Light Crust Doughboys Biographies

 

Light Crust Doughboys Biographies

One of the first bands that would become Western swing, the Light Crust Doughboys, once featured the combined talents of Western swing's two most renowned figures, Bob Wills and Milton Brown. That band under the name, The Forth Worth Doughboys made their first recordings on Feb. 2, 1932 with their first single:  “Nancy Jane,” a jugband song, backed by “Sunbonnet Sue,” a Milton Brown original.

“In the 1930s we were just as popular as the Beatles in the 1960s,” said longtime member Marvin Montgomery. “We would announce on the radio we were going to be in Hillsboro the next morning and 10,000 people would show up.”

The Doughboys, elected into the Rockabilly Hall-Of-Fame in 2001, have the longest history of any Western swing band and have been playing with different personnel since the fall of 1930 and are still going strong today! Although the original band featured two of the most prominent Western Swing bandleaders of all time: Milton Brown (who left the band in September 1932) and Bob Wills (who left in August 1933), they soon left to form their own groups (for detailed biographies of them see: Bob Wills p. and see Milton Brown p. ) because of differences with group's overly controlling manager, W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel, the future governor of Texas.

The Light Crust Doughboys made their first recording without Brown and Wills on October 10, 1933 in Chicago for Brunswick. For that historic session Singer Leon Huff replaced Milton Brown and breakdown fiddler Clifford Gross replaced Wills. With original guitarist Herman Arnspiger and the early 1933-34 sessions included Ramon DeArman bass and steel player Leon McAuliffe. In 1935 O’Daniel left the group and after the Doughboys merged with The Wanderers, a nucleus was formed that lasted for seven years, revolving around tenor banjo wizard, Marvin “Smokey” Montgomery.

The colorful and controversial Pappy O’Daniels was a central character in the 2000 film O brother Where Art Thou. The film featured a character named Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel, the Governor of Mississippi loosely based on the real O'Daniel, Governor of Texas. In the movie "Pappy" O'Daniel was the host of the radio show 'The Flour Hour,' similar to the real O'Daniel’s radio shows with the Light Crust Doughboys and later the Hillbilly Boys. In one campaign, W. Lee O'Daniel carried a broom, an oft used campaign symbol in the reform era, promising to sweep away patronage and corruption. His theme song had the hook, "Please pass the biscuits, Pappy," which became nationally known.

Early Days
The early formation of the band is featured around three central individuals: Milton Brown (with middle brother Derwood on guitar), Bob Wills (with Herman Arnspiger on guitar), and Pappy O’Daniel. Two other men that helped were Truett Kimsey, radio engineer for tiny KFJZ radio and furniture store owner Ed Kimble, who gave them rehearsal space, professional contacts and helped them learn new songs from his 78 record collection.

Milton Brown met Bob Wills and Herman Arnspiger who provided music at a Christmas dance party in 1929.  Milton sang “St. Louis Blues” and they backed him up. This led to other engagements with Milton and his brother Derwood and Bob and Herman. They also played with fiddler John Dunnam who went to the Aladdin Lamp Company and got them to sponsor the group on WBAP as “The Aladdin Laddies.”

By the summer of 1930 the show was cancelled. The duo of Wills and Arnspiger known as the Wills Fiddle Band won a $50 first prize in talent contest sponsored by KFJZ. The group with Milton Brown and Derwood became sponsored by Burrus Mill and Elevator Company, maker of Light Crust Flour, in late fall. They were now the Light Crust Minstrels broadcasting on KTAT briefly before switching to station KFJZ in January 1931. During a broadcast Wills called the band the Light Crust Doughboys and KFJZ announcer Truett Kimzey began using the name to introduce the group.

W. Lee “Pappy” O'Daniel
In charge of sales and advertising for Burrus Mill was Wilbert Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel (March 11, 1890 - May 11, 1969), who became a radio personality, songwriter and Democratic Party politician from Texas. O'Daniel was born in Malta, Ohio, on  March 11, 1890. His father died in an accident soon after his birth and his mother moved the family to Reno County, Kansas. After graduating from Salt City Business College he became a stenographer for a flour-milling company in Anthony, Kansas. Later he became a sales manager in a company in Kingman. He also worked in Kansas City and New Orleans.

In 1925 O'Daniel moved to Forth Worth, Texas where he became sales manager of the Burrus Mills. He soon took over its radio advertising and was in charge of hiring musicians for the radio show on KFJZ. His radio band was originally called the Light Crust Minstrels then the Doughboys. At first Pappy didn’t like their “hillbilly music” on his radio show and cancelled it after two weeks, despite a favorable audience response. Wills, determined not to lose the steady paying gig, arranged to have the Doughboys do additional work for Burrus Mills; Wills drove a truck; Arnspiger worked the dock and Brown was in sales. “Our hands were so sore and stiff you couldn’t note a guitar or a fiddle,” said Arnspiger.

O’Daniel, who at first had little contact with the radio show, was invited by Wills to see one of the shows live broadcasts. Wills persuaded O’Daniel to say a few words on the air as the sponsor. “From that day on O’Daniel became the biggest fan the Doughboys had,” said Charles Townsend, Wills biographer. In March 1931 O’Daniel began accompanying the group on tours, became their road announcer and bought a traveling “bus” with the lettering “Eat More Bread Your Best And Cheapest Food.” By the fall O’Daniel had replaced Kimzey as the radio announcer and received a flood of fan mail for his “down to earth philosophizing.”

Theme Song
The band became identified by their theme song, played at the beginning of every broadcast. When they were the Alladin Laddies they wrote a theme song based on  “Eagle Riding Papa” by the Famous Hokum Boys featuring singer Big Bill Broonzy. They sang the final stanza as “We’re the Alladin Laddies from WBAP.” Later they changed the words to the famous:

Listen everybody from near and far,
If you wanna know who we are;
We're the Light Crust Doughboys from Burrus Mill.

Emerging Fame of the Original Doughboys
Jimmy Thomason, future musician with the Dixie Ramblers and the Shelton Brothers, was a teenager when saw the Doughboys drive into Waco with the sound system on top of their car: “On of the first songs I remember Milton doing was the deal, ‘Crazy Bout Nancy Jane.’ I also remember the smile on Milton’s face, he sure seemed to be enjoying his work. And Milton was the idol of every boy in Waco.”

By the end of 1931 Pappy O’Daniel gave the band a raise to $15 a week and moved the radio show to powerful WBAP where they soon became popular all over Texas. The station merged with other area stations and started the Texas Quality Network. According to Texas historian Richard Schroeder, “The Doughboys may have been the most popular radio program ever originating in Texas.”

Leon McAuffile, who played steel guitar with the Doughboys and later with Bob Wills, remembered: “I would walk three block to the store and never miss a word to the song. In the summer every window was open and every radio was tuned to the Light Crust Doughboys.”

As well as being the manager and announcer, Pappy wrote songs for the group. He would supply the lyrics and the band would finish writing the song. His origin songs include, “Beautiful Texas,” “Put Me In Your Pocket,” and “I Want Someone to Cry Over Me.” Roy Lee Brown said of Pappy: “He could sell an Eskimo a refrigerator. He had a way [with words] on the air that had them eating out of his hand.”

First Record
On February 2, 1932 the original band cut their first and only record. Victor approached them about making a record and their single “Nancy Jane” backed by “Sunbonnet Sue” was recorded under the name, Forth Worth Doughboys, to avoid conflicts with O’Daniel and the radio show. Their single never really sold well as it was released during the depth of the Depression when few records were selling.

