Location of the bootheel region centered on 36°15′N 89°51′W / 36.25°N 89.85°W / 36.25; -89.85Coordinates: 36°15′N 89°51′W / 36.25°N 89.85°W / 36.25; -89.85

Topographic map of the bootheel and surrounding areas of Missouri and neighboring states.

The Missouri Bootheel is the southeasternmost part of the state of Missouri, extending south of 36°30’ north latitude, so called because its shape in relation to the rest of the state resembles the heel of a boot. Strictly speaking, it is composed of the counties of Dunklin, New Madrid, and Pemiscot. However, the term is sometimes used to refer to the entire southeastern lowlands of Missouri located within the Mississippi Embayment, which includes parts of Butler, Mississippi, Ripley, Scott, Stoddard and extreme southern portions of Cape Girardeau and Bollinger counties. The largest cities in the region are Sikeston and Kennett.

The Bootheel along with the Oklahoma-Kansas-Missouri border near the 37th parallel north form the two biggest jogs in a nearly straight line of state borders that starts on the Atlantic Ocean with the Virginia–North Carolina border extending all the way to the tristate border of Nevada, Arizona and Utah.

History[link]

When Missouri was added to the Union, its original border proposal was to be an extension of the 36°30′ parallel north that formed the border between Kentucky and Tennessee, which would have excluded the Bootheel. However, John Hardeman Walker, a pioneer planter in what is now Pemiscot County, argued that the area had more in common with the Mississippi River towns of Cape Girardeau, Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis in Missouri than with its proposed incorporation in Arkansas Territory. The border was dropped about 50 miles to the 36th parallel north. It follows that parallel about 30 miles until intersecting the St. Francis River, then follows the river back up to about the 36°30′ parallel just west of Campbell, Missouri.

According to an apocryphal story in various versions, the bootheel was added because of the request of some Missourian to remain in the state "as he had heard it was so sickly in Arkansas;" ""...full of bears and panthers and copperhead snakes, so it ain't safe for civilized people to stay there over night even." Another folktale has the adaptation made by a lovestruck surveyor to spare the feelings of a widow living fifty miles south of the Missouri border, but unaware of it. At one time, the area was known locally as "Lapland, because it's the place where Missouri laps over into Arkansas".^[1]

Geography and geology[link]

Available samples from the Bootheel and most of the southeastern Missouri counties demonstrate late Tertiary (more than 1.8 mya) to Quaternary (1.8 mya to present) geology, much younger than neighboring highlands. The lowest point in the state is in southwestern Dunklin County along the St. Francis River near Arbyrd, Missouri, at 230 feet above sea level. The bootheel area is notable for being the epicenter of the 1811-1812 New Madrid Earthquakes, some of the largest earthquakes ever felt in the United States.

Swamp reclamation and flooding[link]

The Bootheel lies in the flood plain between the Mississippi and St. Francis rivers; the land is very flat and is now used for predominantly agricultural purposes. Prior to the 20th century, it was mostly swampy forestland not settled by European Americans. As glaciers receded towards the end of the Ice Age and turned ice into liquid, the Mississippi River grew longer and wider. Over time, the silt deposits of the Mississippi created some of the most fertile soil in the world, ideal for agriculture. The areas around the Mississippi are composed of thick regolith that is around 100 metres (330 ft) thick.

Between 1893 and 1989, developers cut about 85% of the native forests. The entire landscape was transformed into farmland by extensive logging, draining of the watershed, channelization, and the construction of flood control structures. High levees along both river courses, an extensive system of drainage ditches and diversion channels, and controlled lakes, pumping stations and cutoffs protect the area from flooding. The soils are predominantly a rich and deep glacial loess, alluvial silt, and a sandy loam, well-suited for agricultural use. The levees have changed the nature of the rivers, however, and in some cases aggravated flooding problems. They also prevent regular silt deposits, as they have increased the speed of the rivers. The reduction in wetlands has reduced important habitats for many species of migratory birds and a variety of fish and animals.

