[ Home | Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Buddy McPeters
Date: October 17, 2003
There has been some discussion here about Texas Playboys guitar players. While Cameron Hill and Jimmy Wyble may have been the first electric standard guitarists to play the Twin Guitar idiom on records with Bob Wills in 1945, they weren't the first to play it.
Of course we all know that steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe and guitarist Eldon Shamblin invented and created this innovative style at least by April 16, 1940 when they made the first recording of Twin Guitar ever made on the song 'Bob Wills Special'. Eldon and Leon had actually came up with the idea as early as 1939 when they roomed together in hotels on the road just to amuse themselves. Bob heard them playing the harmonized dual guitar leads and asked them to work up something for an old blues song called 'Bluin' The Blues' that he had recorded in 1935 he had rearranged and was going to record. (Bob Wills didn't make any records in 1939)
An interesting note is that Junior Barnard sat in with the the Texas Playboys from time to time on loan from Johnnie Lee Wills filling in whenever Eldon was absent and even on occasions of Leon McAuliffe's absences prior to the break-up of the Texas Playboys band in 1942. Junior teamed up with Leon a few times playing Twin Guitar and even did it in a couple of Bob's movies particularly on the song 'I Hear You Talkin' in 'Wyoming Hurricane' which was filmed in 1942 and subsequently copyrighted in 1944 and released in 1945. Junior and Eldon Shamblin shared the stage at Cain's many times during Leon's absences and they were the first Twin Guitar duet that consisted of 2 electric standard guitarists to play the style at least 1 year, if not 2 or even 3 years before Wyble and Hill teamed up with Bob Wills.
After Bob got out of the Army in July 1943 he returned to Tulsa and put together a Texas Playboys band immediately which consisted of Johnnie Lee Wills band members (including himself on tenor banjo) Junior Barnard & Les Anderson on steel (who played Twin Guitar stuff), fiddlers Louie Tierney & Joe Holley, Leon Huff on vocals, Kelso on piano, Don Harlan on sax etc. After a few dates at Cain's and a few US War Bonds rallies in Tulsa and one in Pawhuska, OK (see photos in Townsend's San Antonio Rose pp. 230-321) he decided to let Johnnie Lee continue there in Tulsa at Cain's and over KVOO and set his sights on California where hoardes of his fans from OK and TX (as well as AR, KS & MO) had migrated during the war to work in defense jobs.
When Bob pulled out for CA he took Les Anderson and Joe Holley. (Louie Tierney quit Johnnie Lee and followed Bob immediately to CA) Along the way Bob hired a string of stunning musicians. Among them were steel guitarist Noel Boggs and guitarists Jimmy Wyble and Cameron Hill, who according to one source were playing together with a rhythm section in a small club. Bob heard them and hired the 3 of them on the spot. The three of them were great friends who shared a lot of musical influences including the twin Guitar idiom that Shamblin and McAuliffe had created and the BeBop Jazz electric guitar style of Charlie Christian who had played with Benny Goodman and introduced the electric guitar to the world via Goodman's world wide audience. Christian's style was heavy on Swing improvisations and was THE father of Bebop Guitar in the Harlem nightclubs such as the infamous Minton's on 52nd St in NY at all night jam-sessions with such stellar greats as Dizzie Gillespie, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk and many others. Wyble and Hill both had cut their teeth on Christian's guitar work on Goodman's Sextet recordings such as 'Flying Home', 'Rose Room' and 'Air Mail Special' and many others. Noel Boggs had actually played with Charlie's brother Eddie in a band in Oklahoma City being one of the few white men to play in Black Jazz groups anywhere. Goodman crossed the 'color-line' when he was the 1st white orchestra leader to hire Black musicians such as Teddy Wilson, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton and others, plus great female vocalist Billie Holliday. Wyble and Hill were known to play sophisticated renderings of Christian's solos in arrangements provided as their own solo outings on a number of Bob Wills fiddle tunes. The intro to 'Roly Poly' was something adapted by Playboys trumpeter and MC Everett Stover (who also wrote the words to San Antonio Rose and Maiden's Prayer) from 'London Bridge Is Falling Down' back in the Tulsa pre-war band. It was written out for ensemble with 3 trumpets at first used on a BIG band arrangement which was used on several uptempo songs. Wyble and Hill 'borrowed' this intro and used it first on an old Jazz tune Bob recorded for AFRS (Armed Forces Radio Service) called 'Stumbling' in 1944 while Stover was in the band.
Together with Boggs, Wyble and Hill often played 3-way guitar fugues that predated the '3-Way Guitar' stuff of Eldon, Tiny Moore (on electric mandolin) and Herbie Remington on steel by 3 or 4 years. By 1947 Eldon had re-joined the Playboys which included Junior, Tiny and Herbie. On some of the Tiffany Transcriptions from that year the 4 of them play some great arrangements in a 4-Way Guitar setting!