Western Swing
Some historians consider this recording to be the first western swing recording but Cary Ginell believes that the various elements which make up Western Swing first came together in a band formed by Brown later in 1932, the Musical Brownies. Bob Wills was a breakdown style fiddler and not a jazz fiddler. He didn’t improvise or do “take-offs” at that time. The early music of the Doughboys should be classified as hillbilly with a blues and jazz influence.

Similar bands were formed earlier: Clayton McMichen's Hometown Band was formed in the early 1920s in the Atlanta area. McMichen was one of the pioneers of string band swing music and one of the best swing fiddlers. “Blues in a Bottle” by Prince Albert Hunt's Texas Ramblers, made on March 28, 1928 in San Antonio, TX, is considered by some to be the first recording of Western Swing. Prince Albert Hunt was shot to death outside of a Dallas bar in March of 1931.

According to Cary Ginell, author of Milton Brown & the Founding of Western Swing: “After researching western swing for over 30 years, I've determined that there is no one point that can be determined as the "big bang" of western swing. It developed slowly over a period of time. McMichen was an anomaly - he was a rural musician who loved jazz. But his music in this manner was not very influential amongst Texans. Similarly, Prince Albert Hunt's music was steeped in the blues, but again, the "influence" he had upon later groups was minimal. Milton Brown's band was the one that really set the style in cement: the instrumentation, the repertoire, the actual look of the musicians, the amplification - all bands that followed Brown's, including the Doughboys and Wills' groups, modeled themselves after Brown.”

Original Band Breaks Up
Problems arose when Pappy O’Daniel refused to let the Doughboys play at dances and other events where alcohol was served. Then O’Daniel fired guitarist Arnspiger and replaced him with Sleepy Johnson. Since the band members only made $15 a week (about $280 today) playing on the radio and their outside gigs in Crystal Springs made them $40 each a night, Milton Brown, whose brother Derwood was playing with the Doughboys for no salary, was the first to confront O’Daniel. Pappy agreed to give Milton a small raise but would not compensate Derwood. Milton gave notice and quit on Sept. 17, 1932. Brown, who anticipated the breakup, immediately found a spot with his new band the Musical Brownies on radio station KTAT on Monday the 19th.

At that point O’Daniel gave Wills a raise to $38 a week and told him to build the best band in the country saying, “If it takes 17 men to do it right, hire them.” Wills replaced Brown with Tommy Duncan, a young baritone from Whitney, Texas. He rehired his friend Herman Arnspiger to play guitar and hired Kermit Whalen on steel guitar and bass.

Soon problems between Wills and O’Daniel arose when Pappy wouldn’t let Wills younger brother Johnnie Lee join the band. Johnny Lee worked for Burrus Mill as a truck driver and had a run-in with management and O’Daniel refused to let him in the band. John Wills, the elder brother, who was working a farm for O’Daniel, became angry at Pappy and “grabbed a three-foot wooden bar  from a yoke used to hitch mules to a wagon, and went after O’Daniel, who high tailed it to safety in his car.” Bob Wills, who at times drank heavily, became a liability and was warned by Pappy not to miss any more radio shows. After prohibition was repealed in August, 1933 Wills and his bandmates went out on the town celebrating and when Wills failed to show up for the radio broadcast the next morning he was fired and replaced with Clifford Gross. Tommy Duncan and Kermit Whalen were loyal to Wills and they left with him.

Lawsuit
Wills immediately began looking for work and Bill Little began booking gigs for the new band first as “The Playboys” then a Bob Wills and his Playboys” and finally Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. When Wills advertised his band was formerly The Light Crust Doughboys and played the Doughboys theme song with new lyrics, O’Daniels, angry over losing half his band, sued Wills for $10,000. Since Milton Brown arranged the theme song and copyrighted it, O’Daniel was force to drop that part of the suit, and lost the defamation part (stealing and unauthorized use of the Doughboys name) in court. The lawsuit was a typical move O’Daniels who tried to exert his influence over every facet of the band. His vendetta against Wills included buying radio advertising time at stations where Bob played if they wouldn’t allow Bob on the air. Finally KVOO in Tulsa told Bob about O’Daniels attempts to sabotage the band and hired Wills to play at their station.

Doughboys 1933-35
Clifford Gross, a temperamental Kentucky fiddler, replaced Wills. In 1934 fiddler Kenneth Pitts joined, giving the Doughboys twin fiddles. Singer Leon Huff replaced Tommy Duncan, who left with Wills. Guitarists Sleepy Johnson and Herman Arnspiger remained in the band. Ramon DeArman was added on bass and steel player Leon McAuliffe who was once fired was rehired by O’Daniel. Leon McAuliffe was still a teenager and soon quit the band to play with Bob Wills.

O’Daniel Is Fired 1935; Starts New Band
Pappy O’Daniel had as percentage deal with Jack Burrus for every sack of flour sold. With all the money he was making from managing the Light Crust Doughboys (he scheduled all appearances and took all the money since the band was on a weekly salary) Pappy was soon making more than Burrus. When fiddler Cliff Gross told Burrus that Pappy was keeping most the money the Doughboys made on tours and not giving it to the players or the mill, Burrus began looking for a way to get rid of Pappy. He found that Pappy was using mill workers to work at O’Daniels barn on Burrus Mill time and fired Pappy.

In 1935 after Burrus Mill fired O'Daniel, he organized his own band, the Hillbilly Boys, and his own flour company, W. Lee O'Daniel Flour Company, manufacturers of Hillbilly Flour. Between September 1935 and December 1938 O'Daniel and the Hillbilly Boys did six recording sessions for Vocalion (later part of Columbia Records). Some of their recordings were far from hillbilly music; in general, they represent some of the best western swing that any band in the Fort Worth-Dallas area ever recorded. As a vocalist, Leon Huff was at his best on these recordings, consistently better than when he later recorded for Bob and Johnnie Lee Wills. Kitty Williamson, whom O'Daniel called Texas Rose, vocalized on several recordings. She was probably the first female singer in western swing; her recording of "Baby Won't You Please Come Home" was in the Bessie Smith tradition and was vocalized western swing at its best. Although some of his recordings were hillbilly, it was on his radio shows that O'Daniel promoted a hillbilly façade. His famous "Pass the Biscuits Pappy" smacked of the hillbilly and made the show, Hillbilly Flour, and O'Daniel even more popular. He read poems and gave brief lectures on morality, most of which he never practiced, according to his musicians.

Pappy O’Daniels Runs For Governor; Senator
In 1938, he ran for governor of Texas as a Democrat. O'Daniel's campaign hailed his flour and the need for pensions and tax cuts. He promised to block a sales tax and raise pensions. He was one the first candidates anywhere in the nation to use a string band as a principal part of a political campaign. He toured the state with his Hillbilly Boys, who began his rallies by playing "Beautiful Texas" (which O'Daniel strategically recorded the year before). After the band drew the crowd, O'Daniel gave a campaign speech. Then he sent members of his family and the band into the audience with miniature flour barrels to accept campaign contributions. The method was successful, though no one will ever know how much so, since the donations were all in cash. O'Daniel won the Democratic party primary election easily with 51% of the vote over 12 opponents. In office, he proposed a new sales tax, which was voted down by the Texas Legislature. He handily won re-election in 1940.

In 1941, O'Daniel ran for the United States Senate in a special election. He defeated Lyndon Johnson by 1,306 votes in one of the more controversial elections in state history. His victory made him the only person to ever defeat Johnson for elected office. As a senator, O'Daniel was ineffective, and most of his legislation was defeated. He endorsed the Texas Regulars in the 1944 presidential election. O'Daniel refused to run for another term in 1948, but ran for governor of Texas in 1956 and 1958 and claimed that the Brown v. Board of Education decision was part of a communist conspiracy. He finished third in the Democratic primaries both times.