Flooding is a major concern along the Mississippi River. With such a large river basin and the vast discharge of water, the river makes the towns along its banks highly susceptible to frequent flooding. The National Weather Service reported that from 1980 to 2002, nine floods in the United States had total losses exceeding one billion dollars. In terms of monetary loss and impact on society, the Great Flood of 1993 was the worst.^[2]

New Madrid fault zone[link]

Earthquakes have long been frequent in the area. The New Madrid Fault Zone (pronounced New MAD-rid) is named for the town of New Madrid in the Bootheel. This fault zone is entirely hidden beneath the deep alluvial deposits of the Mississippi embayment and, unlike the San Andreas Fault in California, is not visible anywhere. This fault zone was responsible for an extremely powerful series of earthquakes that rocked the area in 1811 and 1812, known collectively as the New Madrid Earthquake, which reportedly rang church bells along the East Coast. Subsidence formed Reelfoot Lake across the Mississippi River in West Tennessee. An eyewitness of the earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 noted,

“Great fissures opened the earth, geysers show mud and rocks hundreds of feet in the air, new hills and ridges heaved up out of the ground, and the river itself ran red with brimstone and sulfur. Whole islands in the river disappeared, the forests went under, the tall oaks snapped like twigs, and violent winds tossed bundles of fallen timbers. Deafening thunder rang to the heavens. Animals went crazy; thousands of birds hovered and screamed”.^[3]

The states of Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana felt the brunt of this quake, ruining lives and leaving residents in fear of aftershocks and possible larger quakes. To this day, the New Madrid Seismic Zone is still active and produces small earthquakes very frequently. Scientists have estimated that a strong earthquake is inevitable to happen again and is overdue. Residents of the area are aware of the risk, but critics say they are not well prepared for a disaster. William Atkinson, author of The Next New Madrid Earthquake, writes,

“The area is well overdue for a moderately powerful tremor- which will cause major damage and undoubtedly some casualties...With each passing year, the inevitable earthquake is becoming more powerful, while the state of readiness in the Mississippi Valley remains woefully inadequate”.

Given the population in the area, even a moderately sized earthquake would be disastrous.^[4]

Culture and economy[link]

The Bootheel is on the edge of the Mississippi Delta culture that produced the Delta blues. Its relatively large black population makes it distinct from the rest of rural Missouri, and the area has a unique rural black culture reflected in its music, churches and other traditions. The Black population ranges from about 26% in Pemiscot County, to 15% in New Madrid County and about 9% in Dunklin County.

The Bootheel once had a reputation for lawlessness. Remote settlements along the river banks, miles from paved roads, provided an ideal environment (and market) for moonshining and bootlegging.

Culturally, the Bootheel is considered more Southern than Midwestern. It is part of the Mid-South, a region focused on the Memphis metropolitan area. Definitions of the Mid-South vary but in general include west Tennessee, north Mississippi, northeast Arkansas, and the Missouri Bootheel.^[5] The locations of the region's television stations reflect this:

• the CBS and Fox affiliates are located in Cape Girardeau,
• the ABC affiliate is located in Harrisburg, Illinois, and
• the NBC affiliate is in Paducah, Kentucky.

The farther south in the Bootheel, the more pronounced is residents' identification with the South.^{[citation needed]} The network television affiliates in Memphis, Tennessee, which is the largest city for 200 miles, or in Jonesboro, Arkansas, often have a greater audience than those in Illinois, Kentucky, or Cape Girardeau.

Economically, the area is one of the more impoverished parts of Missouri and does not enjoy the benefits of tourism in the nearby Ozark Mountains. There is some manufacturing, but the area is primarily agricultural. Because of its alluvial past, the area's rich soil is ideal for growing soybeans, rice and cotton. Some "truck crops" are grown, most notably various types of melons, especially watermelons. A limited amount of livestock is raised, and in contrast to much of the rest of Missouri, there are very few fences.

No large cities are located in the Bootheel. Sizable towns include Kennett (the birthplace of singers Sheryl Crow, Trent Tomlinson, and David Nail) and Sikeston (the birthplace of professional athletes James Wilder, Brandon Barnes, and Blake DeWitt), which is partially in Scott County and New Madrid County. Cape Girardeau and Poplar Bluff are often grouped together with the bootheel due to the influence the two cities have had on the development of the region, despite not being in the physical area of the bootheel. Hornersville, a small town in southern Dunklin County, was home to William H. "Major" Ray, a one-time 19th-century circus "midget". He later became known as the representative of the Buster Brown shoe brand. He and his wife, Jennie, are buried in a cemetery in Hornersville.^[6]

The small towns of Senath and Arbyrd are also located in Dunklin County. They are home to a locally celebrated ghost light, sometimes called the "Senath Light" or "Arbyrd light". It occurs between these two towns and closer to Hollywood near the Lulu Church and Cemetery.^[7][8]