All in all Bob Wills had some very influential guitarists over the years who set the standards in Western Swing and influenced a lot of different music styles and genres.
Eldon Shamblin alone set THE rhythm guitar style to which the entire genre and style is measured by. The other guys played good rhythm but the playing of Eldon is in a class by itself. And as mentioned above Eldon and Leon McAuliffe pioneered the Twin Guitar style and their influence can be traced all thru popular music clearly into the 70's with The Allman Brothers dual leads played by Dickie Betts and Les Dudek on their major hits 'Rambling Man' and 'Jessica' and other songs. (Duane Allman had already died in 1971 before these tunes were recorded) 'Rambling Man' alone set a standard in Rock and Roll music for dual lead guitars for many to follow, but they are indebted to Shamblin and McAuliffe for the birth of this idiom. Shamblin also had great lead guitar style that mixed chord melody and hot single string runs that incorporated Jazz and Swing, but mostly he is remembered for his great rhythm work. The lead solos he played particularly on the Harmony Park Airshots from January 1953 radio shows (Country Routes CD-21) are stunning examples of his great lead playing that belies his statement "I'm just a rhythm guitarist." and proves he was very daring and adventurous even playing a 'strange' guitar, a Gibson Switchmaster, one which had been loaned to him by Cliffie Stone's guitarist Billy Strange after his 1936 Gibson Super 400 had exploded in the case in 1952. The songs on this CD are NOT Harmony Park Airshots as the title erroneously claims but are actually noon radio broadcasts from station KXLA in Pasadena, CA.
Jimmy Wyble and Cameron Hill set the standard for BeBop Jazz electric Twin Guitar leads and solos in the War years until they left the band in Spring 1945. Even Rockabilly guitarist Cliff Gallup who played with Gene Vincent owes Wyble a debt after stealing parts of the solo from Roly Poly, especially the ascending octave run up the neck that Jimmy is famous for. Nobody played better BeBop Jazz solos than Jimmy Wyble. Unfortunately there aren't many recorded guitar solos from Cameron Hill except one or two in the movies he and Wyble made while with Bob.
Junior Barnard set the standard in Western Swing music for Bluesy take off guitar solos on his over-driven, distorted toned electric guitar with his wild string bends, slurred notes, and rapid hot licks. He got a Rock and Roll sound out of his guitar long before Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix. Listen to his solo on Bob's 1945 record of Harley Huggins tune 'I'm Feelin' Bad'. It's interesting that the cradle of psychedelic Rock music in the 60's was San Francisco, which is where Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys recorded the Tiffany Transcriptions between March 1946 and December 1947. Tiffany's headquarters was located across the Bay in Oakland where Bob played a lot at the Orpheum Theater with broadcasts from radio station KLX there. At the same time Bob & Co. were tearing up the airwaves all across the San Joaquin Valley from Bakersfield to Fresno where he had his Triple B Ranch, clear up to Sacramento where he settled and built Wills point Ballroom. The best examples of Junior's playing were heard on these Tiffany Transcriptions which were played all across the Nation but especially in CA.
Among the great innovators in The Texas Playboys guitarwise was little known Jazz and Swing guitarist Sheldon Bennett who played a few weeks in the 1950 band about the time they played at the Trianon in OKC and The Bob Wills Ranch House in Dallas. He never recorded with Bob but he was nevertheless a great musician and worthy of note. Cotton Whittington was another great who took Eldon's place temporarily in 1951 and recorded with them and is also featured in the Snader Telescriptions from that year. Perhaps his best solo was on "Sitting On Top Of The World". His was a great mix of Jazz and blues. He is the last in this line of influential guitarists in Bob Wills band. Everybody else that followed were guys who played solos and riffs based on everything that Eldon, Junior, Wyble, Hill and Whittington had done.
Steel guitar-wise Bob Dunn may have been the premier Jazz styled electric steel guitarist but nobody took it to the heights that Leon McAuliffe did with Bob Wills, setting standards by 1940 in steel guitar circles that are still valid today. Of course later Playboys steel guitarists Noel Boggs, Les Anderson (for his playing on 'This Is Southland'), Herb Remington, Billy Bowman, Bobby Koefer, 'Shorty' Messer and Vance Terry and of course the Great Joaquin Murphey with Spade Cooley and Tex Williams and of course Speedy West just broke down the barriers and kicked out the walls and took it even further than Dunn or McAuliffe ever dreamed.
All of these guys were very influential in their own right and much of American popular music owes them a debt for the things that they innovated.
Buddy