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Sollie Paul "Tex" Williams was an American Western swing musician. He is best known for his talking blues style; his biggest hit was the novelty song, "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! ", which held the number one position on the Billboard chart for sixteen weeks in 1947. "Smoke" was the No. 5 song on Billboard's Top 100 list for 1947, and was No. 1 on the country chart that year. It can be heard during the opening credits of the 2006 movie, Thank You for Smoking.
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.
Donnell Clyde Cooley, better known as 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.
"Detour " is a Western swing ballad written by Paul Westmoreland in 1945. The original version was by Jimmy Walker with Paul Westmoreland and His Pecos River Boys, issued around the beginning of November 1945.
"Temptation" is a popular song published in 1933, with music written by Nacio Herb Brown and lyrics by Arthur Freed.
This is a list of notable events in country music that took place in the year 1945.
Herbert Clayton Penny was an American accomplished banjo player and practitioner of Western swing. He worked as a comedian best known for his backwoods character "That Plain Ol' Country Boy" on TV with Spade Cooley. He was married to country singer Sue Thompson from 1953–63.
"Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby" is a song written by Louis Jordan and Billy Austin. The song's first recording, by Jordan, was made on October 4, 1943. It was released as the B-side of a single with "G.I. Jive" with the title "Is You Is or Is You Ain't ". The song reached No. 1 on the US folk/country charts, number two for three weeks on the pop chart, and number three on the R&B chart.
"Wolverton Mountain" is a country music song and 1962 crossover hit that established Claude King's career as an American country singer-songwriter. The song was a rewrite of the original version by Merle Kilgore, which was based on a real person named Clifton Clowers. Clowers lived on Woolverton Mountain, located north of Morrilton, Arkansas, some 50 miles west of Little Rock. The song spent nine weeks at the top of the Billboard country chart in the United States in June and July 1962. A giant crossover hit, "Wolverton Mountain" reached number six on the Billboard 100 pop chart and number three on the easy listening chart.
"Take Me Down" is a song recorded by American country music band Alabama. It was released in May 1982 as the second single from Alabama's album Mountain Music.
"San Antonio Rose" is a swing instrumental introduced in late 1938 by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Quickly becoming the band's most popular number, Wills and band members devised lyrics, which were recorded on April 16, 1940, and released on Okeh 5694 in August as "New San Antonio Rose." Despite having completed a lengthy Hillbilly/Folk chart run in 1939, which culminated at #1, it quickly rose to the top again, in early 1941. It went on to become the band's theme song for the next forty years, reverting to its original title.
"Roly Poly" is a humorous Western swing standard written by Fred Rose in 1946. In the song, Roly Poly is a very active boy who eats continuously to keep his strength up. Each verse ends with:
Spade Cooley's Western Swing Song Folio was the first songbook to identify the big Western dance band music as Western Swing. In October 1944, "Billboard made the following announcement, unceremoniously giving the subgenre its common label for the first time in a national publication: 'Spade Cooley will put out 25 of his original tunes, together with an album of band numbers and suggestions on arrangements for Western Bands. Book to be titled 'Western Swing'." All songs in the folio list both Spade Cooley and Smokey Rogers as co-writers.
"Always Late " is a song co-written and recorded by American country music artist Lefty Frizzell. It was the fifth single released from his 1951/1952 album Listen to Lefty. It peaked at number one in 1951 and became his fourth release to hit the top.
"Straighten Up and Fly Right" is a 1943 song written by Nat King Cole and Irving Mills and one of the first vocal hits for the King Cole Trio. It was the trio's most popular single, reaching number one on the Harlem Hit Parade for ten nonconsecutive weeks. The single also peaked at number nine on the pop charts. "Straighten Up and Fly Right" also reached number one for six nonconsecutive weeks on the Most Played Jukebox Hillbilly Records.
"Guitar Boogie" is a guitar instrumental recorded by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith in 1945. It was one of the first recordings in the style later dubbed "hillbilly boogie" to reach a widespread audience, and eventually sold nearly three million copies. It was the first guitar instrumental to climb the country music charts, and then crossover and also gain high rankings on the popular music charts. "Guitar Boogie" has been interpreted and recorded by a variety of musicians. It is among the songs discussed as the first rock and roll record.
Go West Young Man is a compilation album of songs on one 10" vinyl record by Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters released in 1950 featuring songs that were sung by Crosby and the Sisters with a Western-type genre. This album is one of the first by Crosby to not be released on 78 rpm records before going straight to an LP or set of 45s. The album includes several songs which had already enjoyed Billboard chart success. “Along the Navajo Trail” reached the No. 2 position in 1945 and "One Hundred and Sixty Acres", "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?" and "Quicksilver" also charted.
"You Can't Break My Heart" is a country music song written by Spade Cooley and Smokey Rogers, performed by Spade Cooley and His Orchestra, and released on the Columbia label. In April 1946, it reached No. 3 on the Billboard folk chart. It was also ranked as the No. 19 record in Billboard's 1946 year-end folk juke box chart.
References
- ↑ Lange, Smile When You Call Me a Hillbilly, p. 109: "In March 1946, Cooley made the cover of Billboard; an accompanying story reported his drawing over twelve thousand patrons a weekend at the Rancho [Riverside Rancho ballroom]."
- ↑ Autobiography of Julian Aberbach Archived 2011-09-23 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Whitburn, The Billboard Book of Top 40 Country Hits.
- ↑ Whitburn, Joel (2004). The Billboard Book Of Top 40 Country Hits: 1944-2006, Second edition. Record Research. p. 375.
- ↑ Billboard Aug 4, 1945. page 19.