The Missouri Bootheel is the home place of two members of the musical group the Kentucky Headhunters, Doug and Ricky Phelps. They received their education at Southland C-9, the consolidated schools of Arbyrd and Cardwell, Missouri. They performed at the Cotton Pickin Festival in the small town of Arbyrd; a place where they spent much time while growing up. They both performed as Brother Phelps, and then Doug came back and performed with The Kentucky Headhunters. This festival is a major attraction and draws a huge crowd for a town of only about 550 people. Other prominent acts at Arbyrd include T. Graham Brown and the Bellamy Brothers.^[9][10][11]

Also in the northern part of Dunklin County lies the town of Malden, the home of country/rockabilly singer Narvel Felts. Felts' music has played worldwide, as he continues to tour. George (Richardson) Richey is a well-known country music producer.^{[citation needed]} Richey was married to Tammy Wynette. Tammy came to claim Malden as her own and appeared annually at the Fourth of July celebrations for years.

During the American Civil War, a number of battles took place in this area, most notably the Battle of Island No. 10.

References[link]

External links[link]

• How Did ... Missouri Come To Include the "Bootheel"?, from Missouri's Office of the Secretary of State
• Bootheel map and statistics, from Missouri's Department of Economic Development
• Missouri Bootheel Regional Consortium

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BobWillsBlueYodelNo1

James Robert Wills (March 6, 1905 – May 13, 1975), better known as Bob Wills, was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the co-founder of Western swing,^[1][2][3] he was universally known as the King of Western Swing.

Wills formed several bands and played radio stations around the South and West until he formed the Texas Playboys in 1934 with Wills on fiddle, Tommy Duncan on piano and vocals, rhythm guitarist June Whalin, tenor banjoist Johnnie Lee Wills, and Kermit Whalin, who played steel guitar and bass. The band played regularly on a Tulsa, Oklahoma radio station, and added Leon McAuliffe on steel guitar, pianist Al Stricklin, drummer Smokey Dacus, and a horn section that expanded the band's sound. Wills favored jazz-like arrangements and the band found national popularity into the 1940s with such hits as "Steel Guitar Rag", "New San Antonio Rose", "Smoke on the Water", "Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima", and "New Spanish Two Step".

Wills and the Texas Playboys recorded with several publishers and companies, including Vocalion, Okeh, Columbia, and MGM, frequently moving. In 1950, he had two top ten hits, "Ida Red Likes the Boogie" and "Faded Love", which were his last hits for a decade. Throughout the 1950s, he struggled with poor health and tenuous finances, but continued to perform frequently despite the decline in popularity of his earlier music as rock and roll took over. Wills had a heart attack in 1962 and a second one the next year, which forced him to disband the Playboys although Wills continued to perform solo.

The Country Music Hall of Fame inducted Wills in 1968 and the Texas State Legislature honored him for his contribution to American music. In 1972, Wills accepted a citation from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in Nashville. He was recording an album with fan Merle Haggard in 1973 when a stroke left him comatose until his death in 1975. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Wills and the Texas Playboys in 1999.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

He was born on a farm near Kosse, Texas,^[4] in Limestone County near Groesbeck, to Emma Lee Foley and John Tompkins Wills.^[5] His father was a statewide champion fiddle player^[6] and the Wills family was either playing music, or someone was "always wanting us to play for them," in addition to raising cotton on their farm.

In addition to picking cotton, the young Jim Bob learned to play the fiddle and the mandolin. Both a sister and several brothers played musical instruments, while another sister played piano. The Wills family frequently held country dances in their home, and there was dancing in all four rooms While living in Hall County, Texas,they also played at 'ranch dances' which were popular in both West Texas and eastern New Mexico.^[7]

Wills not only learned traditional music from his family, he learned some Negro songs directly from African Americans in the cotton fields near Lakeview, Texas and said that he did not play with many white children other than his siblings, until he was seven or eight years old. African Americans were his playmates, and his father enjoyed watching him jig dance with black children.^[8]

"I don't know whether they made them up as they moved down the cotton rows or not," Wills once told Charles Townsend, author of San Antonio Rose: The Life and Times of Bob Wills, "but they sang blues you never heard before."^[9]

New Mexico and Texas[link]

