Last week, SWING ON THIS featured a little bit of Bach, courtesy of a weirdly compelling LP called CLASSICAL COUNTRY, one of two discs that came out from the producer Snuff Garrett’s Texas Opera Company in the ‘70s. Because I’ve received so many comments on… Read More »8 May 2021
Longtime listeners know that they’re liable to hear just about anyone on SWING ON THIS. However, in the 18 years that the show’s been on the air, I honestly don’t believe we’ve every had Johann Sebastian Bach on the playlist. Well, all of that changes this… Read More »1 May 2021
This week on SWING ON THIS, we celebrate the presence of women in western swing and cowboy jazz with an hour emphasizing their vocal and bandleading contributions to the genre. And yes, I admit to getting a little far afield a time or two —… Read More »24 April 2021
This Saturday on SWING ON THIS, I seem once again to have an unusual amount of pop and jazz cover tunes done western-swing style. The discriminating listener — and if you’re reading this, I know you’re one of ‘em — will hear swinging versions of… Read More »17 April 2021
Saturday on SWING ON THIS, we celebrate one of the great ones — Meherrin, Virginia native and longtime Tulsa resident Roy Clark, born on April 15, 1933. Roy, of course, was hardly confined to the western-swing genre — although he certainly did some good work… Read More »10 APRIL 2021
This Saturday, as is our custom, artists represented on the SWING ON THIS playlist range from the familiar — Bob Wills, Hank Thompson, Asleep at the Wheel, etc. — to the undeservedly obscure, like Oscar Aleman and Donnie Rohrs, who otherwise have little in common… Read More »3 April 2021
As western-swing fans know, Bob Wills and Milton Brown performed together in a band out of Fort Worth called the Light Crust Doughboys, whose main purpose was to advertise the Burrus Mill’s Light Crust Flour. Brown left first to start his own band, followed shortly… Read More »27 March 2021
Because Tulsa is — as I’m fond of saying on the show — the place where western swing grew up, each episode of SWING ON THIS is likely to feature a good number of artists from T-town and its environs. This Saturday,… Read More »20 March 2021
Over the past week or so, I’ve received brand-new CDs from two top contemporary western-swing acts: the Brazos Valley Boys and the Hot Texas Swing Band. Both of these terrific aggregations continue to help keep western swing alive, compelling, and viable, and you’ll be hearing a cut… Read More »13 March 2021
Like many other western-swing numbers — especially those of the double-entendre variety — “What’s the Matter with the Mill” has its origins in blues music. In fact, six years before Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys recorded their version (in 1936), Vocalion brought out the very first… Read More »6 March 2021
