AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Country
• Personalities
• Rock
• Roots of Rock
• Western Swing

(Bandleader, fiddle, 1905–75) Between 1929 and 1931 Bob Wills assembled his first western-swing band, The Light Crust Doughboys, later rechristened The Texas Playboys. By 1940, with its hit single ‘New San Antonio Rose’, it was filling concert halls across the country. The band’s biggest hit, ‘New Spanish Two Step’, spent 16 weeks at No. 1. The hit ‘Faded Love’ became a standard. Wills bucked traditions to fuse two genres and create ...

• Blues
• Boogie-Woogie
• Country
• Personalities
• Pop
• Rock
• Roots of Rock
• Western Swing

(Piano, vocals, 1909–67) Mullican was a versatile Texas pianist and vocalist who influenced Jerry Lee Lewis and others with pre-rock pounders like ‘Cherokee Boogie’ and western-swing gems like ‘Don’t Ever Take My Picture Down’, but was perhaps even more influential behind the scenes of his 30-year career. Widely acknowledged to be the co-writer of Hank Williams’ ‘Jambalaya’, Mullican summoned up many of that song’s Cajun references for his own highly stylized ...

• Boogie-Woogie
• Country
• Personalities
• Rock
• Rockabilly
• Rock’n’Roll
• Roots of Rock
• Western Swing

(Vocal group, 1931–52) The Delmore Brothers (Alton and Rabon) were a precursor to sibling vocal groups like The Everly Brothers. The Delmores’ sound, which incorporated fast electric guitar parts and bluesy harmonica riffs, foreshadowed the crossover appeal of later rockabilly and country rock bands. Embracing elements of western swing and boogie-woogie in the late 1940s, The Delmores recorded multiple songs like ‘Hillbilly Boogie’ and ‘Freight Train Boogie’, but their biggest hit ...

• Blues
• Boogie-Woogie
• Country
• Cowboy Music
• Doo-Wop
• Folk
• Gospel
• Hillbilly
• Jazz
• Pop
• Rhythm & Blues
• Rock
• Rockabilly
• Rock’n’Roll
• Roots of Rock
• Styles & Forms
• Western Swing

Rock’n’roll did not spring fully formed from Memphis in the shape of Elvis Presley but was the coming together of several different roots musics. Country, jazz, doo-wop and the blues had all enjoyed significant audiences in their own right, and all would have a bearing on the sounds to come. The music scenes across America had been local or, at best regional. But just as the advance of radio beamed entertainment ...

• Country
• Styles & Forms
• Western Swing

Western swing is an innovative, free-wheeling yet complex instrumental amalgam drawn from blues, jazz and Dixieland syncopations and harmonies. Central to the style is an emphasis on instrumental solos, often involving the transposition of jazz-style horn parts to fiddle, guitar and steel guitar. It is indicative of western swing’s sophistication that Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys, the definitive western swing band, included at various times a Dixieland drummer (Smokey Dacus), a jazz ...