderson. And the difference with her is that she was raised—she was adopted— she was raised by older parents, and our grandmother was hard of hearing. So Betty was used to kind of speaking up and kind of taking care of her parents. So Bob didn’t seem that different in age, I think. And she was a match. And so they had 33 years of marriage, and she was the queen of secrets, I have to say, and so that kind of affected growing up.
We were not necessarily raised in the music. We were more, it was when daddy was home, he was home to relax. That was his, that was his reward. And he did. What we kind of shared with him was his love for horses. My sister, Andrea’s mother, has been a long-time breeder of beautiful Arabian horses. And we all had horses for a little while when we lived in Tulsa, and he would come out and show us what to do and all. So, that was the fun part. When he was home, we couldn’t quite go out a lot because people always wanted to talk to him, and he would always talk. So we would tend to go to drive-in movies. Sometimes we’d go out to eat, and it never failed. Somebody would stop, and he would always, you know, always talk to them. We went to parks. I can’t think of what else, but the places we lived; it’s just now dawned on me that, yes, we did move a lot, and it was kind of a military life. That’s what a lot of people assumed is that we were in the military.
But what I didn’t get until just now is the places we went. My brother was born in Santa Monica. I was born on the Triple B Ranch in Fresno, south, or close to Fresno, where my mother didn’t make it to the hospital, and my father, it was always said he delivered, but he actually didn’t, and he never wanted to go through that again. So I was born on the Triple B Ranch. Then we moved to Sacramento to a six-acre entertainment field that had an Olympic public swimming pool, a huge dance hall, apartments down in the back, and a huge park. And it was Wills Point, Wills Plunge; and there we lived in one of those apartments, and my brother and I would go up and play on the dance floor. They put that pink stuff, you know, and so that was one of the few times when he was home a lot. And then from there, we would go to places like Tulsa, which I ended up graduating from high school and the University of Tulsa, and so that always felt more like home.
(applause)
Wills: And then we lived in Abilene, Amarillo a few times; Houston, Las Vegas, there was the other, where he got to be home more often.
Thompson: So the song “I’ve Been Everywhere” is really about you.
Wills: It was!
Thompson: You know, I really, in 1930, Wills joins up with a guy named Milton Brown, and they form they have a band called the Aladdin Laddies on WBAP radio in Fort Worth. And then from there they go to the Light Crust Doughboys. And it’s interesting to me, you know, talking about this early era in radio, Bob, and talking about this early time is the bands were named after whatever, who were sponsoring them at the time. I think it’d be great to kind of set the scene. What’s going on in the early 1930s, when Bob is starting to come up in Texas and Oklahoma? What is the scene like? And then, of course, we know we’re in the Great Depression. Radio is coming into existence. I think it’d be great to set the scene for the folks about what’s happening in the world.
Blackburn: Yeah, of course, Trait, generally, when I take on a topic and want to research it or write about it or do an exhibit, I always like to start with people step onto the stage of history with certain assets, with cultural baggage from family, with the experiences of the challenges and opportunities of their youth and heritage. And then they’re looking for these opportunities. With Bob, growing up when he did, the two things: cotton culture was critical in his life, of hearing the people in the field singing, where he had this wide variety from folk music to gospel to blues, and that became part of him. And others can talk about that musical expression better than I can, but you can’t understand Bob Wills without understanding that cotton culture that was so powerful in the ’20s and ’30s. If you were a farmer on 40 acres with the mule with a bunch of kids, your cash crop was cotton. That was the only way you were going to make any money, and so he comes out of that culture. But secondly, the Great Depression, and for many farmers, especially in west Texas and in Oklahoma, my grandparents in Arkansas, the same time period, they were starving out because the Great Depression started for cotton farmers in the ’20s; ’21, ’22 were tough years, only got worse. And then you get to the Great Depression after ’39, or excuse me, ’29, people couldn’t make a living. They’re looking for any opportunity. So, you get a lot of migration. Again, that’s part of Bob’s story. Willing to move to wherever there might be an opportunity, whether it is into Fort Worth or to Waco or Oklahoma City or to Tulsa, always looking for that opportunity.
And of course, the turning point was radio. As you said, radio first went on the air in Oklahoma in 1920. WKY Radio, not long thereafter in Tulsa, and John probably has stories about radio in Tulsa, especially with KVOO. But radio was a business, and at first it was like the early internet. How do you make money with this new invention? And so, you had a lot of entertainment. It was common that a lot of radio stations would have 15-minute segments of musicians. And at the WKY here in Oklahoma City, that’s why Mr. Gaylord bought the Kilgen Organ, is because that Kilgen Organ could play background music for a wide variety of performers coming in for their 15- or 30-minute shows, and so that would support that. And so radio stations were looking for content, and if they had enough content and enough people listening, then they could go to a client and say, buy ad time on my radio station. That was the business model. And here in Oklahoma City, WKY was bought by the Gaylord family in the ’20s, and they made it very successful. And that gave Bob the opportunity to do what he did best, which is to play music for dance.
You always have to remember Bob Wills, fundamentally, his music is dance music. And to promote the dance that was going to be the next night out of here in Oilton or the next night over here in Skiatook, is being on the radio every day for that 30 minutes on KVOO that had a wide reach, that was carried in other markets as well, hearing Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, that was promotion. And yeah, y’all come out tomorrow night, we’re going to be in Oilton. Well, that’s where they would make their $0.75, a person coming in and making a lot more money there than they did on radio. But radio was like that new technology, like what you and I would say, social media today, you reach a lot of, especially young people. But in that day, it was radio before television. Television doesn’t come around until ’49, and that was reaching a lot of families. Those radios in those living rooms on in the morning, as you’re getting ready to go out milk the cows. They’re on at noon when you’re getting fed, in the evening for primetime. And Bob Wills is a master at being an entertainer, not just before a dance crowd, but on the radio. (applause)
Thompson: Yeah. Brett, can you talk about a little bit of those early bands that Bob’s a part of and what is it that kind of catches on with people as he’s getting into the Light Crust Doughboys, and he’s working for W. Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel? And, you know, I read a segment in your book said that one of, Bob said one of his favorite times was when he was in the Light Crust Doughboys. And I think they had drawn like 100,000 people to a concert at one time, or a dance. Can you talk about those early years, and what is it that’s the spark that’s starting to catch on?
Brett Bingham: Well, it just so happens I’ve been reviewing a lot of interviews that I found of Bob Wills recently as we embark on our 90th-anniversary Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys’ tour, because we’re trying to kind of tell the Bob Wills story along with the music as we go. And the Light Crust Doughboys, in a sense, they were on the Texas Quality Network, as Bob’s alluding to the power of radio, and they were being heard all over the state on multiple radio stations just because they were based out of Fort Worth. And they were, they were not unlike what The Beatles might have, were like probably, I mean, they were a big deal. And he almost talks about his success with the Light Crust Doughboys as being bigger than with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, which we all know isn’t quite true. But that was probably his humility, but yeah, it was, it honestly was a string band. It was himself on fiddle. A guy named Herman Arnspiger, Milton’s brother on guitar. Herman played guitar as well, and Milton sang. I mean, they were just a simple string band, and then that evolved. I think they did add a fifth person, eventually. Also, towards the end of the Light Crust Doughboys tenure, he added his brother Johnny Lee on banjo, which was a rhythm instrument at that time.
