Austin City Limits Announces New Class of Hall of Fame Inductees: Asleep at the Wheel, Loretta Lynn, Guy Clark, Flaco Jiménez and Townes Van Zandt

 Austin City Limits -Loretta Lynn

Austin City Limits has announced thier newest class of ACL Hall of Fame inductees. The five legendary artists being honored are Western swing institution Asleep at the Wheel, country trailblazer Loretta Lynn, songwriting legend Guy Clark, master accordionist Flaco Jiménez and the legendary Townes Van Zandt. The announcement was made yesterday evening by ACL Executive Producer Terry Lickona at Austin’s Rattle Inn. The 2015 ACL Hall of Fame inductees will be celebrated at a ceremony highlighted by all-star music performances to be held on June 15th at ACL’s studio home, Austin’s ACL Live at The Moody Theater. The event will be open to the public and ticket onsale information will be announced at a later date.

“I am truly honored to be included in this year’s ACL Hall of Fame,” said Asleep at the Wheel founder Ray Benson who was on hand for the announcement. “After Willie did the pilot in 1974-5, Asleep at the Wheel was selected to do the first regular episode of ACL. Joe Gracey and I were roommates then, and he was booking the show. He asked who we wanted to share the bill with and I said, ‘The Texas Playboys, Bob Wills’ great band!’ That episode is now housed at the Smithsonian. Over the years I have appeared in numerous episodes both as a featured performer and a guest performer, and I cannot imagine our 45-year career without the exposure that ACL afforded us. Many thanks to the great staff who make the show what it is!”

ACL also announced the first round of new tapings for the series upcoming Season 41: breakout country rebel and Grammy-nominated Sturgill Simpson, acclaimed rock outfit The War on Drugs, and, in a special Bob Wills’ tribute, new Hall of Fame inductees Asleep at the Wheel, joined by guest stars including The Avett Brothers and Amos Lee.

The Austin City Limits Hall of Fame was established in 2014 in conjunction with the iconic television series’ 40th Anniversary to celebrate the legacy of legendary artists and key individuals who have been instrumental in the landmark series remarkable 40 years as an American music institution. The invitation-only inaugural induction ceremony took place April 26, 2014 at ACL’s original Studio 6A. Hosted by Oscar-winning actor and Texas native Matthew McConaughey, the historic evening honored the first class of inductees, featuring American music icon Willie Nelson who starred on the original ACL pilot program, Austin blues rock giants Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble and legendary steel guitarist and Grammy Award-winning music producer Lloyd Maines, in addition to non-performers who played a key role in the evolution of the program: original show creator Bill Arhos and longtime ACL supporter, Texas Longhorns football head coach Darrell Royal. A star-studded line-up paid tribute with incredible music performances, including: Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Buddy Guy, Robert Randolph, Doyle Bramhall II and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Ken Burns’ Country Music Documentary Coming to PBS in 2018

Ken Burns

I’ve been hearing about Ken Burns’ new project focusing on Country Music for over a ear. Now PBS has made it a realty b announcing that the anticipated documentary, succinctly called called “Country Music,” will air in 2018.

That will be about 5 years worth of work on the one series. Sure that’s a long time
but it helpes to keep in mind that it’s a year less than he spent on his ten-episode miniseries detailing jazz. And given Burn’s attention to detail ranging from The Civil War and the history of baseball it’s satisfying to see that there is care being applied ot a genre we all love.

The origins and fundamentals of roots, folk and country music are vast . deep at least as deep and vast as many of the topics Burns has tackled before. I have faith that this is going to be a fascinating (and lengthy) series.

From the release “The country series explores the question, “what is country music.” It will track the careers of the Carter family, Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and others.”

“For over a century, country music has been a pivotal force in American culture, expressing the hopes, joys, fears and hardships of everyday people in songs lyrical, poignant and honest,” said PBS President Paula A. Kerger. “It is fitting that we have two of America’s master storytellers, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, tell the story on film of an art form that for generations has told America’s story in song.”

The documentary will follow the rise of bluegrass music with Bill Monroe and note how one of country music’s offspring – rockabilly – mutated into rock and roll in Memphis. It will show how Nashville slowly became not just the mecca of country music, but “Music City USA.” All the while, it will highlight the constant tug of war between the desire to make country music as mainstream as possible and the periodic reflexes to take it back to its roots.

