Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys~ The Tiffany Transcriptions

[Eyeball]

Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys

http://www.ccmusic.com/item.cfm?itemID=CCM09912
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/arts/ ... 1play.html

“The Tiffany Transcriptions,” about 10 hours of radio recordings of Bob Wills’s western swing band, have been in and out of print since the 1980s. But they have never been available as a single brick, as they are now from Collector’s Choice. It’s fantastic, and it needs getting. This was a western band, a jazz band, a dance band in general, and as good as its regular studio records could be, they sound compressed and uptight by comparison. When it recorded this rowdy, airy music in 1946 and ’47, the band seemed free and expressive and hungry; solo after solo, laid over driving two-step rhythm, the group exudes poignancy and raw energy — from the steel guitarist Herb Remington, the guitarist Junior Barnard, the electric mandolinist Tiny Moore, and the violinist Joe Holley, among others. The collected Tiffanys show the black-and-white breadth of the band’s repertory: joy-ride instrumentals like “Three Guitar Special” and “Playboy Chimes”; traditional folk songs including “Sally Goodin’ ” and “Red River Valley”; blues standards like “Trouble in Mind” and “Corrine, Corrina”; Kansas City jazz (Basie’s “Jumpin’ at the Woodside,” Bennie Moten’s “South”); Ellingtonia (“Take the ‘A’ Train,” “C-Jam Blues”); Glenn Miller (“Mission to Moscow”); and the perfect western pop songs written for the band by Cindy Walker. There’s a casual optimism all through it, and it’s a music of contrasts: the sharp crack of the drums versus Tommy Duncan’s lazy, macho, pragmatic singing voice.

[Gong-Oh]

I asked Dave Stuckey, defined by some as a walking encyclopedia for Western Swing, recommendations to expand my Western Swing collection. The Tiffany Transcriptions were part of the list he gave me.

Note that one can also purchase the single tracks from Amazon.

Cheers,
Lorenzo

[fredo]

somewhere far away, with dirty carpet on the walls, and a cigarette that's smoked half way down, un-ashed, peter loggins is smiling at the thought of Bob Wills, and missing his electric steel.

[Gong-Oh]

I finally bought the Tiffany Transcriptions box set a few months ago. There are so many great tunes for DJing! At about $100 for 10 CDs is a pretty good deal too. Besides, you can also find all the tracks on eMusic.

Cheers,
Lorenzo