And I’ve also heard an interview recently where he also kind of gives the credit for his success to the fact that amplification came out around this time, and they could go play dances, and they could actually hear the fiddle. And, you know, it wasn’t just, and Milton wasn’t just singing through a megaphone like they were when they started out. So that was all happening in that period from the ’30s to ’34, before he left the Light Crust Doughboys. So that’s kind of how they started, that simple string band. And of course, we can talk about how they evolved into what they became in a short ten-year time.
John Wooley: Trait, can I add something to that? You know, in Brother Al Stricklin’s book. Brett, you remember? He talks about, he talks about that? You don’t remember that book? (laughter)
And that’s right. But you do remember the book. And when they were auditioning, the Wills fiddle band at that time for WBAP, they come in and they play, I believe the song is “Who Broke the Lock on the Henhouse Door.” And they’re in there, and he takes his fiddle out of a sack, and they’re all dancing around, and Brother Al says—he’s kind of filling in for the program director— and he says, what do you play? And Bob says, the Wills fiddle band plays different. We play different music.
Thompson: That’s an understatement.
Wooley: And that’s the secret, I think. Right? I mean, from the very beginning, he was not like everybody else. He was an amalgam of things. He was not like everyone else. Yeah.
Bingham: But while they were playing, while they were the Light Crust Doughboys, and they were playing for the radio. They were playing songs of the day, just like they continued to do. But they started playing dances, and and as he said, they would take songs by the Skillet Lickers and people that were these hillbilly, for lack of a better term, bands from the Tennessee area, but they would change them. They would put a dance beat on them and so they could go play these, the dances. Crystal Springs is probably the most famous one that they started playing at, but they were playing other places, too, even though they weren’t supposed to, as we could talk about if you’d like.
But that’s what they did, they took those songs, and I found a great little interview where he talks about how they changed, just simply by changing the tempo. And probably the best example is “Right or Wrong.” You can probably find “Right or Wrong” by Emmett Miller from the early ’30s, late ’20s. And it’s, it’s a very slow, very, I don’t really know how to describe it, but go check it out. It’s out there, and then listen to Bob’s version from 1936. And that will tell you that’ll probably be the best example of what they did with music. They took songs of the time and changed them up, gave them a dance beat.
Wooley: And I think we also have to add that they took a lot from blues, and rhythm and blues. You take a look at some of the songs that they did, like “What’s the Matter with the Mill?” and some of that came directly out of the blues tradition, and they changed it just like Brett said, that they changed him up. They made them their own songs, and that was that one. When you talk about all of the influences that created western swing, you know, there’s a incredible amount of different influences that went into that.
Thompson: Yeah, Jeff, you know, you’re probably one of the people that, you know, I’m always amazed by your encyclopedic knowledge of, you know, Bob Wills, and then almost any other Oklahoma musician as well. And I’d like you to talk about, because Bob was a rule breaker. He was someone who wasn’t afraid to take heat. He grew up listening to blues and jazz and ragtime, and he thought, let’s throw it all in together and see what comes out. Jeff, can you talk about that attitude and how he did that?
Jeff Moore: Well, the reason I know things is because I pay attention to the other four people that are on this podcast with me. Just I’ve got good listening skills, I guess. No, I mean, you know, it’s what Bob was talking about that I think, you know, at what moment in history does someone take the stage, and are they willing at that moment to seize the opportunity? And Bob is the perfect example of being in the right place at the right time with the right ideas, with the right audience, with everything was right. It was a perfect storm. Not only is there, you know, mass media is now getting to a point to share very diverse styles with broad audiences. He’s open to that. And I think that’s one thing, you know, in studying pop culture and the history; music’s very tribal. There are certain fans of certain styles, and if you break that or you try to do something, you know, vary from that, you know, you run the risk of alienating your audience. And what’s so amazing is Bob did that all the time and created something new that then you know, then created, in a way, a tribal audience. But still, he was bringing in, you know, it’s amazing.
You know, just being at Cain’s the other night and just hearing, I mean, there’s like this wave for the whole evening of how those sounds change and how the mood changes and the energy changes. And then you’re like, oh my gosh, we’re in New Orleans. Or, you know, we’re in South Texas or, you know, we’re in Oklahoma. I mean, it’s almost like that music’s taking you to different places. And that’s what I admire most about him, is that he was able to be smart enough and intuitive enough and creative enough to bring all that together, but then also have the business savvy and the technology savvy to take advantage of that as it related to media and business. Not only is he, you know, a pioneer in some ways in the way radio is dealt with from a business standpoint as it relates to actual artists, but he’s pioneering business practices that, Brett and, you know, people in the music industry today, still feel the effects of things that he kind of, you know, ideated and put into place in the 1930s, you know, 80 years ago. So, 90 years ago. So it’s all of those things. And I think that’s what attracts me to him, and kind of being someone who never saw him perform live, which I think most of us in the room— Carolyn, did you ever, you saw him perform live? How many other people in the room saw Bob Wills perform live? See, I think that says a lot because music is so emotional, and there’s such a, we were talking about the other night at Cain’s about the language of music and how it connects people together. We have these jokes at OKPOP where we’re talking about all the kids that are born because their parents met at a show at Cain’s Ballroom, which is absolutely true. And part of that is because it’s part of the social calendar of our lives. And so, you know, the fact that very few people are still alive that has seen him play live, but here we are celebrating him to a sold-out show in Cain’s two nights ago. You know, 150, 200 people plus at the Capitol today celebrating his legacy. And then you’ve got, you know, four amazing historians and two guys on each end making them look good. I mean, we’re talking about it here, and look at all you came out.
Moore: So, I mean, I think that says a lot about what he was able to do. (applause) Because there’s stories I hear, I wish I could see and you get little glimpses of it, but it’s like, man, I would love to just watch him for four hours.
Thompson: How many of you would like your time traveling Delorean to go back to one show at Cain’s right? (applause) Yeah.
Wills: Well, and, Jeff, we don’t want to leave out the fact that everything for him was about connection. The band. He promoted every band member. They were known by name. There was a lot of humor. He knew his audience. He always started with “South.” Right? To see, measure who’s going to dance, what kind of dancers he had. He was always very connected. He had rules that the band members needed to engage with the audience. So it was that, you know, he was the consummate entertainer. And I think that, I hope that gets remembered.
Thompson: I pulled this quote from the book, Twentieth-Century Honky-Tonk. from Bob. It says, “You got to give them showmanship. You got to work the crowd from the bandstand.” And so he was a master of that. He knew what his people wanted to hear. And I saw another snippet in there that said that they had over 3,600 tunes in their repertoire. Most bands had about 50. So if he showed up at a dance and they wanted to hear polkas, well, by God, he could play polkas, right?
Wooley: There’s a great story Truitt Cunningham told once, and I think it was at Wills Point, if I’m remembering right. They were playing up there, and a group comes in in tuxedos, evening gowns, obviously slumming to hear country music or hillbilly music, whatever you call it. And they had a few drinks. And so, one of the guys in a tux sort of showing off to his friends, and he walks up to the bandstand and gets Bob’s attention and he says, yeah. And he looks back at his friend, says, yeah, you know “Tuxedo Junction”? And Bob says, yes, sir, I think we can play that. He turns around, counts it off, and it’s a perfect “Tuxedo Junction.” And they just slink out the door. Now that’s what Truitt said. That’s a Truitt Cunningham story, who sang with him for a while.
