About the Book:”Until Hank Williams came along, it was just Bob Willis,” says Willie Nelson. “He wasit.” And indeed he was, especially for the thousands in the Southwest who knew and loved the King of Western Swing. The colorful band leader-composer-fiddler from Turkey, Texas, lassoed the emotions of country-and-western fans nationwide. In the early 1940s, his records outsold those of any other recording artist. He was voted not only into the Country Music Hall of Fame but also into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, the only performer other than Gene Autry to be so honored.Affectionately written by a Texan who responded to the legendary fiddler’s style,San Antonio Rosecaptures Wills’s magnetism and the musical excitement he created. Charles R. Townsend traces Wills’s dynamic life from his birth into a family of frontier fiddlers through his career and stardom and on to the poignant last recording session in 1973 and his death two years later. Townsend shows how Wills brought black and white music together and examines the tremendous impact he had on both popular and country music through the more than 550 selections he recorded and the forty years he and his Texas Playboys performed in dance halls and on radio.Table of Contents: Preface xi 1. Cotton Fields and Cotton Camps 1 2. Down between the Rivers 16 3. “I Slurred My Fiddle . . .to Play the Blues” 36 4. Frontier Folk Music Moves to Town 44 5. Western Jazz 53 6. Light Crust Doughboys and Texas Playboys 68 7. The Spread of Western Jazz 88 8. Music out of a Straitjacket 98 9. “You Hired Bob Wills, Didn’t You?” 112 10. Here Comes de Judge 121 11. “The Ballad of ‘Seabiscuit’ McAuliffe” 132 12. The Glory Years and the most Versatile Band in America 143 13. Faded Loves 156 14. “San Antonio Rose,” Western Swing, and Some of the Finest Jazzmen You’ve Ever Heard 190 15. The Silver Screen and Music on the West Coast 206 16. That Certain Woman: Betty and the Summer of ’42 215 17. “This Is the Army, Mr. Wills” 225 18. “Take Me Back to Tulsa” 235 19. Just Lookin’ for a Home 261 20. “His Body Wore Out before His Desire” 277 21. Country Music Hall of Fame 283 22. More Tributes to a Pioneer Musician 295 23. A Product of the Jazz Age 310 24. Twilight Falls 316 Essay on Sources 325 The Bob Wills Recordings: A Comprehensive Discography Bob Pinson 337 A Preliminary Bob Wills Filmusicography Bob Pinson 375 Index 377