33 Bob Wills (1905-1975) and his Texas Playboys “Ida Red” 1938 and “New San Antonio Rose” 1940

“According to both Wills and his musicians, the band in the late thirties and early forties was the best Wills ever had. This band—actually, two bands in one—gave Wills such breadth of repertory that it is doubtful any other orchestra in American musical history ever approached it. The band was reputed to have had a repertory of thirty-six hundred selections by 1938. This may account, at least in part, for Wills’s appeal to people of all ages and stages of life” (Charles Townsend, San Antonio Rose, 1976). A hit song for the Playboys, Chuck Berry would later transform Ida Red into Maybellene. Their 1940 recording of  “New San Antonio Rose” is listed on the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.

Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys "Ida Red"

Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys "New San Antonio Rose"