Bring It On Down To My House

Are Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys jazz?

I came to Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys through my dad. He had the first volume of The Tiffany Transcriptions on CD, a series of live recordings that the Texas Playboys made for radio syndication. My dad was an impeccably highbrow opera fan, and aside from the Elvis Christmas Album, Bob Wills was the one concession to his Midwestern roots. His own parents had probably gone out dancing to the Texas Playboys in South Dakota when they were young, so I assume my dad had the Tiffany Transcriptions CD out of nostalgia. My sister and I found it when we were going through his stuff after he died. We liked it a lot better than the opera CDs, so we ended up listening to it on endless repeat while we emptied drawers and closets.

Even though I got my introduction to Bob Wills under sad circumstances, his music has brought me a lot of joy. "Bring It On Down To My House" is one of my favorite of his tunes, and I jumped at the opportunity to bring it into pop aural skills class as an example of secondary dominants and circle of fifths root movement.

While this music sounds like it comes from the old dusty trail, the Texas Playboys were based in San Francisco in the late 1940s, and that's where they recorded the Tiffany tracks. The band plays more like they would at a dance gig than at a formal recording session, with a looser and more casual feel. Also, the unusual 16" disc recording format let them play each song longer than they could for a standard 78 rpm record.