The family moved to Hall County in the Texas Panhandle in 1913,^[10] and in 1919 they bought a farm between the towns of Lakeview and Turkey.^[11] At the age of 16 Wills left the family and hopped a freight train. "Jim Rob", as he became known, drifted for several years, traveling from town to town to try to earn a living, at one point almost losing his life when he nearly fell from a moving train, and later being chased by railroad police.^[12][13] In his 20s he attended barber school, got married, and moved first to Roy, New Mexico then returned to Turkey in Hall County (now considered his home town) to work as a barber at Hamm's Barber Shop. He alternated barbering and fiddling even when he moved to Fort Worth after leaving Hall County in 1929. There he played in minstrel and medicine shows, and, as with other Texas musicians such as Ocie Stockard, continued to earn money as a barber. He wore blackface makeup to appear in comedy routines, something that was common at the time. "He was playing his violin and singing." There were two guitars and a banjo player with him. "Bob was in blackface and was the comic; he cracked jokes, sang, and did an amazing jig dance."^[14] Since there was already a "Jim" on the show, the manager began calling him "Bob."^[14] However, it was as "Jim Rob Wills," paired with Herman Arnspiger, that he made his first commercial (though unissued) recordings in November 1929 for Brunswick/Vocalion.^[15]

Wills was known for his hollering and wisecracking. One source for this was when, as a very young boy, he would hear his father, grandfather, and cowboys give out loud cries when the music moved them.^[16] When asked if his wisecracking and talking on the bandstand came from his medicine show experience, he said it did not. Rather, he said that it came directly from playing and living close to Negroes, and that he never did it necessarily as show, but more as a way to express his feelings.^[17]

While in Fort Worth, Wills added the "rowdy city blues" of Bessie Smith and Emmett Miller to a repertoire of mainly waltzes and breakdowns he had learned from his father, and patterned his vocal style after that of Miller and other performers such as Al Bernard.^[18] Wills acknowledged that he idolized Miller. Furthermore, his 1935 version of "St. Louis Blues" is nearly a word-for-word copy of Al Bernard's patter on his 1928 recording of the same song.^[19]

The fact that Wills made his professional debut in blackface was commented on by Wills' daughter, Rosetta: "He had a lot of respect for the musicians and music of his black friends," Rosetta is quoted as saying on the Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys Web site. She remembers that her father was such a fan of Bessie Smith, "he once rode 50 miles on horseback just to see her perform live."^[9] (Wills is quoted as saying, "I rode horeseback from the place between the rivers to Childress to see Bessie Smith...She was about the greatest thing I had ever heard. In fact, there was no doubt about it. She was the greatest thing I ever heard."^[20]

In Fort Worth, Wills met Herman Arnspinger and formed The Wills Fiddle Band. In 1930 Milton Brown joined the group as lead vocalist and brought a sense of innovation and experimentation to the band, now called the Light Crust Doughboys due to radio sponsorship by the makers of Light Crust Flour. Brown left the band in 1932 to form the Musical Brownies, the first true Western swing band. Brown added twin fiddles, tenor banjo and slap bass, pointing the music in the direction of swing, which they played on local radio and at dancehalls.^[21]

Wills remained with the Doughboys and replaced Brown with new singer Tommy Duncan in 1932. He found himself unable to get along with future Texas Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, the authoritarian host of the Light Crust Doughboy radio show. O'Daniel had parlayed the show's popularity into growing power within Light Crust Flour's parent company, Burrus Mill and Elevator Company and wound up as General Manager, though he despised what he considered "hillbilly music." Wills and Duncan left the Doughboys in 1933 after Wills had missed one show too many due to his sporadic drinking.

Wills recalled the early days of what became known as Western swing music in a 1949 interview.^[22] "Here's the way I figure it. We sure not tryin' to take credit for swingin' it." Speaking of Milt Brown and himself working with songs done by Jimmie Davis, the Skillet Lickers,^[23] Jimmie Rodgers, and others, and songs he'd learned from his father, he said that "We'd pull these tunes down an set 'em in a dance category. It wouldn't be a runaway, and just lay a real nice beat behind it an the people would get to really like it. It was nobody intended to start anything in the world. We was just tryin' to find enough tunes to keep 'em dancin' to not have to repeat so much."

