James Robert Wills was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the founder of Western swing, he was known widely as the King of Western Swing. He was also noted for punctuating his music with his trademark "ah-haa" calls.
Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa metropolitan area, a region with 1,023,988 residents. The city serves as the county seat of Tulsa County, the most densely populated county in Oklahoma, with urban development extending into Osage, Rogers, and Wagoner counties.
John Simon Ritchie, better known by his stage name Sid Vicious, was an English musician, best known as the bassist for the punk rock band Sex Pistols. Despite dying in 1979 at age 21, he remains an icon of the punk subculture; one of his friends noted that he embodied "everything in punk that was dark, decadent and nihilistic."
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma and California during the 1930s and 1940s until a federal war-time nightclub tax in 1944 contributed to the genre's decline.
While the music of Oklahoma is relatively young, Oklahoma has been a state for just over 100 years, and it has a rich history and many fine and influential musicians.
Donnell Clyde "Spade" Cooley was an American convicted murderer and former Western swing musician, big band leader, actor, and television personality. In 1961 he was arrested and convicted for the April 1961 murder of his second wife, Ella Mae Evans.
Paul Steven Ripley was an American recording artist, record producer, songwriter, studio engineer, guitarist, and inventor. He entered the music industry in 1977. He was also the leader/producer of country rock band The Tractors.
The Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas, Texas (USA). has been called, Texas' Most Historic Music Venue and since its inception has had a colorful set of proprietors. Originally built by O.L. Nelms, an eccentric Dallas millionaire, for his close friend, western swing bandleader Bob Wills, the venue opened in 1950 as Bob Wills' Ranch House. When Wills left In the early 50's Nelms leased the sprawling venue to notorious nightclub owner turned assassin Jack Ruby. Mr. Ruby eventually had a nervous breakdown and lost the lease, but he is credited with hosting some of the best black entertainers of the day including Count Basie, Ruth Brown, and Nat King Cole. The Nat King-Cole show took place in 1954 in the racially segregated Jim Crow South, where an affluent black audience sat in front, in the premium seats, while the white patrons stood in the back to listen to the legend.
KTSB is a commercial radio station in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is owned by Griffin Communications and airs a sports radio format. The station carries local sports talk. KTSB studios and offices are located across from Guthrie Green in Downtown Tulsa, and it transmits from a three-tower facility located along East 11th Street in an undeveloped area of East Tulsa.
Ernest Lawrence Fields was an American trombonist, pianist, arranger and bandleader. He first became known for leading the Royal Entertainers, a territory band which was based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and toured along a circuit stretching from Kansas City, Kansas, to Dallas, Texas. In later years he led a band that recorded in Los Angeles.
KAKC is a commercial AM radio station in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The station airs a conservative talk radio format and is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. The studios are on South Yale Avenue at the Tulsa Event Center in Southeast Tulsa.
John Steven Wooley is a writer, novelist, historian, lecturer, filmmaker, and radio and TV host who specializes in the movies, literature, and music of the 1930s and ‘40s as well as other pop-culture histories.
Eldon Shamblin was an American guitarist and arranger, particularly important to the development of Western swing music as one of the first electric guitarists in a popular dance band. He was a member of the Strangers during the 1970s and 1980s and was the last surviving member of Bob Wills' band the Texas Playboys.
Crystal Ballroom, originally built as Cotillion Hall, is a historic building on Burnside Street in Portland, Oregon, United States. Cotillion Hall was built in 1914 as a ballroom, and dance revivals were held there through the Great Depression. Starting in the 1960s, the hall has also been host to many popular pop, rock, folk, blues and jazz artists, as well as beat poetry and other entertainment.
Downtown Tulsa is an area of approximately 1.4 square miles (3.6 km2) surrounded by an inner-dispersal loop created by Interstate 244, US 64, and US 75. The area serves as Tulsa's financial and business district, and is the focus of a large initiative to draw tourism, which includes plans to capitalize on the area's historic architecture. Much of Tulsa's convention space is located in downtown, such as the Tulsa Performing Arts Center and the Tulsa Convention Center, and the BOK Center. Prominent downtown sub-districts include the Blue Dome District, the Tulsa Arts District, and the Greenwood Historical District, which includes the site of ONEOK Field, a baseball stadium for the Tulsa Drillers opened in 2010.
"Take Me Back to Tulsa" is a Western swing standard song. Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan added words and music to the melody of the traditional fiddle tune "Walkin' Georgia Rose" in 1940. The song is one of eight country music performances selected for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs That Shaped Rock & Roll".
The Vanity Ballroom Building is a public building located at 1024 Newport Street in Detroit, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Although the building is recorded as the last intact ballroom of the multiple Detroit dance halls that hosted big bands in the 1930s–50s, such claims ignore the abandoned yet still standing Grande Ballroom on Grand River Avenue.
Johnnie Lee Wills was an American Western swing fiddler popular in the 1930s and 1940s.
Westerns swing originated in the 1920s and 1930s; small towns in the US Southwest. Although sometimes subject to the term "Texas swing" it is widely associated with Tulsa, others contend that "Western Swing music finds deep roots in the dust bowl of Oklahoma", and its influences include jazz from the major urban centers of the United States. Its stylistic origins lie in Old Time, Western, blues, folk, swing, Dixieland and jazz. Writing in Rolling Stone, Dan Hicks described it as Texas-bred music grafted to jazz, or as "white country blues with a syncopated beat.".
Diamond Ballroom is a historic music venue and dance hall located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The building opened in November 21, 1964. Oklahoma City attorney Ralph Russell, Sr. and several local business partners opened the venue wanting to provide a space for local and traveling country-swing bands to perform in Oklahoma City. The building was originally advertised as "The Largest Dance Floor in the Southwest" with a 50 foot by 150 foot maple wood floor. The Diamond Ballroom continues to provide Oklahoma City with a place to see live music and touring musicians.
