Search - Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, Jack Guthrie, Spade Cooley :: Swing West! Vol. 3: Western Swing { Various Artists }

With trained, meticulous pop and jazz musicians as their sidemen, postwar California bandleaders created a more grandiose and metronomic brand of swing; they stuck more to arrangements and improvised less than their Texas-Oklahoma predecessors. Spade Cooley, whose orchestra included harps (the stringed instrument, not the harmonica), ruled with such efforts as "Oklahoma Stomp," and Tex Williams & the Western Caravan's "Cowboy Opus No. 1" is every bit as pretentious as its title suggests. Still, you could count on Merle Travis to swing the form harder than ever on tracks like "Let's Settle Down (To Runnin' Around Together)," and Cliffie Stone, though often smooth and erratic, could turn in stomps like "Barracuda" that threatened to go over the top. Like its two companion volumes (Bakersfield and Guitar Slingers), this compilation fills an important gap, telling pretty much everything you need to know about the form. --John Morthland