Wills is also quoted as saying, "You can change the name of an old song, rearrange it and make it a swing." "One Star Rag," "Rat Cheese under the Hill," "Take Me Back to Tulsa," "Basin Street Blues," "Steel Guitar Rag," and "Trouble in Mind" were some of the songs in his extensive repertory.^[24]

The Texas Playboys[link]

Bob Wills' bus during a parade in Tulsa

After forming a new band, The Playboys, and relocating to Waco, Wills found enough popularity there to decide on a bigger market. They left Waco in January of 1934 for Oklahoma City. Wills soon settled the renamed Texas Playboys in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and began broadcasting noontime shows over the 50,000 watt KVOO radio station. Their 12:30-1:15 p.m. Monday–Friday broadcasts became a veritable institution in the region.

Nearly all of the daily (except Sunday) shows originated from the stage of Cain's Ballroom. In addition, they played dances in the evenings, including regular ones at the ballroom on Thursdays and Saturdays.

Wills added a trumpet to the band inadvertently when he hired Everet Stover as an announcer, not knowing that he had played with the New Orleans symphony and had directed the governor's band in Austin. Stover, thinking he had been hired as a trumpeter began playing with the band with no comment from Wills. Young sax player Zeb McNally was allowed to play with the band, although Wills initially discouraged it. With two horns in the band Wills realized he would have to add a drummer to balance things and create a fuller sound. He hired the young, "modern style musician" Smokey Ducas.^[12] By 1935 Wills had added horn, reed players and drums to the Playboys. The addition of steel guitar whiz Leon McAuliffe in March, 1935 added not only a formidable instrumentalist but a second engaging vocalist. Wills himself largely sang blues and sentimental ballads.

With its jazz sophistication, pop music and blues influence, plus improvised scats and wisecrack commentary by Wills, the band became the first superstars of the genre. Milton Brown's tragic and untimely death in 1936 had cleared the way for the Playboys.

Session rosters from 1938 show both "lead guitar" and "electric guitar" in addition to guitar and steel guitar in the Texas Playboys recordings.^[25] Wills' 1938 recording of "Ida Red" served as a model for Chuck Berry's decades later version of the same song - "Maybellene".^[26][27]

About this time Wills purchased and performed with an old Guadagnini violin that had once fetched $7,600 for $1,600, the equivalent of about $24,000 in 2009.^{[12] [28]}

In 1940 "New San Antonio Rose" sold a million records and became the signature song of The Texas Playboys. The song's title referred to the fact that Wills had recorded it as a fiddle instrumental in 1938 as "San Antonio Rose". By then, the Texas Playboys were virtually two bands: one a fiddle-guitar-steel band with rhythm section and the second a first-rate big band able to play the day's swing and pop hits as well as Dixieland.

The "front line" of Wills' orchestra consisted of either fiddles or guitars after 1944.^[29]

Film career[link]

In 1940 Wills, along with the Texas Playboys, co-starred with Tex Ritter in Take Me Back to Oklahoma.^[30] Other films would follow. In late 1942 after several band members had left the group, and as World War II raged, Wills joined the Army, but received a medical discharge in 1943.^[31][32][33]

Wills also appeared in The Lone Prairie (1942), Riders of the Northwest Mounted (1943), Saddles and Sagebrush (1943), The Vigilantes Ride (1943), The Last Horseman (1944), Rhythm Round-Up (1945), Blazing the Western Trail (1945), and Lawless Empire (1945). According to one source, he appeared in a total of 19 films.^[21]

Swing Era[link]

After leaving the Army in 1943 Wills moved to Hollywood and began to reorganize the Texas Playboys. He became an enormous draw in Los Angeles, where many of his Texas, Oklahoma and regional fans had also relocated during the Great Depression and World War II in search of jobs. Monday through Friday the band broadcast from 12:01 to 1:00 p.m. over KMTR-AM (now KLAC) in LA. They also played regularly every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night at the Mission Beach Ballroom in San Diego.^[34]

He commanded enormous fees playing dances there, and began to make more creative use of electric guitars to replace the big horn sections the Tulsa band had boasted. For a very brief period in 1944 the Wills band included 23 members.,^[32] and around mid year he toured Northern California and the Pacific Northwest with 21 pieces in the orchestra.^[35] Billboard reported that Wills outgrossed Harry James, Benny Goodman, "both Dorsies, et al." at Civic Auditorium in Oakland, California, in January 1944.^[36]

While on his first cross-country tour, he appeared on the Grand Ole Opry and defied that conservative show's ban on using drums of any sort.

