Legends of Country Music

Disc 1
1	Sunbonnet Sue / Fort Worth Doughboys 3:03
2	Nancy Jane / Fort Worth Doughboys 3:11
3	Osage Stomp 3:01
4	Get with It 3:02
5	Spanish Two Step 2:54
6	Maiden's Prayer 3:04
7	I Ain't Got Nobody 2:44
8	Who Walks in When I Walk Out 2:52
9	Oklahoma Rag 2:49
10	Sittin' on Top of the World 3:17
11	I Can't Be Satisfied 3:00
12	Waltz in D 3:02
13	She's Killing Me 2:46
14	Bluin' the Blues 3:10
15	Steel Guitar Rag 2:48
16	Trouble in Mind 2:58
17	What's the Matter with the Mill 2:53
18	Basin Street Blues 3:00
19	Red Hot Gal of Mine 3:04
20	Too Busy 2:34
21	Crippled Turkey 2:47
22	Bring It on Down to My House, Honey 2:42
23	Right or Wrong 2:54
24	Swing Blues #1 2:39
25	White Heat 2:41
Disc 2
1	Steel Guitar Stomp 2:37
2	Rosetta 2:52
3	Blue Yodel #1 2:24
4	I'm a Ding Dong Daddy (From Dumas) 2:24
5	Oozlin' Daddy Blues 2:26
6	Black Rider 2:43
7	Down Hearted Blues 2:45
8	Pray for the Lights to Go Out 2:50
9	San Antonio Rose 2:34
10	Silver Bells 2:41
11	Beaumont Rag 2:39
12	Whoa Babe 2:35
13	Ida Red 2:22
14	Yearning 2:24
15	I Wonder If You Feel the Way I Do 2:36
16	Prosperity Special 2:39
17	You're Okay 2:26
18	Liza Pull Down the Shades 2:19
19	That's What I Like 'Bout the South 2:33
20	My Window Faces the South 2:15
21	Don't Let the Deal Go Down 2:42
22	Lone Star Rag 2:44
23	That Brownskin Gal 2:30
24	Corrine Corrina 2:52
25	Time Changes Everything 2:39
26	Bob Wills Special 2:44
27	Big Beaver 2:39
Disc 3
1	New San Antonio Rose 2:38
2	Liebestraum 2:52
3	Lyla Lou 2:31
4	Maiden's Prayer 2:51
5	The Girl I Left Behind Me 2:40
6	I Knew the Moment I Lost You 2:49
7	Twin Guitar Special 2:41
8	Take Me Back to Tulsa 2:40
9	Takin' It Home 2:49
10	Cherokee Maiden 2:59
11	Dusty Skies 2:54
12	My Life's Been a Pleasure 2:25
13	Drop Us off at Bob's Place 2:33
14	Home in San Antone 2:31
15	That Hot Lick Fiddlin' Man 2:29
16	Miss Molly 2:33
17	My Confession 2:56
18	Ten Years 2:50
19	Let's Ride with Bob 2:44
20	Bluer Than Blue 2:37
21	Hand Your Head in Shame 2:39
22	Texas Playboy Rag 2:38
23	Roly Poly 2:37
24	Stay a Little Longer 2:47
25	I Can't Go on This Way 2:35
26	I'm Thru Wasting Time on You 2:32
27	New Spanish Two Step 2:30
Disc 4
1	Sugar Moon 2:31
2	Brain Cloudy Blues 2:47
3	Bob Wills Boogie 2:39
4	Fat Boy Rag 2:52
5	The Kind of Love I Can't Forget 2:43
6	Hometown Stomp 2:35
7	Misery 2:41
8	Deep Water 2:58
9	Bubbles in My Beer 2:17
10	Papa's Jumpin' 2:38
11	Sally Goodin' 2:17
12	Still Water Runs the Deepest 2:52
13	Blues for Dixie 2:53
14	Keeper of My Heart 2:41
15	Ida Red Likes to Boogie 2:41
16	Boot Heel Drag 2:44
17	Faded Love 2:52
18	St. Louis Blues 3:24
19	Cadillac in Model "A" 2:02
20	Heart to Heart Talk 2:38
21	Wabash Blues 2:41
22	A Big Ball in Cowtown (We'll Dance Around) 2:11
23	Pan Handle Rag 2:26
24	Blue Bonnet Lane 2:14
25	What Makes Bob Holler 2:32
26	Goin' Away Party 2:40

