VI.

Western and Western Swing

During the 1930s and 1940s motion pictures about cowboys and the American West popularized the style known as Western music. Western music grew out of a 19th-century tradition of cowboy songs and string bands that was particularly strong in Texas and Oklahoma. This subcategory was influenced by the folk-country music of Tennessee and other Southeastern states, the jazz and blues music of Louisiana, and big-band dance music. Western music frequently features improvisation and a broad range of instruments, including wind instruments. The lyrics center on life on the Western frontier, especially the often romanticized life of the cowboy. Exemplars of the style include the singing cowboys Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, who acted and sang in Western movies of the 1930s and 1940s. Rogers was an original member of the Sons of the Pioneers, a band that appeared in over 80 Westerns between 1935 and 1948. The group’s style of three-part harmony singing, disseminated through motion pictures and recordings, became widely influential.

A variation on traditional Western music called Western swing developed in Texas and Oklahoma in the early 1930s. Western swing was a country version of the big-band jazz music popular during the 1930s and 1940s, a period known as the swing era. Western swing bands combined the string band with instruments used in jazz and blues, including the saxophone and trumpet. The style gained fame primarily through fiddler Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, a band that included as many as 18 players. They were a top musical attraction throughout the Southwest during the 1940s and 1950s. The fiddling style and musical arrangements of Wills had a major influence on later country artists, including singers Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, George Strait and the band Asleep at the Wheel.