In 1945 Wills' dances were outdrawing those of Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman,^[32] and he had moved to Fresno, California. Then in 1947 he opened the Wills Point nightclub in Sacramento and continued touring the Southwest and Pacific Northwest from Texas to Washington State. While based in Sacramento his radio broadcasts over 50,000 watt KFBK^{[disambiguation needed ]} were heard all over the West.^[37]

Famous swing orchestras in California realized that many of their followers were leaving to dance to Bob Will's Western swing. Because he was in such demand, some places booked Wills any time he had an opening, regardless of how undesirable the date. The manager of a popular auditorium in the LA Basin town of Wilmington, California: "Although Monday night dancing is frankly an experiment it was the only night of the week on which this outstanding band could be secured."^[34]

During the postwar period, KGO radio in San Francisco syndicated a Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys show recorded at the Fairmont Hotel. Many of these recordings survive today as the Tiffany Transcriptions,^[1] and are available on CD. They show off the band's strengths significantly, in part because the group was not confined to the three-minute limits of 78 RPM discs. They featured superb instrumental work from fiddlers Joe Holley and Louis Tierney, steel guitarists Noel Boggs and Herb Remington, guitarists Eldon Shamblin and Junior Barnard and electric mandolinist-fiddler Tiny Moore. The original recorded version of Wills' "Faded Love", appeared on the Tiffanys as a fairly swinging instrumental unlike the ballad it became when lyrics were added in 1950.

On April 3, 1948, Wills and the Texas Playboys appeared for the inaugural broadcast of the Louisiana Hayride on KWKH, broadcasting from the Municipal Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Wills and the Texas Playboys played dances throughout the West to more than 10,000 people every week. They held dance attendance records at Jantzen Beach in Portland, Oregon; Santa Monica, California, and at the Oakland (California) Auditorium, where they drew 19,000 people in two nights.^[38] Wills also broke an attendance record of 2,100 previously held by Jan Garbner at the Armory in Klamath Falls, Oregon, by attracting 2,514 dancers.^[38] WIlls and the Playboys also played small towns on the West Coast. Actor Clint Eastwood recalled seeing Wills when he was 18 or 19 (1948 or 1949) and working at a pulp mill in Springfield, Oregon.^[39]

Appearances at the Bostonia Ballroom in San Diego continued throughout the 1950s.^[40]

Still a binge drinker, Wills became increasingly unreliable in the late 1940s, causing a rift with Tommy Duncan (who bore the brunt of audience anger when Wills's binges prevented him from appearing). It ended when he fired Duncan in the fall of 1948.

Later years[link]

Having lived a lavish lifestyle in California, Wills moved back to Oklahoma City in 1949, then went back on the road to maintain his payroll and Wills Point. He opened a second club, the Bob Wills Ranch House in Dallas, Texas. Turning the club over to managers later revealed to be dishonest left Wills in desperate financial straits with heavy debts to the IRS for back taxes that caused him to sell many assets including, mistakenly, the rights to "New San Antonio Rose." It wrecked him financially.

In 1950 Wills had two Top Ten hits, "Ida Red Likes the Boogie" and "Faded Love". After 1950 radio stations began to increasingly specialize in one form or another of commercially popular music. Wills did not fit into the popular Nashville country and western stations, although he was usually labeled "country and western". Neither did he fit into the pop or middle of the road stations, although he played a good deal of pop music, and was not accepted in the pop music world.^[41]

He continued to tour and record through the 1950s into the early 1960s, despite the fact that Western swing's popularity, even in the Southwest, had greatly diminished. Bob could draw "a thousand people on Monday night between 1950 and 1952, but he could not do that by 1956. Entertainment habits had changed."^[42]

On Wills' return to Tulsa late in 1957, Jim Downing of the Tulsa Tribune wrote an article headlined "Wills Brothers Together Again — Bob Back with Heavy Beat". The article quotes Wills as saying, "Rock and Roll? Why, man, that's the same kind of music we've been playin' since 1928!...We didn't call it rock and roll back when we introduced it as our style back in 1928, and we don't call it rock and roll the way we play it now. But it's just basic rhythm and has gone by a lot of different names in my time. It's the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. The rhythm's what's important."^[43] The use of amplified guitars accentuates Bob's claim, some Bob Wills recordings from the `30's and `40's sound similar to rock and roll records in the `50's.