When he was elected governor, O'Daniel took his Hillbilly Boys with him to Austin and got all of them jobs with the state. For example, Kermit Whalin, a barber, became a state barber inspector. The musicians broadcast a show from the Governor's Mansionqv on Sundays, and so continued to build the image of Governor O'Daniel and keep his name before the people. Most of the musicians never saw the inside of the mansion; they played the show on the front porch and were never invited inside. When O'Daniel's daughter, Molly, married, he sent band member Jim Boyd and his wife an engraved invitation, but Boyd said, "They stopped us at the church door and wouldn't let us in." When O'Daniel became a United States senator, he insisted that the band go with him to Washington but refused to tell them what salary they would receive. If they refused to go, they lost their state jobs immediately, and Jim Boyd was even evicted from his state-owned home. Practically every musician who played for O'Daniel believed he was selfish, unfair, and extremely ruthless. Aside from his politics and his personal qualities, O'Daniel was important in the music of Texas when it was in its formative years. Without his remarkable ability to promote and publicize, the innovative music of the Light Crust Doughboys might never have gained such vast popularity, and men like Bob Wills might have been known only in North and Central Texas. As governor, O'Daniel made the world aware that there was a distinctive Texas sound and that music was important enough to help a flour salesman attain the highest office in the state.

New Doughboys 1935
The years between 1935 and World War II were among the most successful in the long history of the Doughboys. When the members of the Wanderers merged in 1935 some of the best musicians in the history of western swing joined the band. Kenneth Pitts and Clifford Gross played fiddles. The rhythm section consisted of Dick Reinhart, guitar; Marvin Montgomery, tenor banjo; Ramon DeArman, bass; John "Knocky" Parker, piano. Muryel Campbell played lead guitar. At various times Cecil Brower played fiddle in the string section.

 Almost from the beginning, the Light Crust Doughboys enjoyed a good recording career; their records outsold all other fiddle bands in the Fort Worth-Dallas music scene. Their popularity on radio had a good deal to do with their success in recording. By the 1940s, the Light Crust Doughboys broadcast over 170 radio stations in the South and Southwest. There is no way of knowing how many millions of people heard their broadcasts. Though the Doughboys played good danceable jazz, the band was basically a show band whose purpose was to entertain.

William Muryel ("Zeke") Campbell
Born in Marietta, Oklahoma April 29, 1914 Muryel never picked up a guitar until 1929 when the family moved to the Dallas area. After taking up the fiddle Muryel learned the guitar from his neighbor, Jake Wright.  “He was the best around there,” Muryel recalled. “I didn’t even have a guitar of my own. An uncle of Mine loaned me his and I learned on that.” After graduating from Sunset High School in 1931 Muryel played with raymond Hall and The Rhythm Rascals on KGKB in Tyler. His break came in 1935 when he and his friend Jake Wright were recommended to Jack Burrus, who instructed new manager of the Doughboys Eddie Dunn to give them a tryout. The next day, October 15, 1935 Muryel was asked to join the group.

When Gibson came out with ES-150 model electric guitar in 1936, Muryel used the electric guitar for his jazz styled solos to be heard above the rest of the band. Muryel was a member of the Light Crust Doughboys western swing band, from 1935-42. His jazz stylings have been compared to the great guitarist Django Reinhardt.

Marvin “Smokey” Montgomery
Born in small farm town in Rinard, Iowa on March 7, 1913, as Marvin Dooley Wetter, his musical career began when he won a ukulele for delivering newspapers.  His mother got a banjo for his brother and Marvin picked it up. After winning second place in a talent contest in 1933, Marvin impressed the manager J. Doug Morgan who sent him a telegram and asked Marvin to join his tent show in Grinnell, Iowa. “My grandfather carried me down,” recalled Marvin, “and we saw the tent. He dumped me out with my suitcase and banjo and I’ve been on the road ever since.”

Soon afterward an official with the tent show, Neil Helvey, said Marvin’s last name Wetter wouldn’t look on the Marquee, so Marvin changed his last name to Montgomery, after actor Robert Montgomery. He was billed as Marvin Montgomery: The Boy with Two Voices and the Fastest Playing Banjo Player in The World. He was called “Two Voices” for his ability to sing a song in normal fashion then sing it an octave higher.

After leaving the tent show in Texas, Marvin ended up broke in Dallas and found work on WFAA playing banjo with a string band named The Wanderers. “I became an important part of the group,” said Marvin. “I took care of the money and everything else.” After Jack Burrus hired Eddie Dunn, WFAA’s Early Bird announcer, to manage the Light Crust Doughboys in 1935, Eddie hired three of The Wanderers (Bert Dodson- guitar and vocals; Dick Reinhart- bass and vocals along with Marvin Montgomery) and fired six of the nine Doughboys, keeping Muryel Campbell- guitar with fiddlers Ken Pitts and Cliff Gross.
 
Montgomery, who Bob Wills referred to as a "genius on that banjo," became a long time member of the group until his death in 2001. Marvin at first was nicknamed, “Junior” but in the 1950s Doughboys changed his nickname from "Junior" to "Smokey" because he played so fast that his hand was blurred and looked like smoke on the TV screen.

Doughboys First Movies with Gene Autry 1936
The extremely popular Doughboys had a radio show on WBAP and the Texas Quality Network. The Doughboys were they first band to appear in Western movies, and got the opportunity from Art Satherley, their record producer, who arranged a contract for them with Republic Studios. In May 1936 they made the first of two movies with two movies with Gene Autry, Oh Susannah, followed by The Big Show, in which Montgomery played, rode a horse, and sang.

Full cast and crew for Oh, Susanna! (1936)
 
Directed by Joseph Kane ; Writing credits Oliver Drake (original story and screenplay)
Cast (in credits order) verified as complete

 

 

 Gene Autry ...  Gene Autry aka Tex Smith 
 Smiley Burnette ...  Frog Millhouse
 Frances Grant ...  Mary Ann Lee
 Earle Hodgins ...  Professor Ezekial Daniels
 Donald Kirke ...  Flash Baldwin
 Boothe Howard ...  Wolf Benson
 The Light Crust Doughboys ...  Western Band (as Light Crust Doughboys)
 Champion ...  Champion - Autry's Horse
 Clara Kimball Young ...  Aunt Peggy Lee
 Edward Peil Sr. ...  Mineral Springs Sheriff (as Ed Peil Sr.)
 Frankie Marvin ...  Henchman Hank
  Zeke Campbell ...  Guitarist with Light Crust Doughboys (uncredited)
Dick Reinhart ...  Guitarist with Light Crust Doughboys (uncredited)

World War II Years
In the early months of World War II members of the band either went into the armed forces or war related industries. In 1942, Burrus Mill ended the Doughboys' radio show.

New Doughboys 1945
Burrus Mill reorganized the band in 1945 and the Doughboys were back on the air. Mel Cox, adopting the name Jack Perry, became the new announcer and the only remaining member from the earlier group was Smoky Montgomery.  The new line-up featured Carroll Hubbard on fiddle; Hall Harris on guitar; Red Kidwell on Bass/Vocals; Wilson Perkins guitar; Charles Godwin piano/accordian vocals.

Burrus Mill tried various experiments, even hired Hank Thompson and Slim Whitman, hoping somehow the radio show could be saved. By 1950, the age of television had begun, and the age of radio was over. In 1952 The Light Crust Doughboys were no longer "on the air" with a daily radio program.

After Radio- New Group Forms in the 1960s
The Doughboys continued to represent Burrus Mill during promotions and occasional tours at supermarkets throughout the southwest. Various personnel changes included Artie Glenn bass; fiddler Jimmie Brown; Bassist Ken Cobb; guitarist Ronnie Dawson; fiddler Johnny Strawn; Gary Xavier piano; Burny Annett piano and Bill Simmons piano; with longtime member Smokey Montgomery on banjo.

