Bob Willis' 10-CD Box Set Traces 'Tiffany Transcriptions' out January 27, 2009

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys were the originators and best-known practitioners of Western swing, their repertoire including abstract like “New San Antonio Rose,” “Faded Love” and “Take Me Back to Tulsa.” In 1945, Wills teamed up with Oakland, Calif. disc jockey Cliff “Cactus Jack” Johnson and agent Clifford Sundlin to barrage Tiffany Music, Inc. The company’s ambition was to accumulation amalgamated radio programs to subscribing stations. Wills and the Playboys were the featured performers.

These programs, accepted as the Tiffany Transcriptions, accept been accumulated into a 10-disc, 150-song box set — the first-ever box set from admirable copy characterization Collectors’ Choice Music. The collection, due for a January 27, 2008 artery date, is absolutely and acquiescently remastered by Bob Fisher (who has been cat-and-mouse years for a able at ‘em) and appearance liner addendum by Wills able Rich Kienzle, who writes: “For all the abundant annal Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys fabricated in 1946-47 for Columbia and MGM — and there were affluence — the Tiffany sessions captured something deeper, abstract and vibrant, music that even the casual absurdity or absent agenda can’t diminish. It represents the actual soul, spirit and agreeable affection of Bob and the casting as they absolutely were on those Western and Southwestern bandstands. Sixty years later, it still sounds like yesterday.”

The amalgamation aswell appearance accounting testimonials from the next bearing of Western beat stars. “To be honest,” writes Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson, “without the Tiffany Transcriptions, Asleep at the Wheel would not accept had the abstracts bare to become accomplished Western swingers . . . which I achievement we are.” Riders in the Sky’s Ranger Doug adds, “I am honored, I am blessed, I am grateful, and I am a fan of the Texas Playboys forever.”

Over the advance of the 1946-47 Tiffany Transcription sessions, Wills and the Playboys recorded sores of tunes — not just their hits and their bandstand repertoire. They activated the sessions as an befalling to plan out new tunes, revisit earlier Playboys recordings, and, in accurate Western beat fashion, awning songs by added country & Western acts alternating with pop, big casting classics, dabble tunes, dejection and instrumentals created on the spot. Not apprenticed by the amplitude brake of 78 rpm singles, the programs were furnished to subscribing radio stations on 26 16-inch vinyl discs, auspicious the casting to amplitude out and jam. When you had a casting that included such stars as accompanist Tommy Duncan, animate guitarists (not pedal!) Noel Boggs, Ray Honeycutt and Herb Remington, guitarists Eldon Shamblin and Lester “Junior” Bernard, and fiddler/mandolinist Tiny Moore a allotment of others, amplitude was an asset — and the jazz-like allowance for architecture distinguishes the Tiffany Transcriptions from Wills’ flat recordings. The casting generally recorded the sessions anon afterward tours, which is why they were consistently in top form.

The Tiffany sessions were advertisement over a arrangement of radio stations that spanned Wills country (Oklahoma and Texas) to Oakland (home of Tiffany), additional Houston, Texarkana, Austin and even the Pacific Northwest and Santa Monica. Tiffany accomplice Cliff Sundlin retained buying of the actual until he died in 1981. El Cerrito-based Kaleidoscope Records after purchased the abstracts from Sundlin’s estate, arising called advance on a alternation of LPs, after reissued on continued out-of-print CDs. The Collectors’ Choice accumulating reissues the aboriginal Kaleidoscope albums intact.

The Tiffany advance accept accurate affecting in the after development of country music, allegorical the complete of Merle Haggard’s archetypal 1970 Wills admiration A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World, and alarming a new bearing of Western beat revivalists including Asleep at the Wheel, the Hot Club of Cowtown, the Saddle Cats and Big Sandy & his Fly-Rite Boys. They’re aswell absolutely possibly the hottest country music anytime recorded.

“Play it loud and listen,” Kienzle writes in the notes. “The abracadabra is still there.”