Blackburn: Trait, one thing I really admire about Bob Wills is that we have to realize that his style of music at first was not mainstream. It was not what you hear in Chicago or New York City or San Francisco. In his first recordings, they would put it in the category of folk. It’s like, oh, this is curious Americana that will soon disappear. But yet, he never let that phase him. And then one thing I like is creative people who also have a mind for business. And Bob Wills did. And I love the story when he gets to Tulsa and he’s not making much money out of the radio show, it’s at the dances. And of course, that business model was working for others as well as for him.
But, at one point he says, let’s step back from this. Maybe there’s another opportunity. So he and his agent go to a local milling company in Tulsa, and they say, here’s the deal, if you will sponsor this show, because I’ve got to pay, I think it was ten or $15,000. I don’t remember the amount, but that’s what the air time was going to cost. So he was going to buy the time. And he said, if you will produce Playboy Flour, we will take a royalty on every sack of Playboy Flour. So of course, the band was part of that. The recipes from the different band members would be on the back of a flour sack, and people would write and say, this is the best flour I’ve ever had, even though it was the same flour everyone else was eating in town.
(laughter)
Blackburn: But his promotion of it for those families and those especially out on the on the farms and ranches, listen to that. Get Playboy Flour. They go buy it because of Bob Wills, and he never made a lot of money out of it, but it would pay for the show, which paid for the audiences coming in to listen to his music. He was an entrepreneur, which, the creative side and the business side don’t always go together. You’ve learned that in the business, I guess, too. But he could do both. And that’s always impressed me. Bob Wills, the entrepreneur, as well as Bob Wills, the entertainer.
Thompson: I’d like to talk about 1932, Milton Brown leaves the Light Crust Doughboys, and we get a guy named Tommy Duncan. I think a lot of people who may listen to an early Bob Wills recording, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, and hear somebody singing. They might assume that’s Bob Wills singing, since he’s the name of the band. In today’s day and age, if you’re fronting the band, most likely you’re singing as well. But that wasn’t the case with this. Brett, can you talk a little about Tommy Duncan and his importance to the the early Bob Wills days?
Bingham: Sure. So I guess the first thing, and I don’t remember the number now, but dozens, if not hundreds of singers were auditioned for that role. And Tommy ended up getting the job after singing “I Ain’t Got Nobody,” and they recorded that in 1935. You can find that, I’m sure, on your favorite places to stream music, but yeah, Tommy just fit with Bob. He loved to sing, and he could yodel, but he could croon, and he could do all the things that Bob want him to do and essentially just took the place of Milton without, with no, what am I trying to say? Yeah. No. Yeah. It just went straight into, so Tommy took that role over. And of course, then Tommy stayed with him till the late ’40s, so he, until Mr. Rausch came along, which we’ll talk about that later. But Tommy was truly the voice of the Texas Playboys. But I also have to point out that Bob, he had pop singers, he had Leon McAuliffe, that he did like the scat-singing type songs, like “That’s What I Like About the South,” because they were, they were referring, they were trying to play for everybody. And so Tommy didn’t just do all the singing. That was his primary role. He also played a little piano before they hired Al Strickland. And some, some of the guys that I was fortunate enough to meet later in their lives said very little piano, but piano nonetheless. It was a rhythm instrument in that band.
Thompson: John, we went back and forth on Facebook because one of my favorite singers is an up-and-comer named Brennen Leigh, and she has a song on her new western swing album, which I have to recommend if you haven’t heard it. But it’s called “If Tommy Duncan’s Voice was Booze, I’d Stay Drunk All the Time.”
Blackburn: That’s good.
Wooley: And it’s really interesting too about the singers, because as Brett alluded to, different singers saying different kinds of things. Joe Frank Ferguson, for instance, would sing the pop tunes generally. And Eldon told us, you remember Brett, Eldon said, Eldon Shamblin, who was with Bob for many years, Eldon really a linchpin in the Texas Playboys. He said every band member had one song that they had to be ready to sing if Bob called on them; every band member. And Eldon’s was “There’ll Be Some Changes Made,” which was also the title of his very last album, which he recorded when he was 80. But Bob utilized— like we were all saying— he utilized everybody in the band. It wasn’t Bob Wills and a bunch of guys. It was Bob Wills, and every one of those Texas Playboys had a personality of his own.
Audience member: And sometimes Bob sang.
Wooley: And sometimes Bob sang, and oh, and “Rosetta.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now there’s, do we have time for a story about “Rosetta,” because Jeff and I have talked, and Jeff talks about Bob’s phrasing, jazz phrasing, and he really never sang a song the same way twice. Right? Well, Smoky Dacus, the drummer, told a story about the first time Bob Wills heard “Rosetta,” and he just had to sing it. He loved the song. He had to sing it. So he’s living in Tulsa in a like second or third-story apartment, right? And they’ve got the record on the turntable, and Smoky Dacus is up there with him. And Smoky told us this was his 90th birthday. Is that when? And so he’s up there, he’s playing. And every time he plays it and he says, okay, Bob. Bob sings it a different way. He stops the verses someplace and then picks up someplace else. Finally, Smoky Dacus says, I got so disturbed. I picked up that record, threw it out the window. It landed on the roof of a grocery store across the street, and as far as I know, it’s still there.
(laughter)
Bingham: Well, I can tag on to that because I asked Bobby Coffer about that. And shout out to Bobby Koefer, he’s 95 years old. He’s just about the last remaining Texas Playboy. And I talked to him today, and he’s doing great. He told me to tell everybody hi, but I asked him about that, and he just said, well, I’ll just tell you what Eldon said. I asked him about Bob singing off meter. He said, “who the hell cares as long as we’re together.”
Bingham: And the band was together, and you listen to that over and over, and you’re waiting for him to come in. But the band, it’s great. It’s a great recording.
Wills: Can we also talk about the hollering and the dancing and the riding Punkin up on stage?
Bingham: Well, we didn’t talk about the fact that he got his start in medicine shows and had to do everything. He had to dance. He had to sing. I keep referring to all these interviews that I’ve been unearthing, but he had to get on that. He said he got on the piano and played on his back. He had to do whatever he needed to do to entertain the people. Absolutely, and he continued that. And there’s unfortunately not a lot of great video out there, but you can you can still see it. In fact, what he does in the movies is almost a little embellished, wouldn’t you say? I don’t know. I didn’t see him, obviously, but but even still, that’s an example of what he had to do. And, so yeah, he, and the hollering; I don’t really know where to go with that. Does anybody else want to take that? But it’s always in harmony. Think about it. I mean, listen to it. Yeah, it’s there. It’s on point. It’s not just something random. They always said when he was moved by the music, that’s what did it. But it was, it was still in tune, in on time, and it was appropriate.
Wooley: And you know, when I was coming up learning about Bob Wills, one of the sort of, I think, things that was wrong was they said, well, he hollered to kind of drown out when there were bad notes. Right? But that wasn’t true at all. He hollered, and look at the people who came along and emulated that holler. Now his own brothers, of course, and their bands. And I, as I understand it, and you may be able to address this. As I understand it, the only one that he really got upset with was the Cornhuskers. Ole Rasmussen, who absolutely copied him note for note on those, on the “ah-ha’s” and all of that kind of stuff. I had been told that Ole Rasmussen was the only one that really annoyed him by stealing his licks.
Wills: Can you tell the story about Mr. Satherley wanting him just stop hollering.
