The Big Green House

Wednesday, December 04, 2002

 

Steel Guitar Rag

I guess I�ve put off this Western Swing thing long enough, huh? See, the deal is that when I first got this CD, I was all excited. Up until now, I�d only ever heard Bob Wills, so this was my chance to broaden my horizons a bit. I was as giddy as a schoolgirl when I stuck the discs in my CD player. (OK, it�s an odd choice of words, I�ll grant you that. But you know what I mean, right?)

Let me say right now that most of this collection does not disappoint. There�s a lot of really good swing music here. Milton Brown and Spade Cooley are the standouts in my mind, but there�s a plenty of swingin' music to be found. The problem is, there�s also a lot of stuff which does not swing, to put it bluntly. Someone decided to include a goodly number of cowboy songs.

Now, I know for a fact that Gene Autry actually did record some happening music, early on in his career, and this would have been a great spot to showcase it. But for the love of cake, why would anyone include his syrupy, string-laden version of �Home On The Range� on a Western Swing compilation? What�s Roy Rogers doing on here? Who the hell invited the frickin� Sons Of The Pioneers? And while I�m at it, why is there only one song by Adolf Hofner? They had room for two crappy Tex Ritter numbers, for god�s sake, but they couldn�t squeeze in some more Texas Wanderers? There�s a place for cowboy songs (preferably one far, far away from me), but a Western Swing collection ain�t it.

Perhaps it�s because this is a Dutch import. No slam on the Dutch is intended, but I�m guessing that the compilers figured, �Western Swing is from the west; cowboys are from the west; therefore, cowboy songs are Western Swing songs�, which is poor logic and bad musicology all at once. To help clear things up a bit, here is a fantastic overview of Western Swing. If you want to know about cowboy music, click on that Sons Of The Pioneers link.

Where does this leave me? Listening to some wonderful swing with my finger hovering over the �skip� button on my CD player every time I play these discs. If you dig cowboy music, more power to you � it makes me want to pull out my hair, for the most part. In the meantime, I�m hoping that someone will be kind enough to give me something like this for my birthday (which is fast approaching, so buy now!) or Xmas (also fast approaching, but three days later). Four discs, low price, all Western Swing, and no goddam cowboy songs! Yee Haw!

bmarkey 12/04/2002 08:42:00 PM