Sony
2006
Legends Of Country Music
About This Album
That Bob Wills was one of the architects of American music is a given, but his particular creation -- he didn't name it Western swing, but that's what it came to be called -- did not arise from the dust. Wills, refusing to be restricted, subsumed virtually every genre available to him at the time, from blues to big band, popular song to old-timey, and forged something new and exciting, something uniquely of the American South yet universally accessible. Among the first bands of its kind -- the term country music had not yet been applied to white Southern music, and Wills detested the "hillbilly" tag -- to incorporate drums and electric guitars, as well as jazzy brass, Wills and his musicians, whom he gave unprecedented creative leeway, were as vital an American musical institution as any. Yet with dozens of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys compilation albums on the market, ranging from single-disc primers to encyclopedic collections of radio transcriptions, the consumer, particularly the initiate, might understandably be flummoxed. Where to begin? Rhino's two-disc Anthology, released in the early '90s, remains the single tidiest summation of the Wills oeuvre, but for a next step up, Legends of Country Music is the way to go.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,17,20,21 and 22)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,21,22 and 23)

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Disc 3 (try tracks 2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10,11,12,13,15,18,19,20,21,22,25,26 and 27)

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Disc 4 (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,10,11,12,14,15,16,18,19,21,22 and 23)

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