That;s the part that will be interesting to me, how Burns handles the splinter threads of the genre. The aforementioned Bluegrass The Outlaws, Bakersfield and, as Steve Earle helped shepherd and deemed, “Great Credibility Scare of the Mid-1980s.”

10 Country Music Awards Moments to Remind Us It Didn’t Always Suck

charlie-rich-envelope-john-denver-cma-1975

Remember when Loretta Lynne won CMA Awards with Loretta Lynn announced as Entertainer of the Year? How about when johnny Cash hosted the event.

Of course you don’t. It was decades ago and most of you weren’t even born yet.

There was a time that the Country Music Awards, like the industry and culture itself, had an edge and a spirit of danger. Performers would roll off a couch in a studio somewhere in town to accept their award. Sometimes they were drunk and looking for a fight. Below find some great moments from CMA history to help us steel through the glitter-choked tailgate party it’s become.

The one video I wanted o find most of all was one of Charlie Rich burning the piece of paper announcing John Denver as the Country Music Association “Entertainer of the Year” at the 1975 CMA Awards. Alas that little gem of industry spontaneity has been shut down.

Dolly Parton sneaks up on Randy Travis

Waylon Jennings performs “America” on what looks like an ’80’s CMA

CMA’s hosted by Johnny Cash in 1978
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkbBJE76KU0

Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge perform Me and Bobby McGee at the 1974 CMA Awards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fujhzkyYias

Sonny James and Bobby Goldsboro present the award for the Country Music Association Instrumentalist to Jerry Reed in 1971.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko39cIFowRY

1974 CMA Awards with Loretta Lynn announced as Entertainer of the Year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8370bQ5Izo

Willie Nelson Induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame by Johnny Cash at the 27th CMA Awards 1993
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMrh7aPaagg

Alison Krauss & Union Station performs ‘My Poor Old Heart’ on the 2005 CMA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuGJaU25ZIA

1968 Country Music Awards with an induction of Bob Wills into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Skip over the insipid performance by Bobby Goldsboro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BYNuPL0Te4

In 1999 George Jones, recovering from a near-fatal car accident, was nominated for Single of the Year for his autobiographical ballad “Choices.”
CMA executives asked Jones to sing a shortened version of the nominated song, but he opted to stay home as a sign of his protest against the request.
Alan Jackson showed class and reverence for Jones worked “Choices” into the last portion of his scheduled performance of his current single, “Pop A Top.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_WmbAek0-4

“Strange and Wonderful Things Happen” : Interview with “My Fool Heart” Writer-Director Jeffrey Martin

For a movie slated for test-screening next month in Charlottesville, VA (fitting since the the movie takes place in Virginia) details on My Fool Heart (Facebook) are as rare as hen’s teeth.

Here’s what we do know, first the official  story brief :  “… Jim Waive stars as a humble Virginia diner singer who is the target of two London hit men in the debut feature film MY FOOL HEART from writer-director Jeffrey Martin.” “Throughout the movie, Jim Waive keeps losing his treasured possessions. Justin plays the Mysterious man who finds Jim’s lost things on the sidewalks of Nashville.”

Then there’s the extraordinary cast from Americana, Country and Bluegrass music fields – Elizabeth Cook, Justin Townes Earle, Merle Haggard, Wayne Henderson, Sarah Jarosz, Jim Lauderdale, Charlie McCoy, Jesse McReynolds, Dr. Ralph Stanley and Jim Waive and the Young Divorcees

Then there’s the oddly dark “Popcorn teaser” posted on YouTube.

I contacted the writer-director Jeffrey Martin on the road to shed some light on this intriguing film. He was very forthcoming in an email interview on  his motivation for the film and how how love of music helped to influence My Fool Heart.

I very much look forward to seeing this film soon and readers of this blog might feel the same way after reading this interview. Enjoy


Baron Lane – Who are some of your influences as a director?

Jeffrey Martin – MY FOOL HEART was influenced by Cassavettes and other directors who believed even if your bank account was low you could grab a camera and make a movie. It’s a stupid idea but it obviously influenced me.  When you make a really cheap film, you get to call the shots and take extravagant chances.  Sometimes they pay off.

BL – My Fool Heart is billed as a comedy, but based on what i’ve been able to glean online it looks more like a black comedy. Is that accurate?