The Doughboys incorporated a rockabilly style and had other offshoot bands like the Levee Singers, the house band at the Levee Club in Dallas. The group featured Ronnie Dawson, Smokey Montgomery, Ed Bernet, and Bob Christopher and played some big shows in Las Vegas and were also featured on some of the top TV shows in the 60’s.

The New Generation
After the Levee Club was sold in 1971, Smokey Montgomery returned full-time to the Doughboy line-up. A "new generation" was formed made up of the following: Marvin Montgomery, banjo and guitar; Bill Simmons, piano; Jerry Elliott, electric guitar; Art Greenhaw, electric bass and guitar; John Walden, Jim Baker, fiddles; Bob Krenkel, tenor saxophone, clarinet; Bud Dresser, trombone, flugabone; John Anderson, trumpet; Bob Venable, Dale Cook, drums; Frank Greenhaw, baritone horn; Jerry Elliott, Jamie Shipman, John Walden, Art Greenhaw, vocals; Walter Hailey, announcer.

The continued to be sponsored by Buruss Mill after Cargill, a giant food-manufacturer, bought Buruss in 1972. Then in the late 1980’s Cargill sold the Light Crust brand to Martha White, who stopped sponsoring tours. In 1996 the Doughboys began touring again sponsored in part by the Texas Commission of the Arts. The legend of the Light Crust Doughboys continues today  in the release of new recordings, music publications, and concerts throughout the world. Smokey Montgomery died in 2001.

Articles- Excerpts
Sharon Dickerson, the president of the Light Crust Doughboys Fan Club, grew up in Nashville. Her father worked for the giant music publishing company, Acuff-Rose, and was a big fan of the Doughboys, so she grew up as a fan of the group. “I was in Mesquite to hear Hank Thompson [the County Music Hall of Fame member who has his own chapter in Doughboys history] one night, and I got there early and decided to go into Generation’s Past [an antique store operated by Doughboy bass player and impresario Art Greenhaw] and met Art and his mother. We got together the following week and started talking about my love for the Doughboys, and he was infatuated with the fact that I had known Hank Thompson all of my life and grew up in the music business. And he said, ‘We would love to have you aboard doing something.’” Soon, she was the volunteer leader of the Doughboys fan club. “I publish a newsletter every month. It runs anywhere from four to five typewritten pages. I put it on the Internet, I send out new fan-club applications. I attend 99.9 percent of the concerts.”

“I like the traditional music that the Doughboys play, their versatility and their wholesomeness,” Sharon said. “They’re incredibly talented musicians, each of them individually as well as a group. I’ve always adored them.” Sharon, a country-music singer and performer in her own right, has a favorite moment in her association with the Doughboys. It happened at a concert. “Smokey kept telling me, ‘Don’t you leave, don’t you leave.’ And he called me on stage during the second half of the concert, and he said he thought it was time everybody knew who exactly I was. And he said, ‘I think you all need to hear this lady sing.’ So Art and I sang ‘Amazing Grace,’ both with the band and a cappella. Of all the memories, that’s the one that got me in the heart the most” (Interview, May 2, 2001). When the sold-out house has completed their dinners of sandwiches and salads, Smokey turns to the group and jauntily announces, “Shall we go out there and see what it looks like?” While Smokey reckons the band of the late ’40s was the best group of musicians to perform as the Light Crust Doughboys, the modernday Doughboys have their own distinction in his astute judgment.

“The best show group I’ve ever had is the guys I’ve got right now,” he said (Interview, January 3, 2001).
On this night, the manager of the theater presents the Doughboys with a certificate naming them to the “Rockabilly Hall of Fame,” along with Lefty Frizzell, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and others. It’s a reminder to the audience that the Doughboys cover a lot of musical territory, not just Western swing, a fact that will become very apparent before the evening is over. Smokey takes the plaque and holds it high, to the fond applause of the crowd. “They are part of what made rockabilly music bigger,” Bob Timmers, founder and curator of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, said. “They were part of the tradition of rockabilly. The Doughboys’ innovative Texas swing has a direct link to rock ‘n’ roll,” he said. “Swing helped inspire rockabilly, which inspired Elvis Presley and ultimately rock ‘n’ roll,” Timmers asserts (Barber, June 18, 2000).

By no means is it the only recent honor in the astonishing career of the Light Crust Doughboys. In early 2001, the Doughboys received a Grammy nomination for their recording The Great Gospel Hit Parade with legendary gospel singer James Blackwood and the Jordanaires, Elvis Presley’s vocal group. (Blackwood, who died in early 2002, was closely associated over the years with Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, the Statler Brothers, Larry Gatlin, and Tammy Wynette, and, as of 2001, had received nine Grammy awards and 29 Grammy nominations of his own.) In 1999, the Doughboys were nominated for a Grammy award in the category of “Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album of the Year” and for a Gospel Music Association “Dove” award. The nominations were for their collaboration with Blackwood and his quartet, They Gave the World a Smile: The Stamps Quartet Tribute Album.

In 1998, the Doughboys were nominated for Keep Lookin’ Up: The Texas Swing Sessions, also with Blackwood. The Light Crust Doughboys were charter inductees in the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame in 1989, and in 1995, the Texas Legislature named the Doughboys “Texas’ official music ambassadors.” In recent years, they have performed in unique collaborations with the Lone Star Ballet in Amarillo and the Southern Methodist University Mustang Band, and performed in a series of concerts in Europe. In 1999, Mel Bay Publications, Inc., published two books of Doughboy compositions, most of them by Smokey Montgomery and Greenhaw.

The Light Crust Doughboys’ place in Texas music history is secure. John Morthland, a contributing editor to Texas Monthly magazine, has been writing about music since 1969 when he began working as an associate editor at Rolling Stone. Morthland related a story that is often repeated about the powerful presence of the Doughboys in the 1930s and ’40s. “Johnny Gimble [a former member of Wills’ Texas Playboys] has said this to me, and I’ve read it or heard it from others too, that when they were growing up, you’d walk down the street at noon and every window was open and the Doughboys were coming out of every window. You could hear their whole radio show as you walked down the street,” Morthland said (Interview, May 4, 2001).

After the Rockabilly Hall of Fame presentation, a local radio personality steps to the mike, and intones the historic words, “The Light Crust Doughboys are on the air!” Immediately, the Doughboys launch into their time-honored theme:

Now listen everybody from near and far,
If you want to know who we are
We’re the Light Crust Doughboys,
From Burrus Mill.
Like our song, think it’s fine,
Sit right down and drop a line,
To the Light Crust Doughboys,
From Burrus Mill.
And I declare, (oh, yeah!) we’ll get it there (ah-hah),
And if we have the time to spare,
Sometime when we’re down your way,
We’ll stop in and spend the day.
We’re the Light Crust Doughboys,
From Burrus Mill.
Never do brag, never do boast,
We sing our song from coast to coast,
We’re the Light Crust Doughboys,
From Burrus Mill.

Smokey cradles his celebrated tenor banjo on his lap as he sits at stage left on a stool, the only concession to his 87 years. Throughout the evening’s two-hour show, he will hop from the stool to the mike to announce the tunes, josh with the other Doughboys, and charm the audience. “We’ll dedicate this next song to Joe Dickinson [the theater manager] because it really fits him. It’s called ‘Bubbles in My Beer,’” he confidently offers.

