Americana
Featured Film (full movie): Take Me Back to Oklahoma - 1940
Wanted by the law...marked by the lawless...betrayed by his best friend...but you can't stop a Texan while there's a song on his lips...and lead slugs in his six guns!
Tex (Tex Ritter) and his friend Slim (Slim Andrews) go undercover to help Jane Winters (Terry Walker) keep her Stageline running as Mr. Storm and his gang slowly pick it apart in order to take over her business. Jane has already had all of her Stage Coaches destroyed except one. Tex gets hired as a Stage Coach Driver and when he sees that he needs help he calls in his friends, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, a country music band, who also do a concert for charity. The Ticket booth gets robbed and Tex is framed for the robbery. Its up to Tex to clear himself of the crime and bring the real criminals to justice.
ShareThisBob Wills: Blue Prelude - 1950's
Joe "Frank" Ferguson on lead vocal, he switched off playing bass and singing with Joe Andrews, no idle time on the Bob Wills bandstand you know/Outstanding Bobby Koefer, Skeeter Elkin, Cotton Whittington
Rock and Roll? Why, man, that's the same kind of music we've been playin' since 1928!...We didn't call it rock and roll back when we introduced it as our style back in 1928, and we don't call it rock and roll the way we play it now. But it's just basic rhythm and has gone by a lot of different names in my time. It's the same, whether you just follow a drum beat like in Africa or surround it with a lot of instruments. The rhythm's what's important.
- BOB WILLS
Bob Wills was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader, considered by many music authorities one of the fathers of Western swing and called the King of Western Swing by his fans.
ShareThisBob Wills: Ida Red - 1951
Another song that Bob recorded many times. IT's said that Chuck Berry based Maybelline on this old song. Bob first heard it by Jimmie Davis according to an interview from 1958.
"Ida Red" is an American traditional song of unknown origins. It is chiefly identified by variations of the chorus:
Ida Red, Ida Red, I'm a plumb fool 'bout Ida Red.
ShareThisBob Wills / Sittin' On Top Of The World - 1951
The title line of "Sitting on Top of the World" was probably borrowed from a well-known popular song of the 1920s, "I'm Sitting on Top of the World", written by Ray Henderson, Sam Lewis and Joe Young (popularised by Al Jolson in 1926). However the two songs are distinct, both musically and lyrically (apart from the title).
Claims are made that "Sitting on Top of the World" was derived from the earlier songs: "How Long, How Long" by Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, a blues hit recorded in 1928, and Carr & Blackwell's follow-up song "You Got To Reap What You Sow" (1929), with Tampa Red on bottleneck guitar. It has also been suggested that Tampa Red composed the melody of "Sitting on Top of the World".