JM – Most black comedies have a more bitter or cynical take on life. I think of MY FOOL HEART in the classical sense of comedy.  It’s about how things come out in the end and in this movie things do come out okay in the end.  But coming out okay is a serious struggle. For me, whenever you look closely at anything in life, especially the serious things like love, marriage, children, death, there is something comical. It’s like when things in life get so bad and crazy you have to just laugh.  In the South, tragedy and comedy seem tightly intertwined.  Weird and terrible things happen and people laugh about it.  Humor makes a lot of things more bearable.  Life is hard.  There’s not a lot of cynicism in this movie.

BL – What time period is the movie set in? How did that time period shape the music chosen for the movie?

JM – The movie is set today.  It’s also set in Virginia which is a place where long ago and today sit side-by-side.  That’s what I love about Virginia.  I grew up in California and Florida suburbs so when I first went to Virginia I was enchanted by the old things.  Even current things seem to have an old feeling in Virginia like a faded photograph or like you’re looking through wavy antique glass.  I love Virginia.  I spent 30 years there, but I’m not a native.  To be really from Virginia isn’t like a jacket you can buy or just put on.  The music chosen began in  Albemarle County, Virginia and moved outward.  If you’re into Americana or bluegrass music, you’ll notice all the lines and connections.  The geography lessons.

BL  – Where did your story of My Fool Heart  come from?

JM – I don’t know.  Strange things just pop into my head.  I saw Jim Waive, a local Charlottesville musician, playing for tips at the Blue Moon Diner and this whole crazy idea came into my head about a musician like Jim being hunted down by professional killers.  It seemed both serious and funny.  Like what kind of great music he might start writing under the pressure of death.  Like in the old westerns when the bad guys shot at your feet and made you dance.

BL – Cameron Crowe and Quentin Tarantino create films where the music becomes a character in the film. Does music come front and center in My Fool Heart?

JM- Music is huge in this film.  It’s the subject and it’s the air you breath watching the movie.   But the movie’s plot and characters are also commenting on the music you’re hearing which is a little unusual in a fictional feature film.  Also the bluegrass, country and Americana music – old and new – blend together in a way that maybe makes you think of the music’s history if you’re a music fanatic.  Crowe and Tarantino are both great, but they use music differently.

BL – What did you grow up listening to?

I had older brothers so I grew up deeply immersed in the music of the 1960’s and 1970’s:  Dylan, the Beatles, the Band, the Beach Boys, Van Morrison.  I went to college in North Carolina and first heard Emmylou Harris who had just moved away from Greensboro and cut her first album.  I got to see Lester Flatt when Marty Stuart was his teenage guitar player.  Also lots of bluegrass and pickers and bands like the Dillards who were playing locally then.  I was listening to that first Scruggs Brothers LP, Doug Sahm Band, John Hartford, Johnny Cash, Earl Scruggs, Mac Wiseman, Doc and Merle Watson.  The mid-Atlantic was an amazing musical region during the 70’s and 80’s with people like Emmylou Harris, Danny Gatton, Stevie Ray Vaughn playing in ridiculously tiny venues.  I stood next to all of them playing their sets, two feet away.  The Band, as well, with Richard Manuel singing in that beautiful voice.  I always liked old American sounds.

Lucinda, who co-produced the movie, was from Charlottesville, Virginia and took me up there when I was 18.  She’s from really old Virginia culture.  Her great grandfather, Col. Charles Marshall, was General Lee’s military secretary who spent the entire Civil War on Lee’s personal staff and wrote Lee’s famous Farewell to the Troops and is the guy between Lee and Grant in the schoolbook Appomattox painting.  Lucinda introduced me to the mountain people still living in Sugar Hollow where they had a farm.  Hand-churned butter, brown eggs, horses and wagons – I thought I was dreaming but there it was:  time frozen.  A lot of that gets into the movie somehow.  Lucinda went to country dances out there in the Hollow with the Virginia Vagabonds playing, some of those guys played at the White House for FDR.  For her, this would have been as a litle girl around the early 1960’s when Paul Clayton had his cabin near there. Bob Dylan visited the area for a week in 1962 and it seems to have revolutionized his world when he went back to New York and came up with “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright.”  Dylan writes about all that in “Chronicles.”  Dylan’s deep inside this movie.  Jesse McReynolds and other older bluegrass guys told me about Dylan’s influence on them.  We tend to think the river flowed the other way, but it was definitely two directions according Jesse.  It’s hard to underestimate the influence of Bob Dylan on music.  He’s way bigger than Hank Williams and that’s a stupid comment to make if you haven’t thought about it too much.  I dug into Appalachian music up one side and down the other and kept seeing Bob Dylan peeking out.  Growing up though I also listened to whatever came on the radio.  It was a great time.  As a teenager, I moved to Winter Haven, Florida where Gram Parsons was from.  He was a Snively so he was related to everyone down there.  I remember my next older brother talking about him and all that country music.  And in college in Greensboro, N.C., Emmylou Harris was playing down on Tate Street just a few years before so I picked up on her when the first album came out and never let go.  I remember being 15 in Florida and turning out all the lights in the house and listening to Johnny Cash “Folsom Prison” and imagining I was in jail.  Until I left Florida, part of me was.

