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From: migraine@sbcglobal.net
Date: September 28, 2003
I just thought I'd post some notes on this year's activities. It was my first year there, and it was quite a bit different than I expected. The good things:
1) Walked into the museum upon arrival and who did I bump into but several Texas Playboys and Bob's daughter Rosetta! Rosetta kindly signed a copy of her book for me and looks so much like picture's I've seen of her father that it sent chills down my spine. She was very kind, as were the ladies behind the counter in the museum.
2) The museum! It's cool. For those who've never been there, the museum, Turkey City Hall and a few other organizations are all housed on the edge of town, along with the site of most of the festivities - Turkey High School. It's not a school anymore, and I don't know but I would guess that it's only opened up this once a year. The museum was great fun - the many rare pieces of memorabilia blew me away. I'm an academic sort of guy, and so I was fascinated to read things like Bob Wills' 1935 job offer to Eldon Shamblin for $30 a week!
3) Glynn Duncan singing! His voice is a little rough these days, but it was still great to see him - Tommy's been gone since before I was born, so this was as close as I could get to my favorite ever singer.
4) Meeting everyone! There's no backstage, there are no real dressing rooms. And all the various Playboys and Wills family members seemed happy to say hi. Dr. Charles Townsend MC'd the Saturday afternoon show and he also signed my book.
5) The Saturday afternoon show. Wow! The evening shows were great, but there was something about seeing the guys play outside on a beautiful (albeit hot) sunny day. Dr. Townsend sort of gave a history of the band between songs, and it was just mind-blowing. After the show, I was talking to Glynn Duncan, who was complaining about the leather vests they wore - "Boy, I wish they'd get rid of these!" It was 87 degrees - I was in a short sleeve shirt and I could barely stand it myself. But they put on a hell of a show.
6) Finding Bob Wills' house. The ladies in the museum gave me vague instructions. Some books I had made it a little easier, although the map in Townsend's book is a little inaccurate. My wife and I found it, walked up to the house around the freshly plowed red earth and walked right in. The roof and front door are still "attached", but the windows are gone and the clapboard walls pretty demolished. It's a teeny place, just a couple of small rooms. I don't know how one person could have lived there - that a whole family did actually brought a tear to my eye. Thinking what it must have been like to be so far from even little Turkey in such a small place, farming cotton - well, all I could think about was how if I could go back 90 years and tell the family that Jim Rob's music would one day be loved throughout the world, and even played in outer space . . . I wonder how fast they'd get a shotgun and chase me off the farm! Seriously, though, reading stories of Bob handing out money to just about any stranger who seemed needy took on a new dimension. I knew the Wills family had it rough there, but having seen the house, it's easy to see why Bob never forgot his roots and was willing to help out many a stranger.
The bad? Well, I can't think of anything. It made a Bob Wills fan out of my wife, who's from Sarajevo and didn't have any real exposure to Western Swing or Bob before. But the one sad thing was that the audience had an average age of around 80. I saw a few younger people (by that I mean anyone younger than about 50 - I'm 38 and my wife is 29, some friends of our were there too), but all the ones I asked said they were locals and really just there because it was a community event. Not that they weren't all swell people - I was charmed by so many great tales about everyone from Bob to Tommy Duncan to Billy Jack / Luke / Johnnie Lee from fine folks old enough to have seen them all in their prime - but where will this festival be in ten years? It's terrible to think about.
Bob's music sounds so fresh to me, the lyrics of the songs he and his Texas Playboys did are timeless, with great humor and relevance. So why does Western Swing seem to be going down a path to relative obscurity like ragtime or minstrel music, as opposed to the route of a still-vibrant musical genre like the blues? I'll be wondering about that until next year's celebration.