Keyboardist Bill Simmons sits in front of Smokey, and slightly to the left at the edge of the tiny stage.
Fiddlers John Walden and Jim Baker stand at the back, and bassist Art Greenhaw holds down stage right, as guitarist Jerry Elliott steps forward to sing the classic Texas Playboys barroom number. Jerry has been a Doughboy since 1960, a record of longevity that would be astounding if not for Smokey’s 65 years with the band.

“He was the ‘Fort Worth singing sensation of 1949,’ which is strange since he tells us he’s 32,” Greenhaw tells the room. Elliott’s resume includes serving as an arranger for the late, great singer and songwriter Roger Miller. Jerry dips his head and grimaces as he reaches for the high notes, and then rares back and wails, still climbing the scale with considerable ease. He recalled that when he joined the band, the Doughboys were still playing at grand openings of grocery stores that bought a big load of Light Crust Flour, and the Cargill foods company, which had bought out the Burrus Mills and Elevator Co., was still paying the group. “But Smokey wanted to get off the road,” he said, and the group has been playing shows for the simple pleasure of its fans ever since, never mind the flour.

The next song, “My Mary,” was perhaps original Doughboy Milton Brown’s best-known song, recorded in 1935 after he left the band to launch his own group, the Musical Brownies. The Doughboys themselves
recorded the song in 1934 (Ginell, Milton Brown, 291–92). Jerry sings the beautiful melody, which sounds as contemporary as any recent hit by George Strait.

While the Doughboys are closely identified with country music, their music actually predates what we today call “country.” Smokey Montgomery: “They didn’t write country tunes then. There wasn’t a Nashville where they made tunes just for country. We were playing all the pop tunes, trying to play them like a big band. We listened to Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey and all those bands, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller. We played a lot of tunes that they played, pop tunes. We would get a lot of songs from south of border: ‘La Cucaracha,’ ‘El Rancho Grande,’ and all those tunes. We did a lot of old breakdowns and old-time East Texas running waltzes” (Oral history, 124).

Early in the show, Smokey shows that, after more than six decades with the Doughboys, he is still very much a banjo virtuoso, as he tears up “Sweet Georgia Brown,” fingers racing up and down the fretboard.
Smokey plays a four-string tenor banjo, different from the more familiar five-string variety. His favorite instrument is a 1948 model Silver Bell Symphonic banjo. He also has a gold-plated Silver Bell Bacon made in 1922, the year when he picked up the banjo for the first time (Tarrant; Montgomery interview, May 3, 2001).
Doughboys shows tend to be informal affairs, not unlike a spontaneous jam in Smokey’s den. Smokey, the undisputed leader and a jovially hard taskmaster, may announce at any moment that the band will play an unrehearsed number. Or he may good-naturedly upbraid one of the Doughboys for some real or imaginary transgression. At the end of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” Smokey, in mock indignation, instructs Bill, “Don’t hit that last chord till I hit the last chord.”

The audience enjoys the feeling of “sitting in” as the Doughboys have fun with their music. A Light Crust Doughboys performance is a guided tour through the American musical landscape of pop, country, early rock ’n’ roll, gospel, and jazz, besides the group’s home base of Western swing. They launch into a countrified version of Pat Boone’s “Love Letters in the Sand.” Smokey relates a story about ’50s teen idol Boone hitchhiking back and forth from the University of North Texas campus in Denton to WBAP-TV in Fort Worth, where he sang on a daily program. “Pat’s almost a genius, but sometimes he goes over to the other side,” Smokey jokes cryptically. Fiddler John Walden steps to the mike and croons the tune in a rich, smooth baritone, his prominent eyebrows and handlebar mustache bobbing, his eyes twinkling.

Backstage before the show, John tells how his father led an orchestra in Wichita Falls, and how he slyly led John into music. “‘See that fiddle in this case,’ he told us boys,” John recalled affectionately. “‘I’m going to put it under this bed, and I don’t want you to touch it. You’ll get a hard whipping if you mess with it.’” Of course, little John picked up the fiddle. “‘Which one of you boys got the fiddle out? I’ll have to whip you all if you don’t own up to it,’” he told John and his brothers. So John admitted playing with the old fiddle, expecting the worst. “But he made me study four hours instead,” John said. “He made me run scales.”

Art is a frequent contributor of new songs to the Doughboys’ repertoire. Smokey introduces Art’s song, “Texas Women,” saying, “This song was written by Art. He’s still researching it.” Art, responds, “I had a good teacher in Smokey,” to which Smokey shoots back, “As much as I can remember.” The song is a bouncy paean to the women of the Lone Star State, in much the same spirit as “California Girls” by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.

You mix champagne with guacamole,
Sparkling water, hot tamales,
Got a Texas woman from head to toe.
There’s nothin’ like ’em in the whole wide world,
They’re even better than a honky-tonk girl.

Besides playing the bass guitar, Art sings in a powerful bass voice. Along with Jim, he forms the younger generation of Doughboys and serves as the group’s business manager. “I have to stay spiritually, physically and mentally alert or they’ll [the other Doughboys] just run circles around me,” Art muses. “Music is our calling, it’s not just a career” (Thibodeaux). For “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” the World War II-era Bing Crosby/Andrew Sisters hit, Jim Oliver, an honorary Doughboy, joins the group on trumpet. “Gene Autry had trumpet on some of his songs, but Bob Wills had ’em on everything,” Smokey, ever the instructor, advises the crowd, which breaks into spontaneous applause after Oliver’s trumpet solo. Jim Baker (our “poster boy,” Smokey calls handsome Jim) joins Jerry to sing the lead vocals. After Jerry receives a big ovation for “Faded Love,” the beloved song made popular by Wills and Ray Price, it’s time for Smokey to shine. “This is one of the first banjo songs I ever learned,” Smokey comments. “Just for a change, Bill,” he offhandedly says to Simmons, “let’s play the first part in waltz time.”

Smokey’s banjo has been very prominent all night as a rhythm instrument. But as they launch into “Bye Bye Blues,” Smokey demonstrates the intricate and lightning-fast picking that has made him a legendary
player on the instrument, “the man who brought Dixieland banjo to Western swing,” as Art calls him. As Smokey unveils the surprising licks, the admiring crowd bursts into applause. It’s easy to forget that the man “smoking” the banjo (it’s how he got his nickname) has been pickin’ like this since Franklin D. Roosevelt was giving Fireside Chats.

“If he is not the best musician in the history of the band, he is certainly among the best,” historian Charles R. Townsend, the author of the Bob Wills biography San Antonio Rose wrote in a brief sketch on the Doughboys. “Bob Wills referred to Smokey as a ‘genius on that banjo,’ and added he would select Marvin as banjoist if he were forming an all-star western swing band” (Townsend, “About the Light Crust Doughboys”).

Then it’s time for the Doughboys to tip their hats to rockabilly, the raw musical genre for which they had been honored earlier in the evening. Giving credit to composer Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup in his tongue-in-cheek fashion, Art launches into a medley of “That’s All Right, Mama” (Elvis’ first hit) and “My Baby Left Me.” Unex pectedly hearing Oliver join the arrangement, Art’s eyes widen in mock alarm. “I think it’s time for a trumpet solo,” he announces.

For “M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I,” Bill Simmons’ own composition, which has been recorded by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Smokey calls to the sound technician, “We need a mike, Bill’s gonna sing, and I don’t have a union card.” Simmons, his features dominated by a long, white beard, gets his mike, and he plays it for laughs when the mike attached to a boom starts to droop, but it is the way his dexterous fingers flit across the keyboard that stands out.