Wooley: I may not be the best person to, but yes, and not use drums either. Correct? Yeah, yeah.
Bingham: So they were in the studio recording, and I guess it was probably their first session. It was in Dallas. And of course Bob was hollering, yes, 1935, and Bob was doing what he does. And apparently Mr. Satherley came into the studio, said, hey, somebody’s hollering, you guys need to be quiet. And he said, well, that’s me, and that’s what I do. And, he said, well, can you keep it down a little bit? Supposedly, he said, pack it up, boys, we’re heading back to Tulsa. So they got Bob Wills, and he said, it was dramatized in Ray Benson’s musical. But if you want Bob Wills, you get Bob Wills. And so that’s probably exactly how it went down.
Wooley: Now, uncle Art Satherley was their A&R man who was responsible for the repertoire and responsible kind of for how the record sounded. Correct? With the label. And one of the things that uncle Art Satherley didn’t like was the big band music. When Bob started, he started really working with reeds and horns in the early 1940s. To me, and on my show, and I know I have a lot of people who listen to the show who agree, that’s some of the most beautiful, intricate music that Bob Wills ever did, and uncle Art, some of that stuff was not even released until I started putting stuff out in the ’80s, like the Time-Life stuff. And, you know, he did “Liebestraum.” He did, he did the “William Tell Overture” with horns, and it was wonderful. “Liebestraum” was wonderful! “Girl I Left Behind Me.” And you have never heard a better “Maiden’s Prayer” than the one from 1941 with those beautiful saxophones in it. Bob was always again, to your point, he was always experimenting, always trying to do something new.
Thompson: Yeah. (applause) One of the people that gave Bob kind of his big break with the Light Crust Doughboys was Pappy O’Daniel. Apparently, you know, if you’ve seen the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? he’s always looking for a little bit of that “reform.” Little joke for you guys out there. But, but also fired him in 1933. Can you talk about Pappy O’Daniel as the guy that gives a break, but also his nemesis for a while that trails him as he’s trying to kind of escape the shadow?
Moore: Have you ever met anyone that’s just so obnoxious you don’t want to be around them? That’s what I imagine Pappy O’Daniel was like. I mean, just. Yeah. I think it’s interesting that there was kind of this nemesis, but I think Bob learned some things through that that he put to good use, you know, down the road, especially in Tulsa, because the, in fact, I came across a letter in the archive where the general manager for KWGS was basically outlining. It was a bit of a one-page history of how they met. And so, like, you were some young guy from Texas who was coming up here, and you had this big idea and you wanted to do all this stuff here in Tulsa, and we gave you a shot, but we didn’t think it was going to work. And, well, it worked, you know, and I think having that conflict that he had helped give him the drive to give him the confidence and give him the motivation to do what...he had a vision. He had a vision for how this was all going to work. There’s an amazing book. It’s one of the —and John can correct me— but I think it’s one of the first kind of pop culture biographies, Hubbin’ It. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that would have been, was that ’30s?
Wooley: That was the late ’30s It was ’37, right. She was, and she was a Tulsa Tribune reporter.
Moore: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s one of the first biographies of a 20th-century pop culture icon. I don’t know, Bob. There might be an earlier biography of Will Rogers. But I don’t, I mean, ’37, ’38 is pretty early. But in that, he talks about his vision for what the Texas Playboys were going to be. And I think a lot of that came from the experience he had with the Light Crust Doughboys and the experience, his experiences that ended up legal lawsuits between he and Pappy O’Daniel, and I think all of that, you know, played a role in what his endgame was going to be. He had a vision of what he wanted, and that was in some ways fulfilled in California, where he talks about he wants the band to be together, to all live on the same property, and all have their families and their horses, and all live as just one big happy band. And then they go do their thing, and then they come back to their families and their horses. And, you know, and he had this vision and in, you know, ’35, ’36, ’37 that he achieves in the mid-to-late ’40s in California. And I think all of that, you know, goes back to, one it’s probably control. You know, if you’re working for someone, you’re having to make them happy. And he had to make Pappy happy, and Pappy couldn’t be happy. So Pappy ran for governor. And that’s a whole ’nother thing. But, you know, he I think he he’s like, well, I’ve got a vision for this. I know how this can be, and I’m going to put this vision in place. And he, in certain respects, he achieved that.
Wooley: Keep in mind that if not for Pappy O’Daniel, WKY would have been a place where western swing took off. WKY in Oklahoma City.
Blackburn: Well, and too, as we look at all of these entertainers and these icons and, and you know, the galaxy of Oklahoma celebrities and stars, other people make a difference in their lives. You know, we’re surrounded by people who give us a chance; our mentors, the people who say, here’s a chance to do this. We want you.
Well, the Pappy O’Daniel vindictive attitude knocked him off of WKY because he then called the station manager of WKY, and he said, if you run that show, you’ll never get my Texas Playboys, Light Crust Doughboys. That’s right. And then the same thing, followed him to Tulsa. But one of those people that enters Bob Wills’ life is W. G. Skelly of Skelly Oil. And of course, us baby boomers remember Skelly Oil. But W. G. Skelly had started the radio station, and he was just big enough and proud enough himself he says “tell that Texan to go home.” We’re not going to take him off. And he let Bob have a chance. Without W. G. Skelly at that pivotal moment, Bob might have gone on somewhere else, might have gone back to Amarillo or some other community or Kansas. But he found not just W. G. Skelly, but he found an oil culture. And Tulsa in the 1930s was kind of a split community, but oil had made such a huge difference. And one reason we have so many foundations in Tulsa today, those great fortunes made in the ’20s. Well, they were still making fortunes in the ’30s, even with the Great Depression. And the money was there, and they had the money to pay the drillers, and the people working on the pipelines and the pumpers, and those were the folks with the $20 in their pocket on a Friday night that wanted to go out and have a good time, and that was Bob Wills. So oil, just as cotton was critical to Bob’s early heritage, oil and the oil industry became critical to his success and giving him a chance to develop the sounds and to absorb all of these different genres. And then for the recording industry to catch up with him, and then for him to go to Hollywood and be in the movies. Without oil and gas and that pivotal moment in Tulsa, your family may not have stayed in Tulsa, what, 15 years? Or about that is what you were in Tulsa?
Wills: Off and on.
Thompson: Before, there’s another pivotal moment, though, and that’s before he gets to Tulsa. He goes to Waco. He thinks he’s going to escape Pappy O’Daniel by getting to Waco, and he starts playing down there. Pappy catches up with him, but he meets a guy, Oliver Wheeler Mayo. John, how big of a deal was this, meeting O. W. Mayo?
Wooley: Oh, Mr. Mayo was a huge influence with Bob, and especially navigating that. You know, the reason, of course, that one of the reasons for the big lawsuit was they advertised in Waco as “former,” I believe, “former Light Crust Doughboys” in the newspaper. And W. Lee O’Daniel seized on that as advertising, and away they went. Well, Mr. Mayo was down in that part of the country, and he was waiting. He was, he had a few oil and other oil industry guy. He had some oil industry jobs that are he’s kind of waiting on. And his brother, the fireman, is that correct? You know, was that right? Brett? The fireman that was putting on the, yeah, that was putting on the shows in Waco started it, and Mr. Mayo decided he’d help him out a little bit while he was waiting. Well, that ended up with a multi-decade relationship between Bob and Mr. Mayo. And later on, of course, Bob’s brother, Johnnie Lee, that ended up with the Cain’s Ballroom with the two of them at the Cain’s Ballroom. His influence was amazing. He was always called a business manager, I remember. Right? Yes, yes.
