Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(21 customer reviews) 66 of 66 people found the following review helpful
What a deal on the best Western Swing ever!,
April 14, 2004 Claude Avary "West Coast Reader" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Take Me Back to Tulsa (Audio CD)
This is another one of those incredible deals floating around the Internet that sounds simply too good to be true: a four CD box set of the incredible Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys -- 109 tracks in all -- for $21.99? You're putting me on! Well, it's all true. These four CDs contain superb quality versions of all the songs; I've never heard Bob Wills sound so clear and clean. The CDs present his musical career from 1932 to 1948, a treasure trove of Western Swing of all varieties, in roughly chronological order. The four CDs come in a sturdy library case jacket, not some cheap cardboard sleeve, and also come with a beautiful 52-page booklet loaded with pictures, a full history of the band, and detailed personnel and session date information for every piece on the four CDs.And just what kind of music did Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys give us? A good question. Wills's music is neither straight country, nor straight jazz, but a wonderful gumbo mix of nearly everything: folk,...Read more
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
"Come in, Tommy...",
January 5, 2006 James Morris (Jackson Heights, NY United States) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Take Me Back to Tulsa (Audio CD)
This boxed set is amazing for the sheer volume of wonderful music it proffers at a fraction of what one would expect to pay for it. Concentrating on the early years, it presents Bob Wills at the dawn of his recording career and continues through the height of his creativity. This is the cream of early Bob Wills, and contains about 60% of his very best material (I am long of the opinion that Bob Wills never made a bad record in his life, and he continued to be productive through his so-called "lean years" of the 1950's, 1960's and beyond). But these tracks are the classics that most fans cherish above all.
Tommy Duncan, Wills' favorite featured vocalist, appears here on many sides, including Time Changes Everything (my personal Bob Wills favorite) and many others. Besides the early Columbia sides, there are examples of his Decca years and other smaller labels. A few of my own favorites include My Little Cherokee Maiden (close runner-up to Time Changes Everything as my...Read more
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
King of western swing,
March 29, 2004 This review is from: Take Me Back to Tulsa (Audio CD)
Asleep at the wheel have kept Bob's music alive by recording two tribute albums with star-studded guest lists, both of which I've already reviewed. Patsy Cline, Ray Price and Willie Nelson are among many country singers who have had hits with covers of his songs. Furthermore, Waylon Jennings famously sang about Bob Wills, who may have still been king when Waylon recorded that song in the seventies, but I wonder how many young people these days - even in Texas - know or care whom Bob Wills is. This collection makes it very clear.Like so many greats from whatever era, Bob's music had a variety of influences. In his case, there were the swing band that dominated the pop charts of the thirties and the primitive country music, just escaping from its folk roots. The fusion of these two styles might have been called country swing but was actually called western swing and that's the name that stuck.This collection covers the period 1935 to 1950, although it begins with a couple of...Read more
