Hide Article Text (OCR)
Sunday, February 1U, iy/4jn Sunday Newsicia-rive iav, 17. itial lion. 11 be club West eria. ocia-veB, vice ison, •lsen,in December when this photograph was taken, Wills suffered aWestern Swing King’s Last Album Features Booklet By WTSU ProfBv ANN MEL1NThe famous Country Western singer had struck up his fiddle and belted out the tune several times now. But he still had an inkling he was missing the proper emphasis here and there.Quizzically, he looked over at Dr Charles Townsend, the West Texas State University professor who was attending the Dallas recording session.“Am 1 getting it right. Doc?Merle Haggard asked Townsend,The CW giant had put the question to the right man. After ten years of research on the life and times of Western Swing king Bob Wills, Dr. Townsend was well-equipped to advise Haggard on how to turn out a tune for an album that promises to be the last tribute to the idol of Haggard, Townsend and thousando of truck drivers, oil field worker? and just plain folks throughout the nation.The two-record album, scheduled to be released in March on the United Artist label, is entitled “Homecoming.”Originally, the album was to be called What Makes Bob Holler?” A Bong by the same name written by Cindy Walker, attempts to answer the question of Bob Willsville fans who are wondering why their favorite fiddler couldn't get through a tune without pelting out a resounding “AAw-haaa.The more somber title ot “Homecoming was given to the album, however, when it became clear to the reunited members of Wills’ old band that the Dallas recording session last December was to be their laBt with their 68-vear-old leader.' On Sunday, Dec. 2, about a half-dozen members of the Texas Playboys, Wills old band, gathered at the head fiddler s home in Fort Worth to talk old times and warm up for the next day's recording session The following day, the ensemble met at the recording studio in Dallas, the city in which they made their first recording together in 1932.Wills, who has been almost totally paralyzed since suffering the first of two strokes four years ago, was the dominating presence in the cavernous recording studio. ,Wheeled into the studio by the Townsends and his wife, Betty, he looked fatigued but in goodOral History Grantspirits. His illness had deprived him of movement in all save his right hand and arm, and he was able to speak only with difficulty.But the flea-bitten old Turkey crooner was determined to get through the recording session he’d been wanting to have with his Playboys for many years.And before the day’s work was done, Wills had managed a croaking and faint “AAw-haaa and had ended the tune. When You Leave Amarillo, (originally written for him by Mrs. Walker) with an emphatic “Cut out the lights!’Wills left the studio tired but contented. He didn't return to the next day's session The evening before he apparently suffered a stroke in his sleep. He never regained consciousness. He still remains comatose in a Dallas hospital.But the Texas Playboys weren’t going to let gnef stand in the way of completing the album which is expected to be Wills’ last. They returned to the studio the next day.Unable to make the first day s session and uncognizant of what being a day late would mean, Merle Haggard showed up in the studio on Tuesday, Dec. 4.For 39 years, Haggard told reporters, he had dreamed of recording with Bob WillB. And I was just a foot away and now it’s still a dream.Haggard had learned of plans for a last album by Wills and asked record producer Tommy Allsup if he could sit in with the band. Dr. Townsend said Haggard asked if he could sing on the album, and perhaps play a Uttie fiddle (“He's been learning to play the fiddle,” Townsend said).Allsup told him ‘why, sure, you can play,' but he reminded this famed CW singer that he’d have to work for union wage scale just like the rest of the boys. He agreed. And that’s how old Merle got to be A Playboy For A Day,” Dr. Townsend said.Dr. Townsend said Haggard was to sing and fiddle on three songs in the album, \ earning,“I Wonder if You Feel The Way I Do, and the “Texas Playboy’B Theme.” For the latter tune, Townsend and one of Wills close friends, Don Dennis, had to jot down the lyrics for Haggard.“He went through it, but couldn’t get just the right emphasis in spots Now Dennis and I can’t sing a lick, but we had to go through it to show Haggard how it went. Then he'd try it again, and afterwards ask me,‘Am I getting it right, Doc?The assist he gave Haggard wasn’t the only role Dr. Townsend played in creating the album.Back in the old days, when Wills’ western swing was becoming legendary, his music would erupt over the radio waves with a plunk of a steel guitar, a twang of a fiddle string and a holler of a radio announcer, crying THE TEXAS PLAYBOYS ARE ON THE AIR!” .Fittingly, the “Homecoming album begins with that same kind of introduction. After the guitar, after the fiddle, the first voice listeners will be hearing will be the one that gets exercised at Panhandle rodeos in the summer and is daily heard in discourses on history at WTSU.Although he gets in just seven words on the sound track, Dr. Townsend has written several thousand words on the subject of Wills that will be appearing both in a book he's writing, as well a a booklet that will be enclosed ir* each of the albums to be sold by United Artists.His book, “San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills,” will be published in a music series this year by the University of Illinois press. The work follows Wills from his begin nings in the dusty cotton fields of his native Turkey until those last twilight hours in the Dallas recording studio.And the booklet that will be a companion to the two-record album will be a synthesized version of the same story. Townsend recounted an interesting storv behind the booklet.Originally, the WTSU professor was commissioned to wnte two paragraphs about Wills that were to be accompanied by blurbs by other experts, all of which were to appear on the back of the album jacket, he said.Townsend asked a United Artist representative about the length of the piece, and he was told to make it as long as you want. We’ll edit it. Write 20 pages if you want. The WTSU professor wrote 31 pages. He sent his essay to the company along with several rare photographs of Wills dating back to his earliest known musical appearances circa 1917 in Turkey.This week, Townsend said he got a phone call from United Artists. The response was quick, since the professor said he’d only mailed his material the previous Friday.“The United Artist executive told me he’d ‘flipped out’ over what I’d sent. Told me they’d changed their plans and were going to box the album and enclose my booklet inside each copy.”For Bud Townsend, the enthusiastic reception for hiB ten-year “labor of love is exhilarating.The WTSU professor says he's been building up to this point since he was a kid in East Texas — since he first began tapping his shoes and clapping his hands to the sounds of America s own music — Negro jazz, downhome country and folk, and, not least of all. the western swing that a Turkey fiddler named Bob Wills invented and made famous.For that reason, Townsend says, he didn't choose the topic for what promises to be his most important piece of research. It chose him.
Newspaper Details
Canyon Sunday News
Canyon, Texas, US
Sun, Feb 10, 1974
Page 6
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
TX, USA 02 Nov 2023
Other Publications Near Canyon, Texas
Canyon City News
The Randall County News
Canyon Stayer
Canyon Sunday News
Canyon News