Wills: And the rodeo.
Wooley: And the rodeo, the Bob Wills Stampede, of course. Yeah, and later the Johnnie Lee Wills Stampede. So just having a Wills’ presence, certainly with Bob and with Johnnie Lee after Bob left and Johnnie Lee stayed. Mr. Mayo was very much a linchpin in all of that.
Blackburn: Yeah. One little thing about Mayo as well. He worked for City Service Oil Company, which started in Indian Territory. It was I.T.I.O., before City Service bought ’em out. So there’s a connection back to the greater Osage Oil Field to Tulsa Oil and Mayo, even having a job that he was willing. And then later, as Bob was needing some cash, they were down to almost nothing, and band members were living in a basement somewhere. Mr. Mayo sold $90 worth of stock for $20, just so they’d have enough food to put on the table.
Thompson: Well, before we take our illustrious band to Oklahoma, I think we need to bring up Kyle Dillingham to play us the song again.
(applause)
Moore: I just have to say how amazing it is to be down bow from a fiddle player on stage. I’ve never done this. It’s like a 3-D movie.
Dillingham: So we would answer the question, and what would make you holler? (laughter)
Dillingham: something I’ll never forget. And I want to thank, Trait, I want to thank you and everybody that’s been involved. Amber Sharples has already been mentioned, the Arts Council for the for what you did today at the Capitol. But there was this proclamation in the Senate chamber. And I got, just sitting here right by this sweet woman right here. And some of you might know that what an influence this music of Bob Wills was on me and in my life. But to sit there and hear this proclamation and then get up in that chamber and play just a little bit of “Faded Love.” We only got 30 seconds, though today, so I think we should do more than 30 seconds tonight. (applause)
Thompson: Let’s do it.
(fiddle music playing “Faded Love”)
Dillingham: As I look at the letters that you wrote to me, it’s you that I am thinking of. And as I read the lines that to me were so sweet, I remember our faded love, And I miss you darling more and more every day, as heaven would miss the stars above. With every heartbeat, I still think of you and remember our faded love. (fiddle music playing)
I think about the past and of the pleasures we had as I watch the mating of the doves. (fiddle music playing)
For it was in the spring time when you said goodbye. I remember our faded love. And I miss you, darling more and more every day as heaven would miss the stars above. With every heartbeat, I still think of you and remember our faded love. And remember our faded love.
(applause)
Thompson: Kyle Dillingham, everyone. Kyle Dillingham. Oh, boy. That’s fantastic. What an incredible song. What an incredible musician. We’re so thankful to have him with us here today. You know, I, I read in the book, the Twentieth-Century Honky-Tonk” book, that Bob starts looking around when they’re getting ready to leave Waco, and he starts looking at where the fan mail is coming from. And lo and behold, a lot of it is coming from Oklahoma and Oklahoma City area. Jeff, take us to, take us to Oklahoma, take Bob across the Red for us. He’s going to come here. They’re going to look at KOMA first, then WKY, then they decide to get to Tulsa. How does that all go?
Moore: Well, I think one thing that’s interesting that— kind of some context to that—is that, you know, Bob grows up in Texas in an economy that’s based, as we’ve talked about before, with cotton farming, which ebbs and flows depending on, you know, drought or flood season, or whatever. And he’s looking for a location that’s going to have more of a stable economy of working-class people who are his audience, who will have disposable income to pay for dances. It’s an economic thing, I think, it as much as it is a creative or musical endeavor or pursuit.
And, as Dr. Blackburn mentioned, I mean, at this time, you know, there’s a bit of a boom going on in Oklahoma that’s not necessarily in the parts of Texas that he is. It is in other parts. But like you said, he’s getting all this fan mail from Oklahoma. I think it was just a natural progression. Plus, it’s another state away from Pappy O’Daniel. So there’s, you know, a lot of factors involved in that going to Oklahoma. But I think one thing that’s interesting about that is once he gets to Oklahoma, he’s what, in Oklahoma City for two weeks and then, less than two weeks, and then shows up and performs his first concert in Tulsa, February 9, 1934. Broadcast. Not at Cain’s. Cain’s wasn’t until New Year’s of ’34, ’35. But then, but he had, you know, first broadcast performance. But I think one thing that’s interesting, and this is what, John and Brett get into in the book, is, and this is something I’ve talked about just, you know, the impact that Bob Wills had on Oklahoma through all of these performances and, you know, looking at Cain’s Ballroom right now, which the capacity, I believe the fire marshal’s capacity is just around 1,800. But there’s stories you guys, you know, found for you know, 2,000 plus. And some of those numbers are a lot. Right? And, you know, looking, standing in Cain’s. I’ve been in Cain’s where there’s 1,800 people. I don’t know how you could get 3,000 in there, but let’s say it’s 2,000 for sure, and he’s playing there Thursday nights, Saturdays, twice a week for 52 weeks for seven years. I mean, that’s millions of tickets sold. And during the height of the Depression, tickets were $0.35 when he gets there in ’35, I think that was. And then they go up a dollar by ’37. So it’s $1.35. I mean, that’s in the height of the Depression for working class to, you know, and they’re still selling out 2,000 tickets a show. I mean it’s phenomenal. And I really think the reason, you know, there were so many factors, that led him to come to Oklahoma. But, you know, it’s kind of interesting that the only place up from Tulsa, Cain’s Ballroom on KVOO was Southern California. Really. I mean, that’s the only other place he had to go that would have been more of what he wanted than where he was. So that says a lot about the fan base in Oklahoma.
And I think that we live today, especially in Tulsa but across the state, with a very sophisticated musical fan base of average people that live in the state. But, you know, it’s phenomenal that Tulsa has, you know, three, you know, major music venues. And there’s been multiple times in the last few years that all three of those, the BOK Center, the Tulsa Theater, and Cain’s Ballroom are all sold out the same night. And I think that’s a testament that goes back to that fan base and what Bob Wills, going back to the relationship that he had with the fans, that kind of that scene, that kind of that energy, that kind of that relationship that he developed led to expectations on the side of the public that those are the types of experiences, shows, you know, performances that they want to see. And there’s hundreds of thousands of musicians that are benefiting from what Bob Wills did in Oklahoma in the 1930s and ’40s.
Wooley: We’re talking about how he got there. You know, when we’re talking about Mr. O. W. Mayo, Mr. Mayo always said it was him that came up with the idea because after they get bumped, after Pappy O’Daniel indicates he’s going to move. Correct me if I’m wrong, Brett—this is how we work. I always write something then say correct me if I’m wrong, Brett, and sometimes he does. But what they were kind of promising, Pappy O’Daniel was kind of promising, he’d have the Light Crust Doughboys’ network show on WKY, moving it from KOMA, but he couldn’t do it as long as they had Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys there. So they bump him. And this is on a snowy, sleety day in Oklahoma in February, as Jeff said, and the guy feels really sorry for him, the general manager, because they’ve just moved into Oklahoma City, right? And the general manager of WKY says, well, look, they’re starting out a new station in Tulsa. Maybe you can get on that station. It’s KTUL, and so maybe you can go down and do that. Well, they were kind of, they felt bad but they, Bob, O. W. Mayo, and Everet Stover, who was their announcer and trumpet player, Bob’s announcer and trumpet player were the three, and of course, there’s no turnpike. So they’re driving down 66 for Oklahoma City. It’s sleeting. They’re cranky. They’re sad. And as I say, Mr. Mayo always said it was him, said, Boys, before we go to that KTUL that’s just starting out, you know, it, just 5,000 watts, there’s a big station down in Tulsa called KVOO. It’s 25,000 watts. Let’s see if we can go get on that first. And sure enough, they go in there. They talk their way on to getting a slot at midnight that night, because that’s about the quickest they can get everybody else down from Oklahoma City. They offer a picture of the band to the person who writes them from the farthest away, and it is someone from Oakland, California. That’s the reach of KVOO. (applause)
Thompson: So, Brett, I think we’re at the point now where we talk about how we get from KVOO to those noontime broadcasts to where Bob got famous from 1934 to 1942, which is playing Cain’s Ballroom.