Even a 1958 return to KVOO, where his younger brother Johnnie Lee Wills had maintained the family's presence, did not produce the success he hoped for. He appeared twice on ABC-TV's Jubilee USA and kept the band on the road into the 1960s. After two heart attacks, in 1965 he dissolved the Texas Playboys (who briefly continued as an independent unit) to perform solo with house bands. While he did well in Las Vegas and other areas, and made records for the Kapp Records label, he was largely a forgotten figure — even though inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968. A 1969 stroke left his right side paralyzed, ending his active career.

The May 26, 1975 issue of TIME (Milestones section) read: "Died. Bob Wills, 70, "Western Swing" bandleader-composer; of pneumonia; in Fort Worth. Wills turned out dance tunes that are now called country rock, introducing with his Texas Playboys such C & W classics as Take Me Back to Tulsa and New San Antonio Rose".^[44]

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

Singles[link]

Legacy[link]

Wills' style influenced performers Buck Owens and Merle Haggard and helped to spawn a style of music now known as the Bakersfield Sound. (Bakersfield, California was one of Wills' regular stops in his heyday). A 1970 tribute album by Haggard directed a wider audience to Wills' music, as did the appearance of younger "revival" bands like Asleep at the Wheel and the growing popularity of longtime Wills disciple and fan Willie Nelson. By 1971, Wills recovered sufficiently to travel occasionally and appear at tribute concerts. In 1973 he participated in a final reunion session with members of some the Texas Playboys from the 1930s to the 1960s. Merle Haggard was invited to play at this reunion. The session, scheduled for two days, took place in December 1973, with the album to be titled For the Last Time. Wills, speaking or attempting to holler, appeared on a couple tracks from the first day's session but suffered a stroke overnight. He had a more severe one a few days later. The musicians completed the album without him. Wills by then was comatose. He lingered until his death on May 13, 1975.

In addition to being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968, Wills was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category along with the Texas Playboys in 1999, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007.

From the 1970s until his 2002 death, Waylon Jennings performed a song called "Bob Wills is Still the King". In addition, The Rolling Stones performed this song live in Austin, Texas at Zilker Park for their DVD The Biggest Bang. In a 1968 issue of Guitar Player, rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix said of Wills and the Playboys: "I dig them. The Grand Ole Opry used to come on, and I used to watch that. They used to have some pretty heavy cats, some heavy guitar players."

Wills ranked No. 27 in "CMT's 40 Greatest Men in Country Music" in 2003.

Fats Domino once remarked that he patterned his 1960 rhythm section after that of Bob Wills.^[45]

During the 49th Grammy Awards, Carrie Underwood performed his song "San Antonio Rose". Today, George Strait performs Wills' music on concert tours and also records songs greatly reflecting the magic of Wills and his Texas-style swing.

Asleep at the Wheel, the Austin, Texas-based Western swing band has been paying homage to Wills for over 35 years, best demonstrated by their continuing performances of the musical drama A Ride With Bob^[46] which debuted in Austin in March 2005 to coincide with celebrations of Wills' 100th birthday.

Another band that contributes to keeping the Western swing tradition alive are The Armadillos, who hail from Manchester, England and have been performing for more than 15 years.

In 2004, a documentary film about his life and music music, entitled Fiddlin' Man: The Life and Times of Bob Wills, was released by VIEW Inc.

In 2011, Proper Records released an album by Hot Club of Cowtown titled What Makes Bob Holler: A Tribute to Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.

In 2011 the Texas Legislature adopted a resolution designating western swing as the official "State Music of Texas".^[47][48]

See also[link]

• Aragon Ballroom (Ocean Park)

.

References[link]

47. Paula Jungmann Lobbiest. http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/82R/billtext/html/SC00035F.htm

Bibliography[link]

• Townsend, Charles R. (1998). "Bob Wills". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kinsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 594–5.
• West, Elliot. "Trails and Footprints: The Past of the Future Southern Plains". The Future of the Southern Plains (pp. 17–37) edited by Sherry L. Smith. University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. ISBN 0-861-3735-5
• Whitburn, Joel. The Billboard Book of Top 40 Country Hits. Billboard Books, 2006. ISBN 0-8230-8291-1
• Wolff, Kurt; Orla Duane. Country Music: The Rough Guide. Rough Guides, 2000. ISBN 1-85828-534-8

External links[link]