“I was working with Curly Williams when I first went to Memphis, Curly Williams and his Georgia Peach Pickers,” Simmons recalled. “One day he came in and he said, ‘You want to help me write a song? M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter . . . ’ He hummed a little bit, and he didn’t have much, he just had the idea. They said kids used to jump rope to that, you know. My wife remembered it [the jump-rope chant]. I told him I’d go home and work on it. I was sitting there at the kitchen table, with an old pencil and some manuscript paper. It was three o’ clock in the morning and I woke my wife up, and said, ‘How do you spell ‘Mississippi?’ Anyway, I finished the thing up, and I did the words and most of the music, but it was his idea. We put it together, made a demo, and sent it to Fred Rose with Acuff-Rose [publishing company] in Nashville. A couple of days later they called and told Curly, ‘Boy, you’ve got a hit!’ They were trying to get [Bing] Crosby and the Andrews Sisters to do it. But instead, Red Foley did the first one [recording]. Of course, we made one with Curly.” Others who have recorded the song are Kay Starr, Ella Fitzgerald, Art Mooney, Snooky Lanson. Bill’s favorite version was Ella Fitzgerald’s (Interview, March 16, 2001).

Doughboys shows are characterized by a striking variety of musical genres. Could Bob Wills or Milton Brown ever have imagined that the Light Crust Doughboys would share the stage with a pair of Russian classical musicians? Two friends of the Doughboys’ faithful fan Charlie Ostrander, Sergey Vaschenko on the balalaika, a triangular- shaped stringed instrument, and Vladimir Kaliazine, on the bayan, an accordion-like apparatus, step forward for a brilliant interlude.

Charlie and his wife Marina regularly invite the Doughboys to their home for parties. There he introduced Sergey and Smokey. “He [Sergey] just has magic in his fingers. And then I heard Smokey, and he has magic in his fingers. And I said, these two guys have got to meet each other. So we had them over to the apartment for a party, and they had a jam session, and they’ve been going strong together ever since.” Thanks to the Doughboys’ penchant for a wide range of styles, the sprightly, intricate sounds created by the two Russians seem not at all out of place, and they are warmly received by the Doughboys fans.

The Doughboys perform “Fraulein” and “Cool Water” before Smokey introduces the rare tune that has been around longer than the band, “Listen to the Mockingbird.”  It’s a fiddle tour de force for John, who, among other flourishes, reaches over the top of the fiddle’s fretboard to hit the high notes. The enthusiastic audience pays him back with wild applause.

It would be hard to top John’s rip-roaring performance, so the Doughboys break for intermission, after Art formally introduces the band. Finally, turning to Smokey, he announces. “He’s been a Light Crust Doughboy since 1935. That’s about 30 years longer than Mick Jagger’s been a Rolling Stone. And he looks younger than Jagger and Richards.” Smokey puts the spotlight back on Art, saying sincerely, “If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be here today.” Mauvehaired waiters and waitresses too young to remember The Eagles, let alone the early Doughboys, circulate among the crowd taking new orders, as Art jokingly admonishes the fans, “The break’ll be a lot shorter if you buy everything on that table.” The counter at the front of the theater, covered with new CDs and videotapes, is a testament to the Doughboys’ modern-day productivity. Fans mix easily  with each other and with members of the Doughboys in the relaxed atmosphere.

In the second half of the show, the Doughboys stretch out. They’re joined by Bob Krenkel on clarinet and saxophone, Bud Dresser on trombone and flugabone (a rare hybrid of the flugelhorn and trombone),
John Anderson on trumpet and Art’s father Frank on euphonium. Smokey nonchalantly announces, “Let’s get the horns out, get a little Dixieland going. . . . Scramble one muskrat, I’ll be home for dinner.” The Doughboys then kick off the lively New Orleans classic, “Muskrat Ramble.”

“As their current recordings reveal, the band has always borrowed from all areas of American music,” Townsend wrote. “Everything . . . from country to Dixieland, from western swing to big band swing, from blues to cool jazz” (Townsend, “Doughboys—Yesterday”).

Besides James Blackwood and the Jordanaires, the Doughboys have also recorded in recent years with Nokie Edwards, the lead guitarist for the 1960s surf band The Ventures, and with steel guitarist Tom Brumley, best known for his work with Buck Owens and Rick Nelson. Besides serving as banjo man and master of ceremonies, Smokey serves as the group’s musical arranger. Before the next number, he offers, “I want to show you how the Doughboys learn a new song. I wrote a new arrangement this afternoon, none of these guys have seen it before. I’ll show you how well these guys can sight read. If it doesn’t sound right, it was the computer, it wasn’t me.”

The song is “Marie,” the beautiful Irving Berlin chestnut first popular in the bigband era, and a song that one-time Doughboy bass player and vocalist Joe Frank Ferguson helped to popularize while he was with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Smokey confides to the audience that Berlin never liked Tommy Dorsey’s arrangement of the song. “So I wrote a Bob Wills arrangement,” he said. The Doughboys, reading Smokey’s fresh arrangement note-by-note, perform a near-perfect rendition of the old favorite, twin fiddles to the fore.

Satisfied, Smokey beams, “You played every note I wrote, band, just like I wrote it. That’s kind of unusual.”
Smokey Montgomery, it is revealed from his stage comments, has stepped into the computer age with the ease of a person 50 years younger. “Looking at my computer, I see that this next song is the most-played song by the Light Crust Doughboys. We’re going to play it again tonight.” It’s Bob Wills’ best-loved song, “San Antonio Rose,” sung with consummate skill by Jerry Elliott, with harmony vocals from Art Greenhaw and John Walden. There is no dance floor in the dinner theater, but a couple is inspired to find a spot large
enough to enjoy a spontaneous two-step.

On another occasion, Smokey revealed how the computer helps him maintain his amazingly busy schedule, which also includes performances with a unique group he formed called the Dallas Banjo Band, and reflected on his long-standing love of composing and arranging music. “I’ve got too many irons in the fire,” he said. “One of them is sitting at home, playing with that computer, and writing arrangements for the Dallas Banjo Band. That’s fun. . . . When I was with the Doughboys [in the group’s radio heyday], I could write a new song, and I wrote a new song almost every day, and we’d put it on the air the next day, because I was making out the [radio] programs” (Oral history, 182–83).

Later, Smokey announces, “A couple of months ago, a fella came up and asked me why we didn’t play this next song. I looked on my computer and saw we never have played it. I helped [Dallas Cowboys
quarterback] Don Meredith make a record of this.” The song is the old country and folk standard, “Wabash Cannonball.” Jerry nevertheless sings it with great familiarity, and Smokey, with complete aplomb, crosses the stage to give on-the-fly directions to the fourman horn section, which they pick up easily, knowing to expect the unexpected from Smokey.

Now, Smokey stirs the pot with, “Let’s pep it up a little bit. How about the ‘Pinetop Boogie’? That’ll get it going.” The tune, which Smokey learned from old-time bluesman Clarence “Pinetop” Smith (Tarrant), is a vehicle for Bill to show off his barrelhouse piano playing. At one point, he picks up the electric keyboard and brandishes it like a 25-year-old rock and roller. On the beat, Smokey hops out the mike to shout, “Boogie!” When it’s over, Smokey gives his ironic seal of approval: “Thank you, Bill. He gets better all the time . . . so they tell me.”

“Bonaparte’s Retreat” features a swinging, sophisticated arrangement. Smokey, perched on his stool, nods approvingly as he looks over Bill’s shoulder at his artful fingers dancing across the keyboard. Another Western standard performed by the Doughboys comes from their brief but successful movie career. In 1936, the Light Crust Doughboys traveled to Hollywood to make a movie, Oh, Susanna, with the singing cowboy star, Gene Autry. While in California, they made friends with the popular Western singing group, the Sons of the Pioneers, which then featured young Leonard Slye, who soon would be known as Roy Rogers. The Doughboys learned “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” from the Sons of the Pioneers, and have been performing it ever since. The three-part harmony from John, Jerry, and Art conjures visions of mesas and big-sky vistas. “Everybody listen—this is how we’re going to do it, whether it’s right or not,” Smokey announces. “This is my theme song, I want it played right. It’s called, ‘I Can’t Get Started Anymore.’”