Bingham: Well, for sure, and you can’t discount the power of KVOO, because that was in ’34. And they immediately got on KVOO. And of course, they were not getting paid to be on the radio. They were only doing that in order to plug their dances. And it didn’t take long. They started doing dances. And as Bob mentioned earlier, then they made the deal with, with the flour company to start selling Playboy Flour. So they’re gaining some momentum throughout 1934. They’re playing in a place called the Pla-More Ballroom. It was second or third-story building where they’re having to lug all their equipment and not a very big ballroom, but they’re, it was home. And then they get a chance to play at Cain’s Ballroom. They were hired by the Morningside Nurses Association, which is now Hillcrest Hospital. And January 1, 1935, seems like a weird time to be playing a dance, but, hey, maybe maybe that was their fund- It was a fundraiser for them, and they fell in love with Cain’s. Madison Cain was very ill at this point. He was late in his life, and they were just kind of trying to keep the place alive. As Bob said, they were just playing with the piano player two or three nights a week. And the dance, they were still doing dance lessons, but they went in and made a deal, as Bob said, immediately. He said he told Mr. Mayo, go make a deal. Let’s start playing here. So they increased their, they quadrupled their capacity when they did that, and that also coincided with, because of the reach of KVOO all over the country, they started getting noticed, and they were able to sign a recording contract with Brunswick. Now we can start talking about the music whenever you guys are ready. But everybody’s talked about timing and his innovation and even a little bit of luck with amplification, but we haven’t touched on his work ethic. And to me, that’s almost the biggest part of his success, because not many people would have done what he did to achieve that success. He grew up in a farming family, so they knew hard work. They had to work hard to make a living. A
nd so, I’m just going to give you an idea of their schedule, once they got going really well with Cain’s. They played six nights a week. They broadcast six days a week. And they also were, as their popularity grew, they were asked to do funerals and all kinds of things on Sundays. But a typical day would be a noon broadcast, noontime broadcast, I think it was actually at 12:30. And then they’d get a little break depending on where they were going that night. And then they would climb on the bus about 4 o’clock. And again, it depends. Sometimes they got to play at Claremore. They played Oklahoma City every Tuesday, in what became the Trianon Ballroom. Cain’s Thursday and Saturday, so those were probably their down days. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they could play. They might be in Kansas. They might be in Claremore every other Wednesday, I think they played the Claremore Armory. My uncle and my dad used to go do that. So anyway, but they were playing four-hour dances, so they don’t get done until 1:30, 2 o’clock. They climb in the bus, drive back to Tulsa. Every Tuesday night when they played Oklahoma City, they’d stop in Bristow at the Hamburger King. He’d open up the restaurant, make hamburgers for everybody. Luke Wills told us that story. He wanted to go by and see the Hamburger King with John and I one day, and we showed him where it was. But they also started doing, believe it or not, Wednesday mornings, they started doing gospel broadcasts and Thursday mornings, “Old Time Fiddlers Hour” with Bob, Eldon, and Uncle John, your grandfather. Can you imagine? Like think about where did they, when do they sleep? You know, now that was just Bob and Eldon and Uncle John doing the Thursday mornings. And then I think they had a trio on Wednesday mornings, but I don’t know when they slept.
Wooley: Luke was on Wednesday mornings with Jesse Ashlock, and Mr. Mayo was their announcer here, remember? And here’s another story. Does anybody know? Is anybody old enough to know who what Black Draught was, or “black draft?” Did your folks ever tell you about that? It was a laxative, all right? All right. So Black Draught was the sponsor for the gospel program on Wednesday mornings, and, they didn’t do that Wednesday morning. I think that wake up. Didn’t they get worn out from that Wednesday morning one, they kind of stopped that after a while? But at one point, I mean, they never knew, like Brett has talked about. They never knew anything. They’d have lead sheets, and they didn’t know what they were playing. They had no idea, no time to rehearse, nothing because of that work ethic. They just kept filling the airwaves. So one morning, Jesse Ashlock, who was a fiddler and a songwriter, apparently kind of a funny guy, according to Luke Wills. Luke told us this story. So they’re up there playing, and they’re playing along. And Mr. Mayo is announcing, and Mr. Mayo walks up to the microphone and starts doing his spiel for Black Draught, and about when he’s finishing up, Luke says Jesse Ashlock elbows him and points at what the next song is going to be. And at this point, Mr. Mayo announces, and now here are the boys to play “I Shall Not Be Moved.” (laughter)
Moore: I think one thing that’s interesting, going back to the technology of all— this is fascinates me— is that they were able to do in the 1930s and ’40s, and we have film of this in 1942 in Enid, they were able to do their noon broadcasts on the road. You know how they did it? Because it would broadcast on KVOO. They’d be in Enid or wherever else on the way of whatever show they’re doing, through telephone lines. I mean, I mean, just the innovation, the constantly pushing is incredible.
Bingham: But I don’t know if anybody wants to, I’m not going to go there, but talking about western swing, nobody worked like Bob Wills did, and I don’t think anybody else would have. It was his work ethic, and along with all the other things, that made him the superstar that he became in the late ’30s, and I mean a superstar. Bigger than any of the the actual swing bands of the day. That’s why they called it western swing. That didn’t actually come to later. But they say he was outdrawing Benny Goodman on the West Coast. And people said, what happened? Benny said, “Bob Wills is in town.” I mean, you know, so.
Wooley: And Benny Goodman actually is, Benny Goodman was “the King of Swing.” And so in the ’40s, it was not coined for Bob at all, although he was “the King of Western Swing.” But Benny Goodman was the King of Swing. And there was a group named Spade Cooley, Spade Cooley & His Orchestra, who was also born in Oklahoma. He was out on the West Coast. They all dressed like Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, and his publicist started calling him “the King of Western Swing.” Benny Goodman, ”King of Swing; Spade Cooley, “King of Western Swing.” That’s where the term got started. Before that, in the ’30s would be what hot string band music you’d see. It wouldn’t be Western Swing. It would say Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys hot string band music or fiddle music with accompaniment. There was all kinds of things, but never western swing.
Wills: Like the most versatile orchestra?
Wooley: Exactly. Exactly. Yes.
Thompson: And Bob loved his fans. And I want to talk a little bit about, Carolyn, we were having lunch earlier today, and you were talking about his generosity and his heart for his fans. There’s a segment in the book where Smoky Dacus talks about how Bob, if somebody came up and had a hard-luck story, Bob would give him $100 and, and somebody would say, well, Bob, you know, you just gave. Who knows if that guy story was true? And he said, well, you know, I did my part. I tried to do my best. Can you talk about his generosity and how much love he had for his fans?
