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From: Jerry
Date: October 16, 2003
In the past two months, I've been listening to a lot of Bob's recordings over his entire career, and I've come to the conclusion that the Tiffany period (1946-47) was his best. This was a sweet spot in the evolution of Western music, the big band era, and recording technique. The war had just ended, so the best musicians were back, we were still recording acoustically with limited miking, and the lone singing cowboy was not yet the rage. So Bob Wills had a free hand to take his music in the direction he wanted to take it. He was his most blues-influenced during this period, moving away from the "hoosier hotshots" style popular in the 30s.
What lay ahead was the MGM period where he was expected to provide the soundtrack for horse operas, and develop material that could serve double duty as movie soundtrack and hit record. Then, in 6 short years, from 1950 to 1956, musical westerns tanked and popular orchestral dance music moved from swing to champagne pop. Lawrence Welk moved from LA television to a national weekly show on ABC, while Spade Cooley, who once had a 75 share in LA was cancelled on TV and dropped by Decca. Bob's hits were fewer and fewer.
Nashville slowly began to elbow Hollywood out of the way, with little resistance since word was out that Westerns were dead. Nashville never had much use for Western music; in the 40s they looked down their noses at Bob for using drums at the Grand Old Opry. Even in the 90s, Patsy Montana had to die before they'd induct her into the hall of fame. So I'm not surprised that the Kapp sessions, done with Nashville studio musicians, were met with less than wild acclaim. They were good, but not surprisingly, the excitement wasn't there. Nashville never could get excited about something they couldn't claim to have invented.