Search - Spade Cooley, Tex Williams :: A Western Swing Dance Date with Spade & Tex

The real Hot Spade Cooley Band

Tony Thomas | SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA | 11/26/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Get this record is you like real western Swing. Get this if you have been disappointed by more moderate later Spade Cooley Records. Cooley was a disciplinarian, not much of a musician himself, who aimed at cornering the pop audience holding the band down to "the businessman's bounce." This is his original band with a group of hot musicians he gathered up in the hey day of Western Swing during WWII. In the end the group tended to be too creative and hot for Cooley, and he fired them all, something he would continued to do until the mid 1950s when he was able to front a pathetic easy listening music sounding all women band. Most people in this group went on in a matter of months to launch Tex Williams great bands of the late 1940s which really are arch typical Western Swing. Despite, all this history, this CD is is boot scooting fun. Like any dance record with a dance band, you hear an interaction with to get the audience dancing that you might not hear on a studio or concert album."

When swing was king . . .

Ronald Scheer | Los Angeles | 01/22/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Just what the title says, this is get-up-and-dance music and recalls the great days of swing bands playing on the radio and for ballrooms full of dancing couples. This CD features band-leader Spade Cooley, who came into his own during the war years of the 1940s putting together a band that was big even for a big band, with violins, guitars, brass, reeds, accordion, piano, and his trademark harp. In his arrangements, there was also great slide guitar, and his fiddles could play in harmony. He teamed up with singer and bass-player Tex Williams, who later had a band of his own, the Western Caravan. Five of the tracks on this CD are from his organization.



As this CD demonstrates, Cooley and Williams played to a wide variety of musical tastes, and there are classics here, including "Yearning," "Sioux City Sue," "Crazy 'Cause I Love You," "You Can't Break My Heart," and Cooley's own "Spadella." There are several polkas and traditional songs ("Wabash Cannonball" and Popeye's "Hornpipe Song") and comic songs ("Leather Britches"). There are two Bob Wills rags. Hollywood Indian motifs show up in "Redwing" and "Pale Moon." Four songs feature the honey-smooth baritone of Tex Williams. Other vocalists include Ginny Jackson, Red Egner, Del Porter, and Smokey Rogers (pictured with Cooley and Williams on the CD cover).



With 27 tracks and almost an hour of music, this CD is a terrific trip into the era of big bands and western swing. And a great bargain, too.

"

Western swing at it's best

COMPUTERJAZZMAN | Cliffside Park, New Jersey United States | 08/17/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"this is a great CD, great music, great rhythm and a whole lot of fun to just listen to. This was recorded when Western Swing was at its' peak, a lot better than the stuff they try to pass off as Western Swing today (that's why all the new bands go back and re-record all of the old stuff.....)."