Overview

When Texas Playboys front man Jason Roberts steps onto a stage with his fiddle and utters his first “AH-ha” of the evening, western-swing fans know they're seeing and hearing nothing less than the living embodiment of a tradition that stretches all the way back to 1933. That was the year the charismatic fiddler Bob Wills and several other musicians in a group called the Light Crust Dough boys broke away from Fort Worth's Burris Mills and its autocratic business manager, W. Lee “Pappy”O'Daniel, to form their own band. As Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, they became one of the most popular touring and recording acts in the nation, offering audiences the highly danceable musical mixture that came to be known as western swing.

Today, the Bob Wills sound continues, as big and bright and brassy as ever. The newest Texas Playboys aggregation is led by two-time Grammy winner Roberts, hand-picked by both the Wills estate and Leon Rausch, whose nearly two decades in the famed western-swing band Asleep at the Wheel includes an eight-year stint actually playing Bob Wills in the Wheel's nationally touring musical-theatre production, A RIDE WITH BOB. And, like Bob's original band, this group of Playboys includes some of the best swing musicians both Oklahoma and Texas have to offer. The Okies include trombonist Steve Ham, trumpeter Mike Bennett, drummer Tony Ramsey, and fiddler Shawn Howe. The contingent from south of the Red River boasts piano player Wayne Glasson, steel-guitarist Dave Biller, saxophonist Larry Reed, and bassist Albert Quaid. Many of these top-notch players from both states have already done stints with the band's earlier incarnations.