Who was/is Billy Jack Wills ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more
Billy Jack Wills
Bob Wills's youngest brother, BILLY JACK, led what was probably northern California's most popular western swing band during the early '50s.
Born in Memphis, Hall Co., Texas in 1926, he learned to play guitar, bass and drums. He played with Johnnie Lee Wills in the early '40s and at various times with brother Bob, most notably during the five-year period after World War II. Billy Jack's greatest fame may well reside in the fact that he wrote the lyrics to Faded Love, and guested as vocalist on a number of Bob's MGM discs including Rock-A-Bye Baby Blues and Bottle Baby Boogie, from which Charlie Feathers may have got the inspiration for Bottle To The Baby. Billy Jack also wrote the rocking Cadillac In Model A.
By 1950, Billy Jack and Texas Playboy Tiny Moore had organised their own band to play at Wills Point Ballroom near Sacramento. Bob Wills owned it but, having moved to Oklahoma City, he left the management of the leisure centre to Moore, who had tired of cross-country touring. The two men recruited Kenny Lowery (rhythm guitar), Tommy Varner (steel), Dick McComb (trumpet) and Cotton Roberts (bass). Moore sang and played mandolin and fiddle; Billy Jack also sang and played drums. Vance Terry, a teenager from Sacramento, replaced Varner in 1951.
Inevitably, Billy Jack never escaped the shadow of his more famous brother, and his small group was relegated to the second division in which, despite their be-bop orientation, one western swing band sounded very much like another. Nevertheless, the aforementioned line-up appeared daily over the 50,000 watt KFBK, stomped the stage at Wills Point on Saturday nights and toured the west. According to Rich Kienzle, the band's boogie and blues songs garnered most attention and, unlike other western swing ensembles, Billy Jack was heavily influenced by R&B, citing B.B. King as one of his favourite artists.
The group's recordings for 4-STAR (1951-2) and then MGM didn't always reflect that bias, but we've located Billy Jack's mould-breaking revival of Good Rockin' Tonight, and one of the follow-ups, All She Wants To Do Is Rock. This also swings along nicely in a relaxed, old-bufferish kind of way. Wynonie Harris captured more of the song's true intent in his chart-topping version in 1949.
"I thought our band was a lot like Bill Haley and the Comets," Moore told Kienzle. "He just had better exposure. They called him rock 'n' roll... we weren't consciously going that way but we sounded a lot like his band." Haley's Crazy Man Crazy, Willie Mabon's I Don't Know and Ruth Brown's Teardrops From My Eyes were among the transcriptions which Billy Jack laid down at KFBK in the early '50s.
The group broke up in 1954. Most of the members went to work for brother Bob's Texas Playboys, appearing on the first DECCA session in 1955. Billy Jack retired in 1960 and died on March 2, 1991.
Copyright © Bear Family Records
Copyright © Bear Family Records®. Copying, also of extracts, or any other form of reproduction, including the adaptation into electronic data bases and copying onto any data mediums, in English or in any other language is permissible only and exclusively with the written consent of Bear Family Records® GmbH.