Barnes & Noble

The year 2005 marked the 100th anniversary of Bob Wills’s birth, an occasion this four-CD box set celebrates in grand style. There’s a sampling of Wills’s earliest recordings; a full helping from his heyday, 1935-47; and a well-considered overview of his still-vital music through the ‘50s and ‘60s -- culminating in four tracks from the 1973 album For the Last Time, which represented the final reunion of Wills, then disabled by a stroke, and ten of his former Playboys. Wills never thought of himself as a country artist, and he made sure the Playboys were virtually unclassifiable as anything but one hell of a band. Western-flavored swing, blues (Bessie Smith was a Wills favorite, and he did her proud in 1938 with a solid treatment of “Down Hearted Blues”); pop (a rich component of the Wills repertoire, with striking adaptations of Tommy Dorsey’s take on the classical favorite “Liebestraum” and the Ray Noble Orchestra’s 1934 hit “Who Walks In when I Walk Out,” being among the most enduring performances in the Wills canon); traditional country (he put songwriter Cindy Walker on the map with “Cherokee Maiden,” “Dusty Skies,” and “Sugar Moon”); and jazz (clearly inspired by Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings) -- all were part of the Playboys’ wide-ranging repertoire. A stern taskmaster, Wills drew to his ranks some of the most gifted musicians of his time: giants such as vocalist-songwriter Tommy Duncan, steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe, guitarists Eldon Shamblin and Herman Arnspiger, piano virtuosos Al Stricklin and Millard Kelso, fiddlers Jesse Ashlock and Johnny Gimble, bassist Joe Ferguson and drummer Smoky Dacus, among others, who could bring home a formal arrangement in the studio and improvise with breathtaking facility in live settings (this box set includes no live recordings, however). Wills himself, fiddler, songwriter, singer, and bandleader, lorded over it all, with a joie de vivre that remains as infectious as it is distinctive. Wills and the Playboys’ classics are American standards, and they’re all here -- “New San Antonio Rose,” “Faded Love,” “Take Me Back to Tulsa,” “Right or Wrong,” “Time Changes Everything,” “Steel Guitar Rag,” et al. -- in this authoritatively annotated collection. In vision, spirit, and execution, what Wills and his Playboys wrought in their heyday stands with the greatest music of the 20th century, as these four discs attest. David McGee

All Music Guide

That Bob Wills was one of the architects of American music is a given, but his particular creation -- he didn't name it Western swing, but that's what it came to be called -- did not arise from the dust. Wills, refusing to be restricted, subsumed virtually every genre available to him at the time, from blues to big band, popular song to old-timey, and forged something new and exciting, something uniquely of the American South yet universally accessible. Among the first bands of its kind -- the term country music had not yet been applied to white Southern music, and Wills detested the "hillbilly" tag -- to incorporate drums and electric guitars, as well as jazzy brass, Wills and his musicians, whom he gave unprecedented creative leeway, were as vital an American musical institution as any. Yet with dozens of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys compilation albums on the market, ranging from single-disc primers to encyclopedic collections of radio transcriptions, the consumer, particularly the initiate, might understandably be flummoxed. Where to begin? Rhino's two-disc Anthology, released in the early '90s, remains the single tidiest summation of the Wills oeuvre, but for a next step up, Legends of Country Music is the way to go. A four-CD box set, it focuses on the bandleader/fiddler's key recording years (mid-'30s to mid-'40s) for the OKeh and Columbia labels, before winding up with later sides cut for such labels as MGM, Kapp, and Liberty. Legends of Country Music packs in 105 tracks, among them all of the original recordings that established Wills as an icon.

To set the scene, it kicks off with a pair of tracks Wills made in 1932 with the Fort Worth Doughboys, before skipping ahead a few years to the earliest Texas Playboys sessions. The band takes a while, but not too much of a while, to find its groove. Seriously stellar musicianship is present from the start, but by the late '30s, when Wills' fiddle meets up with Leon McAuliffe's steel guitar, Eldon Shamblin and Herman Arnspiger's guitars, Johnnie Lee Wills' banjo, and Al Stricklin's piano, this band was making sounds like no other. Lead vocals alternate, Tommy Duncan or McAuliffe taking the lion's share, but history will probably note that Wills' constant between-lines banter, and his frequent "ah-haaaa"s, adding levity to the performances, ultimately became the vocal trademark most often associated with the Texas Playboys. The set dutifully features all of the cornerstone Wills recordings -- "New San Antonio Rose," "Faded Love," "Bubbles in My Beer," "Take Me Back to Tulsa," "Steel Guitar Rag" -- and, by necessity, many known mainly to converts. But there's much more to be discovered beyond the basics, particularly on the second and third discs. By disc four, as Wills leaves Columbia Records and American music begins heading in radically new directions, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys can be heard becoming less prolific and, for some time, less important. But he was never quite forgotten. The set follows through, into the '50s, '60s, and even his final session in 1973, by which time Wills had influenced a generation of acolytes, some of whom (Asleep at the Wheel, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard) continued to honor him decades after his death. Jeff Tamarkin