BL – The cast for My Fool Heart -  Merle Haggard, Dr. Ralph Stanley, Jim Lauderdale, Elizabeth Cook, Justin Townes Earle – reads like a who’s who of classic country and Americana. What was the motivation behind casting such a heavy assortment of musicians?

JM – My joke rule was that nobody who was a SAG member could be in the movie.  Keep it to nonprofessional actors.  We did become a SAG movie though when Merle joined us.  The inspiration or idea came from this thought I had. I sat and watched Jim Waive play at the diner for tips and drew this imaginary line from the guys at the bottom playing for free and going all through the middle level and to the very top of the music business, the icons.  I thought the story was about that.  What is success?  Is it talent?  Luck?  I knew people at the top always considered themselves just a step away from that diner tip jar because you never forget where you came from.  And sure enough, a bunch of them dug the idea and wanted to play a part in it.  We wound up with Dr. Ralph Stanley and Jesse McReynolds, two IBMA Bluegrass Hall of Fame members.  Also Merle Haggard and Charlie McCoy, two Country Hall of Fame members.  I used to sit on my bed reading Dylan’s liner notes and I would always see the name Charlie McCoy.  It came full circle for me when Charlie agreed to give me a tour of Nashville and that old recording world of working with Elvis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash – all the greats.  That’s in the movie.  It’s worth the price of admission.  And Jesse McReynolds tells about playing with Bob Wills, amazing stuff.  But it’s not a documentary.  This all unfolds in the course of the story.

BL – Finding one musician that can act is pretty rare, where you concerned with the high odds of bad acting in such a large roster of musicians?

JM – Filming musicians is like handling dynamite.  You have to be on your toes.

Everybody gets nervous.  Merle was nervous.  I was nervous.  Ralph Stanley told me that he’d been dreading it for days.  But if you can help them relax and just take the temperature down and get into that space, strange and wonderful things happen.  Merle is powerful and mesmerizing. I wrote his lines, but Merle went deep into the country preacher.  And Justin Townes Earle is fantastic.  Most of the film, he’s silent.  Then at the end, he finally talks and he has the entire film on his shoulders.  Justin is a sweet, soulful, deep guy and he brought something  to the film that I never expected.  I actually expanded his part to use all his great footage.  Merle too.

BL – What was your background in music and how did you choose the music for the movie?

JM – I have no background in music.  I sang in my elementary school choir until the director tried to isolate where the bad voice was.  When I stopped singing and just faked it, she said, “That’s better.”  I have no talent which is good.  I’m 100% enthusiastic fan.  Musicians fear no competition from me.  I’m in awe of musicians.  I can’t duplicate what they do.  I’m not a director or writer with a guitar at home.  I suck at everything musical except loving it.   MY FOOL HEART’s soundtrack is the music I love:  Elizabeth Cook, Merle Haggard, Charlie McCoy, Jesse McReynolds, Wayne Henderson, Jim Lauderdale, Ralph Stanley, Justin Townes Earle.

BL  – If you could make a biographic film of one musician’s life who would it be and why?

JM – I don’t think I’d be interested.  The magic is in the songs, not the person. Documentary is a better angle on hitting that target.  A biopic wouldn’t be my thing.