Wills: And actually, it was Andrea who was telling that today. Remember?
Thompson: That’s right. Yeah, I was, yeah, we were both having lunch together.
Wills: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. He was known for helping people and his family. He, throughout his whole life, took care of brothers and sisters and mother and father. He was a very generous man. Um, I think for him, connection was his fuel. You know, he couldn’t have been Bob Wills without it, and it extended to the band, the audience, and to family. So, I don’t know, I’ve heard the stories about, you know, a man having really poor teeth and him saying, my father pulling out money and saying, you go get your teeth fixed. And a woman showing up with a little daughter, and Bob walked up to, one of the band members and said, take this to her, and tell her to go buy that little girl a new dress. And so just, and funerals, they usually, they played those for free, you know.
I guess one of the things I love so much about Dr. Blackburn, and Jeff, and you, is you’re invested in that part of his life. It’s it, yes, music was great, great art, I think, survives. And so I’m not too worried about that. But his story, you know, it’s just phenomenal. I love all the tales about Punkin, the famous stallion and who only Bob could, I don’t know what the word would be. Not control, because it wasn’t happening with that horse, but they were a pair. I mean, Bob Wills would ride Punkin across the dance floor, and apparently Punkin was a star on his own, because he would know exactly when the announcer would announce them, and he would literally jump on the stage. And being around horses, I know, I mean, I just can’t imagine that kind of relationship. But, so I thank all of you because you’re telling, you know, oh— you’re telling the important part. Yes, the music is, but what a life.
Bingham: Yeah, well, I know you know this story. (applause)
But since you’re talking about the generosity, it’s so appropriate because I’ve read all the stories and heard all the stories, but I experienced one just recently, and it was in this building. When the Texas Playboys, when Bob and the Texas Playboys played the Tower Theatre in November. I was down in the lobby there selling merch. Lady came up and said that her grandfather had been given a wagon by Bob and the boys. She told me the timeframe. They were right here in Oklahoma City. It was in 1935. And okay, I thought that was cool, you know? And I immediately went into my mode of, oh, I’ve heard wonderful stories about. And I was going to tell her a couple. She said, no, you don’t understand. He was from a dirt-poor sharecropping family. That’s the only new toy he ever got in his childhood. And then to take it, they always were told that story growing up. They heard about Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys playing at the Tower Theatre. Didn’t know much about the music or anything. They just came out because that was the family legend story about that wagon that was given to Bob, or by Bob and the boys in 1935 to their grandfather, and they just wanted to come check us out.
Thompson: That’s a great story. Love that story. (applause)
Let’s talk a little bit about the music, you want, we wanted to get into the music a little bit, and so I think it’s important. Let’s talk about some of his iconic songs, some of the iconic artists that played. And Jeff, I want you to start off and talk a little bit about Eldon Shamblin, because there’s a Eldon Shamblin connection with the Stratocaster, am I correct? And that connection leads into how we designed our OKPOP building. So I thought that would be a nice little segue here to talking about the music.
Moore: So one of the things that, you know, being a person who devotes their career and a lot of their life to history is you’re studying people that aren’t alive a lot of times. Right, Bob? And one of the things that’s been kind of a bonus with OKPOP is we get to talk to people who were actually there. That doesn’t happen, you know. And, unfortunately, never got to meet Bob Wills and never got to meet Eldon Shamblin. But, you know, I talk to the people that did know them, and it’s interesting because you always wonder, as a historian, how much of this is being, you know, exaggerated or added here and there.
And so when I give a tour at OKPOP, the first probably third of the tour is about Bob Wills, Cain’s Ballroom, and then Eldon Shamblin, and one of the interesting things is I spent a day with Larry Schaeffer, who some of these folks know fairly well, and he just. I mean, I was just absorbing like a sponge listening to everything he said. He was talking about his friendship with Eldon, and he talked about this story about how Leo Fender of Fender guitars. Leo Fender was the the founder of the company. He was a scientist. He was an innovator, was a creator of coming at it from an inventor standpoint as it related to guitars and amplifiers. He was not a musician, but he loved western swing. And so, he early on developed a relationship with Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, and in particular, Eldon Shamblin, who was Bob Wills’ guitarist for a long time. And they developed this relationship, and it’s interesting, you, you learn, you know, you learn a lot of details that, you know, that may not seem significant at the time, but then you put it all together, and it’s pretty amazing. And what Leo would do is, he would take these ideas he had and then basically use Bob’s band to road test these ideas. And so in the early ’50s, Fender released the Fender Telecaster, which has a very square cross-section. It’s a solid body electric guitar. And Eldon built that so that it can be played two different ways. One is Spanish style, which is upright. Someone sitting, you know, playing like an acoustic guitar. That’s called Spanish style. The other is Hawaiian style, which is flat on a table like a steel guitar. And a Telecaster can be played both ways because of that square back. Well, apparently, this is what it was told to me by Larry Schaeffer, is that Eldon Shamblin like to play sitting down and that the back squareness of that back of the guitar would dig into his rib cage and into his thigh, and it was uncomfortable when they were playing four-hour gigs. And so he asked, Leo, you know, I would, you know, kind of contour that a little bit on the back. And so Leo Fender did that in 1954 when Fender released the Fender Stratocaster. He created a special one for Eldon, and it was gold, and as Trait was mentioning, we use that guitar as the inspiration for the finishes on OKPOP. I wanted a building, you know, that would have a story, you know, 10, 15, 30, 50, 60, 70, 80 years from now. And being right there across from Cain’s Ballroom, being grounded and then having a building façade, an architecture that helped tell the story.
So I’ve been telling the story for years now, and one of our—Meg Charron, who’s our deputy director—she and I got to go out and meet with Fender out in Nashville a few months ago and met with their vice president, who’s their historian. So I said, okay, let me tell you a story, because this came from hearsay. I relayed the whole story. And he says, that’s 95% accurate. The part that may be a little bit, we don’t know, is whether Leo Fender came to Cain’s and presented Eldon with the guitar or Eldon picked it up in California at the factory, the Fender factory. But the rest of it, he says, is absolutely, 100% true. And there was a story where Eldon, or Leo Fender was asked about Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton and so many kind of guitar heroes of the ’60s and ’70s used Fender Strats. And it’s, in my opinion, the most famous guitar, electric guitar. But they asked Leo Fender, do you know who these rock and roll guys are? And he says, no, but I know who Bob Wills is, and that’s where it started.
Thompson: And I have to say, (applause) a few months ago, I was at a conference in Richmond, Virginia, and we got a chance to tour the art museum there, and they have a temporary art exhibit on guitars as art pieces. And as I am walking through that exhibit, that gold Fender Stratocaster is on display there, and I got chills, and I took photos and I sent it to Jeff. I was like, I’ve heard Jeff tell the story about this guitar maybe 500 times by now, because we’ve done a lot of tours for OKPOP with our legislators and trying to get funding and all that other kind of stuff that I won’t go into, but I saw that guitar, and I just was like, there it is. It’s the Holy Grail, and it’s sitting right here in Richmond. I resisted the urge to take it and run, but there it was sitting there, and it might still be on display there. Wow, indeed. Yes. Okay. I think we’re getting fairly close here to the end of our time. And, before we do, I have an easy question for everybody that I want to kind of wrap everything up with. What’s your favorite Bob Wills song, Bob?
