Western swing
Noun
Meaning
Western swing (uncountable)
A 1930s to 1940s style of U.S. Southwestern country music with a jazz influence, meshing string bands with other instrumentation - especially drums, trumpet, piano, electric guitar and the steel guitar.
1989, Gunther Schuller, The Swing Era, O.U.P., p. 564:
"The most pervasive Southwestern music of all, especially on the radio: the early Western Swing bands, essentially string bands [...] who as early as the beginning 1930s featured guitarists playing improvised single-note lines. These players also pioneered the electric or amplified guitar."
Synonyms
Examples
I made a Christmas album a couple of years ago and just put it out on my Web site. It kind of smacked of this flavor. All of the reviews said it was Western swing even when it was Christmas standards.
Where I grew up, Bob Wills and his western swing was very popular. And western swing is not that far from jazz and blues.
Changing instrumentation Drums were scorned by early country musicians as being "too loud" and "not pure", but by 1935 Western swing big band leader Bob Wills had added drums to the Texas Playboys.
By the early 1950s a blend of Western swing, country boogie, and honky tonk was played by most country bands.
In his shows, the Commander draws from this deep catalogue, and has a penchant for growling out arcane but juicy facts about some of the vintage blues and western swing covers and CCHLPA originals.
The two were in their early teens when they played shuffles that borrowed more from Bob Wills’ western swing than from Memphis rockabilly.