Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys [extended]

  • For the Last Time [United Artists, 1974] B+
  • Anthology 1935-1973 [Rhino, 1991] A
  • Stay a Little Longer [Rounder, 2002] **

See Also:

Consumer Guide Reviews:

For the Last Time [United Artists, 1974]
Recorded under Wills's supervision until he suffered a stroke before the last day's sessions, this double-LP doesn't represent the band at its peak. But though earlier recordings of most of these classic tunes are at least marginally sharper, it certainly captures the relaxed, playful, eclectic Western swing groove that Wills invited in the '30s. And Merle Haggard does sing lead on three cuts. B+

Anthology 1935-1973 [Rhino, 1991]
Newcomers may be put off by Wills's opportunistic omnivorousness. As a popularizer of what he considered Texas fiddle music, he felt no more loyal to country, which didn't mean much in the '30s anyway, than the early black songsters did to blues. An entertainer who assumed, correctly, that his audience liked everything he did--folk, hillbilly, blues, swing, and let us not forget pop--his format was the pop format of the time, the big band. Plus fiddle and pedal steel, and also plus fellow frontman Tommy Duncan, a congenial equivalent to the generic boy singers of swing. He's almost sublimely relaxed--the country meeting the city without the usual anxious excitement. The classic Wills is just plain Anthology, a Columbia double-LP turned Sony Special Products CD, which collects 24 cuts where the two separately available CDs in this package each offer 16. But these are a tad longer on sheer song quality. Volume 1 duplicates five Sony tracks, Volume 2--which finally convinces me that Wills's post-Columbia work wasn't busy and tuckered out--zero. Wills's eclecticism was tremendously ambitious, but it was never pretentious. And sometimes unpretentiousness is its own reward. A

Bob Wills: Stay a Little Longer [Rounder, 2002]
Oddities and standards from a guy who recorded too many of the latter ("Who Walks In When I Walk Out," "That Brown Skin Girl"). **