This Week's Suggested Book
from the Ashbrook Center
(Monday, November 15, 1999)
 | | Lone Star Swing:
On the Trail of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
by Duncan McLean |
Norton
311 pages, January 1997
Paperback, 14.00
ISBN: 0393317560
A percentage of the proceeds from your purchase of this book from Amazon.com will benefit the
Ashbrook Center.
Using the prize money from his Somerset Maugham Award, Duncan McLean traveled from Orkney, Scotland, to Texas in search of the extraordinary mix of jazz, blues, country, and mariachi that is Western Swing.
This account of his travels takes in barbed-wire museums, onion festivals, hoe-downs, ghost towns, dead dogs, and ten thousand miles of driving through the Lone Star State. A constant soundtrack of vintage music from bands like the Texas Top Hands, The Lightcrust Doughboys, and the Modern Mountaineers cheers McLean as he tries, with great difficulty, to track down any trace of his greatest heroes: Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Both a quest for a musical grail and a wildly funny travelogue, Lone Star Swing captures the singular wonders of Texas and its maverick inhabitants, its staggering 100-in-the-shade heat, its mouth blistering chilies … Above all it captures the spirit of the glorious, mongrel music--once incredibly popular, now all but forgotten--that McLean crossed the world to hear.
Table of Contents
- Get With It
- Deep In The Heart Of Texas
- Razors In De Air
- Big Beaver
- Shanty Town
- A Good Man Is Hard To Find
- Dog House Blues
- Eagle Riding Papas
- You're Bound To Look Like A Monkey When You Grow Old
- What Make Bob Holler?
- Shake Up Your Gourd Seeds
- Fifty Miles Of Elbow Room
- Cheesy Breeze
- It's Bad To Be A Good Girl (When You're Nine Miles Out Of Town)
- This Is Southland
- Bright Lights And Blonde-Haired Women
- Jesusita En Chihuahua
- South Texas Swing
- Across The Alley From The Alamo
- Svestkova Alej (The Prune Song)
- 12th Street Rag
- Let's Count The Stars Together
- Tired Of The Same Thing All The Time
- Good Time Cake-Walk
- The Wheel Of The Wagon Is Broken
- I Can't Be Satisfied
- Crippled Turkey
- Hometown Stomp
- Smile Darn You Smile
- Still Waters Run The Deepest
- It's The Bottle Talkin'
- Twin Guitar Special
- Sittin' On Top Of The World
- Song Of The Wandered (Where Shall I Go?)
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