42 The hisTory of coUnTry MUsic

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surround it with a lot of instruments. The rhythm’s what’s important.24

Wills continued to play on occasion, but his declining health in the early 1960s forced him to break up his band. A stroke in 1969 paralyzed his right side and left him unable to play. The pioneer of country swing died in 1975.

Melting Pot MusicWhile Bob Wills and Milton Brown pioneered the sounds of western swing, they were joined by others, including two of Bob’s brothers, Billy Jack Wills and Johnnie Lee Wills, both of whom performed and recorded in the shadow of their famous brother. Fiddler Spade Cooley made a name for himself lead-ing a large swing band in Southern California. Cooley’s band

In 1955 the innovative guitarist and songwriter Chuck Berry had a number-one hit with the song “Maybelline.”

Berry freely admitted that the loping dance beat of the song was based on “Ida Red,” a 1938 hit for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Like many other early rock songs, “Maybelline” combined country with African American boogie-woogie, which features a driving rhythm that origi-nated in black churches. The new sound was called rocka-billy, one of the earliest types of rock and roll.

In a way, rockabilly was the opposite of western swing music. Rockabilly lacked tight arrangements and sophisti-cated musicianship. While swing bands utilized dozens of virtuoso musicians playing advanced jazz licks, rockabilly groups needed nothing more than a singer accompanied by a stand-up “slap” bass, an electric guitar, and a drum-mer. The exciting new beat of rockabilly was behind early Elvis Presley hits like “Blue Suede Shoes” and propelled art-ists like Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis to the top of the charts in the second half of the 1950s.

rock and roll and rockabilly

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cowboy MUsic and wesTern swinG 43

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Spade Cooley, standing left, created a smoother, more polished western swing sound with his band in Southern California.

perfected a smoother, more polished sound using written musical arrangements as opposed to improvised jazz licks.

Other names from western swing’s golden years included Tex Williams, a former vocalist with Cooley, and Pee Wee King and His Golden West Cowboys, who scored a huge hit with “Tennessee Waltz.” Pee Wee King was not a cowboy, however, but an accordion player raised on polka music in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Western swing might have passed into oblivion if not for a 1970s revival of the style by the group Asleep at the Wheel. The band recorded many well-received albums that revived Bob Wills standards such as “Take Me Back to Tulsa” and “Hubbin’ It” for baby boomers raised on rock. The band also created its own original western swing classics such as “Let Me Go Home Whiskey,” “Bump Bounce Boogie,” and

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