Music Review: Willie Nelson – Heroes [Sony Legacy]

Reviewing a Willie Nelson album is like describing to someone a visit you’ve made to the Grand Canyon. Sure there are the facts and impressions but the shear majesty of what you’re in the presence of something larger than life anit can bow you into awe. But here goes…

Nelson has always been a serial collaborator. The Texas Yoda has cut tracks with so many people he’s become a  musical Keven Bacon. He’s shared the studio with  his country contemporaries Waylon, Merle, Ray to genre-crossers Julio Iglesias and Phish, but Willie is no longer just a country artist. Like Ray Charles, another of his collaborators, he’s jettisoned his original genre and elevated himself to simply American music.

This studio gregariousness shows that Willie is not willing to sit on a laureled pedestal. He is generous with his studio and stage time and willing to lend a little Texas outlaw mojo to others. His legacy is so firmly entrenched in history he seems to feel he can work with whomever,and do do whatever, strikes his fancy. This has resulted from the inspired to the perplexing, but it’s hardly ever boring.

At nine Willie’s new album, ‘Heroes,’ ups the collaboration ante, and sometime within a single song. The count is four,including Willie,  in the post-mortem ode to herb “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.” The song’s title was was originally the album’s title until Willie put the kibosh on the inevitable Walmart boycott. Willie might be an outlaw, but he’s also always been a shrewd businessman. On the song Willie seems to be having fun performing with his brother of the weed Snoop Dogg, along with a bemused-sounding Kris Kristofferson and Jamey Johnson, this collection get’s my vote for a “High” way men tour.

A Last of the Breed mini reunion occurs with Merle Haggard on a beautifully grizzled “Horse Called Music,” originally from the criminally overlooked 1989 album of the same title. Ray Price reprises Floyd Tillman’s classic “Cold War With You” with Willie and Lukas Nelson to suave cowboy effect.

The album’s title, Heroes, is a nod to the performers on the album as well as the musical influences that Willie has always honored. One clear influence on Willie Nelson, Bob Wills and the Western Swing genre is well represented with spirited renditions of Will’s “My Window Faces The South” and “Home In San Antone.”

Amongst the crowded studio the real purpose of “Heroes” appears to be a father’s introducing his son to a larger fan-base. Lukas and his band, The Promise of the Rea,l have been opening and backing for Willie for a couple of year as they honed the craft. But this is not crass nepotism as Lukas contributes a couple of the  best songs on the album with “Every Time He Drinks He Thinks of Her” and “The Sound of Your Memory,” His pleasing vocal style is somewhere between his old man’s phrasing and Jimmie Dale Gilmore keen. Also, he’s a solid guitarist and his Stratocaster flourishes provides a contemporary counterpart to Willie’s cowboy-jazz Trigger.

A contemporary theme runs through a selection of covers. An inspired, palatial version of Pearl Jam’s rumination on mortality “Just Breathe” takes on deeper level of poignancy as the song is sung with his son Lukas, and Willie approaches his 80th birthday. Tom Waits’  quasi-gospel  “Come On Up To The House” features Mickey Raphael’s excellent and understated harmonica work cultivated from being with Willie for many years. The song aligns dutifully with the original and also features Lucas and the ubiquitous Sheryl Crow, who is serviceable if unnecessary. Willie’s solo turn on Coldplay’s “The Scientist,” first seen on a Chipotle Super Bowl commercial, charms me into enjoying (okay, appreciating) the song.

The Willie-penned title song is said to be about fellow outlaw Billy Joe Shaver (in some cases literally), who appears here with a contemporary rabble-rouser of sorts, Jamey Johnson. This 4/4 waltz is a sentimental reminiscence of a musician who used to be “king of the bars,” but it just as well could be a testament to the current sad state of country music.

“Heroes” is an uneven affair. Like a ramshackle late-night guitar pull fueled by intoxents both legal and not, it’s a lot of fun and done with love of music, mutual respect and a seeming sense of harmonious happenstance sorely missing image-obsessed music industry.

Here’s to Willie being Willie.

Official site | Buy

My Jukebox – Amanda Shires

My Jukebox is a new Twang Nation feature where I ask musicians and other folks about their recent  listening choices.

photo Credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

For Americana chanteuse Amanda Shires music is ubiquitous. “I listen to music when the alarm goes off, when I ride or drive, when I can’t sleep, in the airport, when I shop, in a box with a fox…,” Shires says showing her inner Seuss.