The musical styles and references fly by in kaleidoscopic fashion. Now the Doughboys are venturing into the territory of jazz and blues, with a detour into Elvis country. A bawdy “Sugar Blues” is followed by “Crying in the Chapel,” with Art informing the crowd that Presley’s popular gospel number was composed by one-time Doughboy Artie Glenn. Glenn is one of the dozens of talented musicians who have been members of the Light Crust Doughboys at one time or another over the past 70-plus years. He played bass and guitar with the Doughboys for a few years in the 1950s. In 1953, as he was recovering from spinal surgery in a Fort Worth hospital, he made a promise to become closer to God. After leaving the hospital, he went to pray at the Loving Avenue Baptist Church. As he walked to the front of the church, tears coursed down his cheeks and the famous words suddenly came to him:

You saw me crying in the chapel,
The tears I shed were tears of joy.
I know the meaning of contentment,
Now I’m happy with the Lord.

The song first became a hit as sung by Glenn’s son Darrell. The Orioles, Ella Fitzgerald, Rex Allen, Sr., and Eddy Arnold later recorded the song, in addition to Elvis’ definitive version (Jones). After “Crying in the Chapel,” it’s a sharp turn into traditional jazz with the Jimmy Van Heusen tunes “Darn That Dream” and “Here’s That Rainy Day.” And then, hammer down, they hit the homestretch. On the old standard “You Are My Sunshine,” John, all knees and elbows, nearly stops the show with a sensational fiddle solo.

Then they tear into the “Orange Blossom Special,” with the crowd impulsively joining in with rhythmic clapping. John pumps his right arm and leg in locomotive fashion, bends over at the waist, stomping the floor and hopping on one foot as the music reaches a crescendo. So exuberant are his contortions that his glasses fly off and he nearly topples over.

“It’s a natural thing that I do. The music gets to going so fast that I can’t hardly keep up with it,” Walden said, almost sheepishly. “It happens every time I play it” (Interview). The crowd responds to John’s solo with a howling cheer. They send the happy audience into the summer night with the old Roy Rogers-Dale Evans theme, “Happy Trails,” and, of course, a final chorus of the Doughboys theme. Art pronounces the benediction; he is part of the Light Crust Doughboys present and future, but the words are from the earliest days of the band’s existence: “Remember the words of W. Lee O’Daniel, the governor of Texas and the only person to defeat Lyndon Baines Johnson in an election (‘And live to tell about it,’ interjects Smokey): Fellows, won’t a 50-pound sack of flour make a great big biscuit?”]

[THE SOUTHWESTERN STRING BAND TRADITION Presented on Chuck Taggart's "Down Home", KCSN, March 24, 2001 Today I want to focus on the southwestern string band tradition and its development over the years up through the early 1950s when, in my opinion, it reached its apex of development. There was no generally applied name for the genre until it was dubbed "western swing", but that didn't occur until Spade Cooley became the self-styled "King of Western Swing" in the early 1940s.

Today's program will include a number of rare 78 RPM records, many of which have not been reissued on CD, and I want to thank Michael Kieffer for his assistance in transferring them to CD. String band leaders were, of course, not purists and many of them supplemented their string bands first with a piano and later with wind instruments and even drums. Let's start by playing three examples of western swing from the decade of the 1940s, and then we will contrast by backtracking to the very beginnings of the western band tradition. 'Sally Goodin' was a traditional fiddle tune, which Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys updated in contemporary style in 1947. Then we'll hear 'Fiddlin' Stomp', by The Miller Brothers, a swinging group from Wichita Falls, Texas. Finally, Spade Cooley explodes with 'Oklahoma Stomp' in the West Coast style from 1946.

Now, let's return to the frontier West, the West of the 19th century. Mark Gardner and the Skirtlifters, a fiddle and two banjos, have recreated the authentic music of the western migrants on their CD "Songs of the Santa Fe Trail and the Far West". The fiddle, often played unaccompanied, has been called "the royal instrument of the frontier". Second in popularity was doubtless the fretless banjo. The guitar was a poor third, because it was considered delicate, and was somewhat unwieldy to carry around. The group will perform 'The Battle Call', a patriotic Mexican War song from the Rough and Ready Songster of 1848, to the melody of a minstrel tune "De Boatman's Dance". You might justifiably wonder how what you have just heard could possibly develop into the western swing of the 1940s, but it did, and the thread can be traced through the fiddle instrumental tradition.

In the early West fiddlers were in great demand for dances and competed in numerous fiddle contests. Eck Robertson from Vernon, Texas, who played for many a ranch dance, will fiddle 'There's a Brownskin Girl Down the Road Somewhere', accompanied by members of his family on banjo and guitars. The first decade of the 20th century saw the flowering of the ragtime craze. Fiddlers playing for dances at ranches and schoolhouses began to get requests for ragtime music to accompany the new two-step dance. There were string bands that specialized in ragtime. First, we'll hear a contemporary group, the Etcetera String Band of Kansas City, led by Dennis Pash on the mandolin-banjo, who have recreated the sound of the 1890s, with 'Peaceful Henry' composed by Charles L. Johnson in 1901. Then the East Texas Serenaders, of Lindale, Texas, led by fiddler D.H. Williams, present 'Three-In-One Two Step', recorded in 1928, playing in a style that presages western swing.

Finally, Bob Wills and Sleepy Johnson play Bob's version of 'Harmony Rag', a 1902 composition doubtless learned from his father, recorded in 1935. Bob Wills and Milton Brown are generally credited with being the primary facilitators of the transition from breakdown fiddling to western swing. Wills was brought up on a cotton farm in the West Texas panhandle and learned the repertoire of a breakdown fiddler from his father, who, incidentally, had competed in contests against Eck Robertson. He also learned the rural blues from the many black families living in the area. During his musical career he bridged the gap between these two musical genres. He was also able to broaden his style to accommodate the requests for music to accompany the round dances becoming popular Texas, such as the two-step and later the fox trot.

Milton Brown's father, also an accomplished breakdown fiddler, moved the family from rural Texas to Fort Worth in 1918. Milton impressed Bob with his vocalizing at a dance where Bob was fiddling accompanied by guitarist Herman Arnspiger. They formed the Wills Fiddle Band in 1930 and obtained airtime over several Fort Worth radio stations. Audience response to the programs amazed everyone. In late 1930 Wills convinced W. Lee O'Daniel, President of the Burrus Mill and Elevator Company, which manufactured Light Crust Flour, to sponsor them. An announcer on KFJZ dubbed the group The Light Crust Doughboys. By late that year the group also had a steady job playing for dances at the Crystal Springs roadhouse. 'Nancy Jane', adopted from a version by a black group the Famous Hokum Boys, is one of only two tunes recorded by this group, in February, 1932. The band, called the Fort Worth Doughboys, comprised Wills, Milton Brown on vocals, Milton's brother Derwood, harmony vocal and guitar, and Sleepy Johnson, tenor guitar. While Nancy Jane can hardly be called "western swing", we can detect signs of the emerging style.

