WESTERN SWING

WESTERN SWING:

Country music and jazz today are thought to be complete opposites. But, when these genres are examined in a little more detail, there is a big link between the 2. There’s more in common between such artists as Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash than one may think.
The sub-genre of country music called Western Swing is where jazz, blues and mountain music met in the 1920s. As with most forms of country music, it was Jimmie Rodgers who initialised the basic ideas of what would be called Western Swing . On such records as "Mean Mama blues", "Blue yodel #9", "Blue yodel #4 - California blues", "Blue eyed Jane" and "Sweet Mama hurry home", Jimmie mixed blues, hillbilly and jazz at will. Rodgers had initialized not only Western Swing - but also country music and white blues with such songs.
Who actually invented the term ‘Western Swing’ is unsure. But, anyway, after Rodgers’ 1933 death, many artists began to develop on his styles. Some concentrated on his yodelling, others on his hillbilly - but many more on his jazzy blues and oldtime pop sides. This gave impetus to Western Swing and many hillbilly bands began to use instruments like saxophones, clarinets, trumpets, piano and so on for a jazzy or bluesy effect.
Some of the first of these bands included Cliff Bruner and the Texas Wanderers (probably the best of the band, especially because of the multi-faceted singer/pianist Moon Mullican and Bruner himself - who excelled on fiddle), The Lightcrust doughboys, Milton Browne and his Brownies, Pee Wee King, Adolph Hofner and the most famous, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. All of these did many black blues and jazz songs, as well as the pop hits of the time and pure country. The singers with these bands such as Moon Mullican and Tommy Duncan were very versatile and their purpose was to be able to sing any style of music. Their repertoires contained such blues standards as "Old Joe Turner blues", "Milk cow blues", "New falling rain blues", "Corrine, Corrina" and "What’s the matter with the mill".

The 1930s and 1940s were the glory days of Western Swing and many of the bands were likened to the popular big bands of the day like Tommy Dorsey. Cliff Bruner’s band, especially, sounded the closest to jazz. In the 1940s & 1950s, however, the Western Swing movement died away and an offshoot called honky tonk replaced it. Many of the pioneers of honky tonk - Ernest Tubb, Moon Mullican, etc. - were originally singers with Western Swing bands.
The pioneer of solo artist Western Swing is undoubtedly Moon Mullican. Moon was basically a blues singer who could use a bluesy style on any type of song and he proved to be one of the most versatile artists of all time. Like Jimmie Rodgers, Moon wrote many original blues - the bestknown being "Pipeliner blues". Many more artists followed in Mullican’s footsteps in various derivative forms of a solo Western swing style of music, notably Merrill Moore and Jerry Lee Lewis.
Nowadays, Western Swing and its cousin Bluegrass are very much cult music and have no impact on modern country trends. But its influence is felt everywhere - many of todays musicians were influenced by rock ‘n’ roll, a genre that was an update on Western swing. One of the pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll was Jerry Lee Lewis -but even though he never officially recorded much of it,Lewis' style was initially formed from a combination of blues and Western swing.It has become increasingly obvious with the release of Lewis box sets and unreleased masters collections that this is very much the case.Other country singers like Willie Nelson,also,have continued to feature a heavy dose of Western swing in their repertoires.
Patrick Wall,
August 12th, 1999.

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