Wills, Bob (actually, James Robert), versatile

Wills, Bob (actually, James Robert), versatile American bandleader, fiddler, singer, and songwriter; b. near Kosse, Tex., March 6, 1905; d. Fort Worth, Tex., May 13, 1975. Wills popularized the eclectic style of country music known as Western swing. The most successful country bandleader of the 1940s, he and His Texas Playboys had a million-seller with “San Antonio Rose,” which he also wrote. He was a major influence on such successors as Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and George Strait.

Wills was the first son of John Thompkins and Emmaline Foley Wills. His father was a migrant farm worker. His father and grandfather were both fiddlers, and he learned mandolin and guitar as a child to accompany them. At ten he began playing the fiddle in public. He left home in 1924 and moved to Amarillo. In 1926 he married Edna Posey and tried to become a farmer, but he had returned to music by 1927 while supporting himself primarily as a barber.

Wills moved to Fort Worth in 1929 and joined a medicine show, where he met Herman Arnspiger, with whom he formed the Wills Fiddle Band; they played on local radio. By the fall of 1930 they had added other members, notably singer Milton Brown, and become the Aladdin Laddies, sponsored on WBAP by the Aladdin Lamp Company. In January 1931 they became the Light Crust Doughboys when the mill that made Light Crust Flour took up their sponsorship. Brown left the band in February 1932 and was replaced by singer Tommy Duncan (1911-67), who would be the primary vocalist in Wills’s bands thereafter.

Wills and Duncan left the Light Crust Doughboys in August 1933, moved to Waco, and formed The Playboys. As Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys they first appeared on KVOO in Tulsa on Feb. 9, 1934, after which they established themselves as the major band in the area. They were contracted to the American Record Company (ARC) in 1935 and recorded their first tracks on Sept. 23; the recordings were issued on the Brunswick label. (Later ARC recordings were released on the Vocalion and OKeh labels; after ARC was absorbed by Columbia Records, they were on Columbia.)

Wills and his wife divorced in 1936. That same year he married and divorced his second wife, Ruth McMaster. He married and divorced Mary Helen Brown in 1938; in 1939 they remarried and divorced again. He married his fourth wife, Mary-Louise Parker, in July 1939; they divorced in June 1941. He married his fifth wife, Betty Anderson, in 1942. They remained married until his death 33 years later. Wills fathered six children.

In 1940, Wills appeared in the motion picture Take Me Back to Oklahoma, for which he also wrote five songs. It was the first of a series of B-movies he made over the next several years, including Go West, Young Lady (November 1941), Rhythm Round-Up (1945), Blazing the Western Trail (1945), Lawless Empire (February 1946), Frontier Frolic (1946), Echo Ranch (1948), and Corral Cuties (1954).

Wills first recorded “San Antonio Rose” as an instrumental in 1938. Reissued in late 1940, it became a pop hit for him in January 1941, selling a million copies. He had also recorded a version with lyrics, titled “New San Antonio Rose”; his version of the song reached the pop charts in May 1941, but a cover record by Bing Crosby had peaked in the Top Ten in April and it also became a million-seller.

Wills disbanded in December 1942 and joined the army at the age of 37. He was discharged as unfit for service on July 27, 1943, and, with Tommy Duncan, went to Calif, in the fall of 1943 and reorganized The Texas Playboys. In the fall of 1944 he scored a double-sided chart hit with “We Might as Well Forget It” (music and lyrics by Johnny Bond)/“You’re from Texas.” “Smoke on the Water” (music and lyrics by Earl Nunn and Zeke Clements) topped the country charts for Wills in April 1945; he returned to #1 on the country charts with “Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima” (music and lyrics by Wills and Cliff Johnson) in July and with “Silver Dew on the Blue Grass Tonight” (music and lyrics by Ed Burt) in December. “White Cross on Okinawa” was a #1 country hit in January 1946, followed by “New Spanish Two Step” (which also reached the pop charts) in May. Wills returned to the top of the country charts with “Sugar Moon” (music and lyrics by Wills and Cindy Walker) in June 1947.

Tommy Duncan was the featured vocalist on all of Wills’s major hits from 1945 to 1947; in the fall of 1948 he left Wills and formed his own band. Wills was less successful on records thereafter, though he reached the country Top Ten with “Ida Red Likes the Boogie” and “Faded Love” (music and lyrics by Wills and his father, John Wills) in 1950. During the 1950s, Wills performed primarily in Tex. and Okla. and ran dance halls, notably the Bob Wills Ranch House in Dallas. He recorded for MGM (1947-54) and Decca (1955-57). Ray Price scored a #1 country hit with Wills’s composition “My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You” (music and lyrics also by Lee Ross) in September 1957.

Wills signed to Liberty Records in 1959 and reunited with Tommy Duncan. Their “Heart to Heart Talk” (music and lyrics by Lee Ross) reached the country Top Ten in 1960; “The Image of Me,” co-billed to Wills and Duncan, was Wills’s final country singles chart entry in January 1961. Floyd Cramer reached the pop Top Ten with his instrumental revival of “San Antonio Rose” in July.

Wills suffered heart attacks in 1962 and 1964, after which he disbanded, though he continued to front bands and to record, notably reaching the country charts with the Kapp Records LPs From the Heart of Texas (1966), King of Western Swing (1967), and Here’s That Man Again (1968). On May 31,1969, he suffered a paralyzing stroke, but he was able to participate in the first day of recording for The Texas Playboys reunion album For the Last Time, supervised by Merle Haggard, on Dec. 3, 1973. Then he had another stroke, which left him in a coma until his death from pneumonia on May 13, 1975.

Discography

For the Last Time (1973); Historic Edition (ree. 1935-18; rei. 1982); The Tiffany Transcriptions, Vols. 1-10 (ree. late 1940s; rei. 1982-91); Anthology 1935-1973 (1991); Encore (ree. 1960-1963; rei. 1994); The Longhorn Recordings (1964).

Bibliography

J. Latham, The Life of B. W.: The King of Western Swing (Odessa, Tex., 1974; 2nd ed., rev., 1987); A. Stricklin with J. McConal, My Years with B. W.(San Antonio, 1976); C. Townsend, San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music ofB. W. (Urbana, 111., 1976); R. Sheldon, B. W.: Hubbin It (Nashville, 1995); R. Wills (his daughter), The King of Western Swing: B. W. Remembered (N.Y., 1998).

—William Ruhlmann