One of the great joys I get out of doing SWING ON THIS is the chance to pair up things that might, upon first and even second glance, seem incongruous. I will always be grateful for your indulgence in this area; over the years, you’ve… Read More »20 NOVEMBER 2021
This week on SWING ON THIS, Tin Pan Alley songwriters of the 1920s supply us with three famous tunes, all done up as western-swing numbers. Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys check in with their ‘40s radio transcription of the timeless number from Fats Waller… Read More »13 NOVEMBER 2021
This time around, I’m happy to announce that Shelby Eicher will be dropping by the SWING ON THIS studio, and he and I will be talking about and playing several cuts from his brand-new disc, SWING. Like SWING ON THIS, Shelby’s excellent CD is chock-full… Read More »6 NOVEMBER 2021
There’s a definite seasonal vibe to this week’s episode of SWING ON THIS, with Halloween-ish tunes that begin with Bob Wills and end with Tom Morrell and His Time-Warp Tophands doing a nice instrumental named after a famous genus of dinosaur. In between, more somewhat… Read More »30 OCTOBER 2021
Like a lot of people around here — and, in fact, around the world — I miss Steve Ripley a lot. I think I’ve written here before that he and I went back to Oklahoma State in the late ‘60s, a time when we were… Read More »23 OCTOBER 2021
It’s Tulsa Time once again on SWING ON THIS, with a good half-dozen T-town stars represented on this Saturday’s playlist. From the classic sound of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, we swing on up to contemporary times with James Robert Webb and the Bagsby… Read More »16 OCTOBER 2021
This week on SWING ON THIS, we’ll remember George Frayne IV, aka Commander Cody, with a trio of his tunes. I first saw Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen in 1973 with my friend Tim Fletcher at the Fox Theater in Long Beach,… Read More »9 OCTOBER 2021
I got to know the late Gary Stewart a little bit when I was working the country-music beat at the TULSA WORLD; at one point, he was interested in having me collaborate on some sort of Civil War project he had in his head. He… Read More »2 OCTOBER 2021
Because I got an unusual amount of commentary on the Bob Wills big-band-style song I played last week, “When It’s Honey Suckle Time in the Valley” (yeah, that’s the way “honeysuckle” is spelled on the original record label), I thought I’d start this week’s SWING… Read More »25 SEPTEMBER 2021
Although their duties have changed a bit over the years, the A&R (artists and repertoire) people at record labels are generally responsible for overseeing recording sessions and suggesting songs to be recorded by an act. In the pre-Internet days, they exerted a tremendous amount of… Read More »18 SEPTEMBER 2021