Blackburn: “Faded Love.” Thank you.
Wills: Oh, mine changes. “Faded Love,” but I like “Brain Cloudy Blues.” I like, now I’m not going think of the name, “Milk Cow Blues.” I like the blues. Yeah.
Bingham: I refuse to answer. (laughter)
It’s like the desert island question. I mean, if I can only take certain things, I’m just not going to go. So.
Thompson: All right, how about I rephrase it this way? Is there a song you’re particularly feeling right now at this moment in your life?
Bingham: Let me think. Let me think about that one.
Thompson: Yeah. Okay. He’s still not going to take the bait.
Wooley: While he’s thinking, I’ll give you one out of left field. I have always loved “Got s Letter From My Kid Today,” it is just, I know it’s very sentimental, and I don’t know if you guys know. It’s a kind of a Tin Pan Alley song, and it’s about a guy on the road who’s talking about getting a letter from a kid. And the kid has his son has found a dog. And honest to God, I mean, it just tears your heart out,
Moore: Man, You’re making us get verklempt up here. Mine has a story. So I was dating my wife, who grew up in El Paso, Texas. Her father was not a fan of mine, and whenever I came to visit, he would walk around the house singing “Take me back to Tulsa, I’m too young to marry.” (laughter)
And for some reason, I didn’t realize. I mean, I think, you know, now, I clearly know what he was trying to say, but it was like, yeah, way to be subtle. So, you know, it’s got to be, because now we’re in Tulsa, you know. So, I gotta say “Take Me Back to Tulsa.”
Thompson: I gotta say, I love the rollicking fun of “Roly Poly.” And, not only that, but it kind of describes my eating habits. You know, “bread and jelly 20 times a day.” So eating “corn and taters.” So, you know, unfortunately, it kind of describes how much I love to eat.
Bingham: I’ll go ahead, and just, I remember I was just sitting next to Andrea’s mom briefly on Saturday night, and she said, do you ever get tired of the music? And I thought about it, and I didn’t immediately answer. No, I do not. And I can’t say that about very many things. I mean, I don’t rewatch movies. Very seldom do I do that. There’s maybe two or three, so I don’t ever get tired of it. And so I guess with that and just hearing the amazing rendition that Kyle just did with “Faded Love,” I guess I have to go with “Faded Love,” because I will never get tired of that melody.
Thompson: Yeah, and I don’t think there’s a song you can answer wrong, but here on Bob Wills’ birthday, he would have been 118 years old today, and with “Faded Love” being Oklahoma’s official Country and Western song, as determined in 1988 by our state legislature, I think “Faded Love” is as good an answer as you can possibly give. Patsy And there’s so many people, from Cline to Ray Price to you name it, who have done that song and done it justice, and it never gets old. So I’m right there with you. It’s a great one, Brett, for sure. I think, you know, talking about the legacy. I had a chance last year, when I was here, at the Tower Theatre, right next door to hear Asleep at the Wheel play. And I had a chance to talk to Ray Benson for just a few minutes, and I asked him about western swing music, and I said, what do you see as the future of western swing music? And he said, look at all the people in my band, you know, 40 and under. He said, look at how many people are perpetuating western swing music out there today. He said future western swing music is very bright. Mentioned people like Jason Roberts, and I wonder just to kind of get a sense of where is western swing music going? And Jeff, when we can talk about how are we going to continue telling that story at OKPOP, so let’s talk about that for just a few minutes in our closing moments.
Moore: Yeah, I’m excited. I mean, you know, I’ve been around the family for 14 years now. And I feel family, distant cousin, maybe, but, you know, it’s been really interesting, you know, to see how all this has gone, and it’s just, you know, two nights ago, we’re at Cain’s Ballroom, and it’s sold out ten days before the show date, and, it, you know, and then they went ahead and added some extra tables, you know, to get more people in. And one thing I noticed was that there were a very, you know, the audience was very diverse from, you know, age-wise. And I just—that’s amazing. But you know what? I mean there’s people of all ages that go and celebrate Bach or Mozart or people like that, centuries after they’re gone. So we’re a century, you know, into, you know, Bob Wills’ existence now covers beyond a century. And I think it still has a role in our society and in our culture. And, you know, especially places, you know, we talk about locations. And I think that’s interesting. We talked about Route 66, and we talk about, you know, Fresno and we talk about Fort Worth, and we talk about Waco, and we talk about Oklahoma City, and we talk about Tulsa. We talk about actual locations. And I think that the impact that Bob Wills had in those locations, and we talk about I said it earlier about the, you know, the people that exist on Earth because their parents met at a dance that’s not just Tulsa, it’s all over Route 66. I think, you know, some of that is going to keep this going for a long time.
And I think the best way we can do it, or exactly what we’re doing tonight, what we did today at the Capitol, what Brett and Andrea and and Carolyn and everybody else, you know, with Jason Roberts, who is just, oh my gosh, amazing. And I just think it’s going to continue and, and, you know, Bob and I and Larry O’Dell, he’s here tonight, you know, as we were working on OKPOP, you know, we wanted it to be done right. That was always our goal and mission. And, you know, we looked at four different locations. And at the last minute, the Hanson Brothers came to us and said, hey, what about being across from Cain’s Ballroom? And Dr. Blackburn said that’s sacred ground. It’s sacred ground because of Bob Wills. That building exists, it wasn’t torn down when they put through a put a highway through there in the early ’70s, because of Bob Wills. OKPOP is there because of Bob Wills. So, yeah, I mean, I think that it’s huge. And in our lives, it’s huge in my life, it’s huge in the historical society history now. And, yeah, I mean, that’s what our job is to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma history. And Bob Wills is Oklahoma history.
Blackburn: And I really believe that his legacy is secure. One because of the music. As Carolyn said, the art will survive both in recordings, and we have a record that we produced with some of his unique music. But I saw The Playboys when you were here in November. I was so moved when I left, I called Carolyn. Probably woke you up, but I said I just saw one of the most incredible performances, and she said, you all perform his music more in the spirit of Bob Wills. So it’s going to live on through what you’re doing, and hopefully someone will take over there. So both live music, which is so important, and others that taking it and doing their own versions, but the recordings.
But then we also need to make sure that the personal story of Bob Wills, and I just brought my copy with me. Charles Townsend, who just passed away in the last couple of months, wrote San Antonio Rose: The Life of Music of Bob Wills, Illinois University Press. I’d recommend that to anybody who’s interested, not just in Bob Wills, but the history of music in the American West and especially in Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Texas, Oklahoma, and then all the other literature that’s out there about Bob Wills. But then the man himself will be what we want to focus on in the OKPOP. And when Carolyn and her sisters and Andrea, and I remember that night and the Summit Club in Tulsa, where they made a decision that they would entrust their family collections with the Oklahoma Historical Society, adding to the collections that we have on Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe and all the other great Oklahomans, and really entrusted that to us. And we’ve got to finish that OKPOP so not just the story of the music is preserved and shared, but the story of the man. And that’s what we will make sure happens.
Thompson: Well, I want to thank everyone for coming out tonight. I want to thank our friends at Ponyboy, who have opened up their space to us. I want to thank all of our OHS staff and the Oklahoma Arts Council, and this has been a phenomenal night to talk about one of our Oklahoma favorite sons. And we’ll see you around the bend everyone. Thanks for coming out tonight.
(fiddle music plays)
You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org, and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to us to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