The essence of jazz is the improvised take-off solo. Southwestern string musicians first adopted this melodic technique between 1929 and 1933 in emulation of the hot jazz that had swept the country about ten years earlier. Thus was created the style that record companies referred to as "hot string band", although "southwestern jazz" would have been more appropriate. The details of this transition are not well documented although numerous accounts exist of southwestern musicians listening attentively to the jazz and blues recordings of the day. By 1933 after various disputes with O'Daniel, both Bob Wills and Milton Brown had left the Doughboys to form their own musical aggregations. Brown, who had real promotional skills, organized the Musical Brownies and obtained airtime on Fort Worth's KTAT. His death resulting from a 1936 automobile accident ended his promising career. Here are the Musical Brownies. We'll hear 'This Morning, This Evening, So Soon', and 'Do the Hula Lou' from 1934, 'Copenhagen' from 1935, and 'Yes, Sir!' from 1936. Note Derwood Brown's strident guitar work and, on the latter two, Bob Dunn's improvisations on the amplified steel guitar. Both Dunn's take-off performance style and the amplification were totally innovative for the time.

Other excellent western bands formed and developed concurrently. Over in Dallas at city-owned WRR, Bill Boyd gathered a group of musicians to form his band The Cowboy Ramblers. Boyd's groups featured changing personnel over the years, many of them borrowed from other groups such as the Light Crust Doughboys. We'll hear 'The Train Song' and 'When The Sun Goes Down Again' from 1935. A later Boyd aggregation showed the strong influence of hot jazz. Classically trained fiddlers Carroll Hubbard and Kenneth Pitts, devotees of Joe Venuti, and pianist John "Knocky" Parker, who later became a college professor and eminent jazz pianist, stand out. We'll hear 'Frosty Mornin'' sung by Bill himself and obviously learned from the Bessie Smith 1924 recording, 'Jig in G', 'Riding on the Old Ferris Wheel', incidentally featuring Knocky on the accordion, and 'The Weeping Blues', which was a pseudonym for the Duke Ellington composition "Jeeps Blues", from 1937 and 1938. Meanwhile, W. Lee O'Daniel formed a new group under the name The Light Crust Doughboys to replace Wills and Brown.

Then the Burrus Mills fired O'Daniel in 1935 and, realizing how much flour the music was selling, formed its own group of Light Crust Doughboys under Eddie Dunn. We'll hear first the instrumental 'Uncle Zeke' featuring guitarist Muryel "Zeke" Campbell, and then the traditional waltz song 'Troubles'. Upon leaving the Burrus Mills "Pappy" O'Daniel formed his own band the Hillbilly Boys. He first used them to sell his own brand of Hillbilly Flour on the radio, and later to campaign for Governor of Texas, a post that he won in 1938. The Hillbilly Boys will give us 'Hillbilly Stomp', 'San Antonio', and 'In An Old Log Cabin By An Old Log Fire' from 1935, and 'Please Pass the Biscuits, Pappy' from 1937. O'Daniel used this final number as a theme, sung to the tune of "I Like Mountain Music" and featuring the fine tenor voice of Leon Huff, known as The Texas Songbird.

Meanwhile, Bob Wills had formed a much larger aggregation including a full horn section. He moved the band to Tulsa and radio station KVOO and played dances regularly at Cain's Academy ballroom. We'll hear two tunes from 1936 starting with the traditional 'What's the Matter With The Mill' with Tommy Duncan on vocal. Following will be his famous 'Steel Guitar Rag', an instrumental classic because each of the three sections builds upon the devices of the previous section in leading to a climax. Although the recording gives composer credit to steel guitarist Leon McAuliffe, actually McAuliffe learned the first two sections from a recording by black guitarist Sylvester Weaver of his "Guitar Rag", but did add the climactic third section. This will be followed by the Cindy Walker composition from 1941 'Cherokee Maiden' with Tommy Duncan on the vocal. Then Tommy sings 'Have I Stayed Away Too Long' from 1944.

You can tell that this was not a commercial recording because Tommy starts to chuckle at one of Bob's comments right at the end. Now we'll sample some other popular but lesser known western swing groups. The Tune Wranglers from San Antonio present the rather unique 'Chicken Reel Stomp' from 1936. Then the Swift Jewel Cowboys, formed by an executive of the meat packing firm and billed as "the only mounted cowboy band in America" perform Kansas City Blues' from 1939. Next we'll hear an instrumental by Adolph Hofner and his San Antonians featuring some unique solos. J.R. Chatwell must have loosened his fiddle bow in order to play on all four strings and the steel player lets loose some wild microtones and syncopations on the 'Alamo Steel Serenade' from 1941. When Bob Wills went to California after World War II, his younger brother Johnnie Lee took over at Cain's Academy in Tulsa. Here's one of his classics 'Lazy John', vocal by Leon Huff, from about 1947. We'll close the show with two examples of western swing from the late 1940s. Bill Boyd and his Cowboy Ramblers continued to produce exemplary examples of the genre in the 40s and into the 50s. We'll hear 'Lone Star Rag' from 1948. After Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan parted ways, Wills tried a number of other vocalists. Carl Luper sings 'You're the Sweetest Rose In Texas' from 1949. Fred Hoeptner March, 2001]

[SMOKEY MONTGOMERY introduced the Dixieland banjo style to the hillbilly jazz that is popularly called western swing. A member, for over 65 years, of the seminal Texas swing band the Light Crust Doughboys, he was one of the last links with the genre's "Golden Age".

Smokey Montgomery was born Marvin Wetter - the name Montgomery was adopted in tribute to his favourite actor, Robert Montgomery - in rural Iowa in 1913 and had taught himself to play the banjo ukulele by the time he was 10. As he got older he would follow his parents to the local dance halls, and recalled:

I'd stand and watch these orchestras and saw a banjo player playing tenor style, so I ordered a chord book from Sears and Roebuck and started playing tenor style.

Having switched to the tenor banjo, he played in a four-piece band named the Iowa Orioles before joining a travelling tent show. The regime of constantly moving from town to town proved a tough one and in 1934 he headed for Dallas. Whilst there he joined a local fiddle band named the Wanderers and met Eddie Dunn, a radio announcer who would shortly move to Fort Worth to lead the Light Crust Doughboys.

The Doughboys had been formed four years earlier when the Burrus Mill and Elevator Company, producers of Light Crust flour, sponsored a Fort Worth radio show featuring a trio with Bob Wills on fiddle, Herman Arnspiger on guitar and Milton Brown handling the vocals, the group quickly became very popular. Arnspiger departed the group to be followed, in 1932, by Brown and then, in 1933, by Wills who, as leader of the Texas Playboys, would go on to become the most important figure in the genre.

In June 1935 Montgomery was invited to join the Doughboys. He immediately acquired the same nickname as his predecessor, "Junior". "I had that name with the Doughboys until 1948 when we went on television on Channel Five on WBPA in Fort Worth," he said.

When I would play my banjo on fast things my hand would blur. Mel would say, "Well, there's old Junior smoking it out." But the first thing you know, he started calling me Smokey, and I was glad to get rid of the name Junior.

In 1936 the band appeared in two films alongside Gene Autry, Oh Susannah and The Big Show. They toured and cut a series of fine records for Columbia including "South" and "Little Honky Tonk Headache" (both 1940) and "Bear Creek Hop" (1941). Montgomery formed close musical associations with the band's guitarist Muryel "Zeke" Campbell and with a young ragtime pianist named John "Knocky" Parker. Although Parker went on to pursue a career outside music, they continued to work together. During the 1970s the pair produced a history of ragtime for Audiophile and followed it in 1986 with a four- volume survey of Texas swing for Circle Records.

Montgomery maintained his association with the Doughboys but increasingly devoted his time to arranging, songwriting, publishing and the development of a recording studio. He continued to perform into his late eighties, noting, "I can't play quite as fast as I used to, but I can still keep up." Smokey died in 2001.]