‘Like a lot of musicians I listen to everything. I love great songs.  I don’t think I have a wide strike zone–I just think that if the song is there, then that’s why I like something. So, it could be anything from Nicki Minaj to Bob Wills…Bush to Beethoven..and a ton of songwriters.”

“I used to work at Ralph’s Records in Lubbock, TX so I was exposed to all sorts of things.  I got to hear a lot of music I wouldn’t have heard if I hadn’t worked there. That said,  I know what I can’t stand.”

Her current playlist reflects her current “winter moods.” and spans from the Gypsy-folk of DeVotchKa, to blues-garage duo The Black Keys and, showing her Texas roots, Waylon Jennings and Buck Owens .

1.  Out With The Tide – A.A. Bondy
2.  The Corner – Cory Branan
3.  100 Other Lovers – DeVotchKa
4.  Sweet Boy -  Dolorean (this whole album The Unfazed is amazing)
5.  Waitin In Your Welfare Line – Buck Owens
6.  Howlin’ for you – Black Keys
7.  You Can’t Talk To Me Like That Anymore – Rod Picott
8.  Wrecking Ball -  Gillian Welch
9.  Hank Williams Jr. Drunk as Hell Live!
10. Another Place Another Time – Jerry Lee Lewis
11. The Curse – Josh Ritter
12. Sixes and Sevens – Lucero
13. Black Rose-Waylon Jennings( all of Honky Tonk Heroes really)
14. Jewelbomb – Richard Buckner
15. My Narrow Mind-16 Horsepower

Amanda Shires’ new release,  Carrying Lightning comes out May 3/11. She will be be touring behind it soon after.

Neal McCoy, Linda Davis and Michael Martin Murphey are 2009 Texas Country Music Hall of Fame Inductees

  • Billboard.com posts on the South-By-Southwest tribute to Texas music legend Doug Sahm which featured performances by Jimmie Vaughan, the Gourds, Dave Alvin and Sarah Borges & the Broken Singles, Los Lobos, Delbert McClinton, Charlie Sexton, Little Willie G, Terry Allen and a collaboration between Joe “King” Carrasco and the Texas Tornados.
  • Two native East Texans are among three country music artists destined for the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame. Jacksonville native-turned-Longview resident Neal McCoy will join Panola County native Linda Davis and western singer-songwriter Michael Martin Murphey as 2009 inductees into the hall of fame. The hall of fame show is scheduled for 7 p.m. Aug. 15 at the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame facility, 300 W. Panola St. in Carthage.
  • From Country Standard Time:  Willie Nelson has postponed six tour dates due to illness, according to his web site. The illness was not specified.  Postponed dates were March 17 in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.; March 18 in Melbourne, Fla., March 19 in Panama City, Fla., March 20 in Choctaw, Miss., March 21 in Marksville, La. and March 22 in Springdale, Ark.
  • Famed moonshiner Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton died at the age of 61 at the his Parrotsville, Tennessee home. He allegedly committed suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide in an old Ford Fairlane he kept in a barn on his property  a few days before serving an 18-month sentence in Federal Prison for illegally brewing spirits and possessing a firearm as a felon. Read Johnny Knoxville’s fitting post here.

Previously Unreleased Recording of Bob Wills Discovered

A previously unreleased and unknown recording of Bob Wills has been discovered by a fan and former musician is available for purchase on bobwills.com.

From takecountryback.com:

An unknown recording of Western Swing legend Bob Wills has been discovered that has never been released to the public. Austin resident Dwight Adair, owner of www.bobwills.com learned of the recording’s existence through an email message sent to him by a Bob Wills fan and former musician Gary Frietag of Florida. Mr. Frietag revealed to Mr. Adair that the recording was made on a reel-to-reel tape deck by a musician friend, Ray Riggs, also of Florida. Mr. Riggs made the recording in a hotel in Fresno, California, in 1949/50 when Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys were appearing there. Mr. Riggs has kept the tape recording, for all these years, hoping to find the appropriate person(s) or organization to which he could entrust the recording for posterity.

Mr. Riggs states, “I tried to contact the Wills estate but never heard back from them. So I just kept it, hoping that someday it would see the light of day.”

It’s been over fifty years since the recording was made.

“I was dumbfounded when I learned of the recording,” Mr. Adair says. “To think this recording has existed all these years and has never been released is absolutely amazing.”