View source for Bob Wills Is Still the King

{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2017}}
{{Infobox song
| name     = Bob Wills Is Still the King
| image    = File:Bob Wills Is Still the King by Waylon Jennings US vinyl.png
| caption  = One of flipside labels of the U.S. vinyl release
| artist   = [[Waylon Jennings]]
| album    = [[Dreaming My Dreams (Waylon Jennings album)|Dreaming My Dreams]]
| A-side   = "[[Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way]]"
| released = August 1975
| recorded = September 27, 1974
| genre    = [[Country music|Country]]
| length   = 3:29
| label    = [[RCA Records Nashville|RCA Nashville]]
| writer   = Waylon Jennings
| producer = Waylon Jennings<br />[[Ray Pennington]]
| misc     =
}}
"'''Bob Wills Is Still the King'''"  is a song written and performed by American country music artist [[Waylon Jennings]], as a tribute of sorts to the [[Western swing]] icon [[Bob Wills]].
It is known in two forms. A live recording of the song was released in June 1975 as the concluding track on the album ''[[Dreaming My Dreams (Waylon Jennings album)|Dreaming My Dreams]]'', and then appeared in August 1975 as the B-side of "[[Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way]]", the second single from the album. By early November, the A-side had risen to number one on the [[Hot Country Songs|country singles chart]], but the B-side gained considerable airplay as well, enough so that ''[[Billboard (magazine)|Billboard]]'' listed it as a [[A-side and B-side|two-sided hit]]<ref name="bb-early-nov">{{cite news | url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/47212257/?terms=%22Are%2BYou%2BSure%2BHank%2BDone%2BIt%2BThis%2BWay%22%2Bbillboard | title=Top 20 country singles | agency=United Press International | newspaper=The Times-Standard | location=Eureka, California | date=November 9, 1975 | page=6 | via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref> whereas ''[[Cashbox (magazine)|Cashbox]]'' showed it with just the A-side listed.<ref name="cb-early-nov">{{cite news | url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/49920906/?terms=%22Are%2BYou%2BSure%2BHank%2BDone%2BIt%2BThis%2BWay%22 | title=Top 10 Recordings: Country-Western | newspaper=Waco Tribune-Herald | date=November 9, 1975 | page=8 | via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref>  A studio version of the song was released in March 1976 on the ''[[Mackintosh & T.J.]]'' film soundtrack album.
The exact meaning of the song, which also alludes to Jennings' fellow [[outlaw country]] star [[Willie Nelson]], has been the subject of considerable commentary. Nonetheless "Bob Wills Is Still the King" continues to be a staple at [[classic country]] radio stations and the satellite radio channel [[Willie's Roadhouse]], for example, plays both versions of the song. The live version is included in ''[[Classic Country Music: A Smithsonian Collection]]'', a multi-volume set of recordings released by the [[Smithsonian Institution]] in 1990 that contains 100 tracks deemed to be significantly important to the history of country music.<ref name="smithson">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NKoQAQAAMAAJ&q=%22bob+wills+is+still+the+king%22+%22Duke+Goff%22 | title=Classic Country Music | first=Bill C. | last=Malone | publisher=Smithsonian Institution Press | date=1990 | page=68}} For personnel, see also various editions of ''Waylon Live'' back album cover and liner notes.</ref>
==Composition and recording==
The song was composed sometime before September 27, 1974,<ref>''Dreaming My Dreams'' album, back cover notes.</ref> when the live version was recorded at the Texas Opry House in [[Austin, Texas]]<ref name="patoski-213"/> before what owner Willie Nelson later described as "a crowd that had jammed in there shoulder to shoulder so tight that even the fire marshall couldn't get out."<ref name="willie-1988-66ff"/>  Nelson also believed that this was the first time the song had been performed in public.<ref name="willie-1988-66ff"/>  Despite their unfamiliarity with it, the audience responds robustly to each mention of Texas in the song.<ref name="spitzer"/>  The live recording was produced by Jennings and [[Ray Pennington]].
The song contains allusions to the Wills song "[[San Antonio Rose]]", Wills singer [[Tommy Duncan]], Wills band [[The Texas Playboys]], the existence of [[honky-tonk]]s in Texas, the [[Grand Ole Opry]] in Nashville, and the [[Red River of the South|Red River]] that denotes one of the boundaries of Texas.<ref name="spitzer"/> The song also quotes from "At The Crossroads" ("You just can't live in Texas if you ain't got a whole lot of soul"), a 1969 record by [[The Sir Douglas Quintet]].  The music to the song is not obviously Western swing nor does it sound like Bob Wills.<ref name="hill"/>  Nor for that matter is it straight country music; rather, it is a slow-tempo mixture of country, [[country rock]], and [[rockabilly]] with some possible hints of Western swing.<ref name="spitzer"/>  The basic group instrumentation features [[pedal steel guitar]] and [[harmonica]], both of which lend credibility to the performance's Western origins.<ref name="spitzer"/>
The song gained some renown even before it was released on record, <!-- did someone have an advance copy? --> as one verse of it was quoted by a [[United Press International]] story published on May 14, 1975, following the death of Wills the day before:
:''You can hear the Grand Ol' Opry in Nashville, Tennessee''
:''It's the home of country music, on that we all agree''
:''But when you cross that ol' Red River, hoss,''
:''That just don't mean a thing.''
:''Once you're down in Texas, Bob Wills is still the King.''<ref name="wills-obit">{{cite news | url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/48988774/?terms=%22bob+wills+is+still+the+king%22 | title=Country Music Star Bob Wills Is Dead | agency=United Press International | newspaper=The Raleigh Register | location=Beckley, West Virginia | date=May 14, 1975 | page=36 | via=[[Newspapers.com]] }}</ref>
The song concludes, in another verse about Texas, with lines directed at his friend and occasional collaborator:
:''It's the home of Willie Nelson, the home of Western swing''
:''He'll be the first to tell you, Bob Wills is still the King.''<ref name="spitzer"/>
Jennings played the song at one of the early instantiations of the [[Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnic]] and later wrote that in the wild environment of that setting, women started taking their clothes off during the song, leading to an orgy taking place on one side of the audience.<ref name="waylon-autobio"/>
The studio version, whose date of recording is unclear, is 3:00 long, and was produced by Waylon Jennings and Richard (Ritchie) Albright.<ref>''Mackintosh & T.J.'' soundtrack album, back cover notes.</ref>   It is shorter than the live version because it omits the spoken introduction and pauses in the singing for audience reaction. It does however include a [[false ending]] followed by an instrumental outro of the fiddle theme from the Bob Wills classic hit "[[Faded Love]]". This outro had not been present in the recorded live version, thus making it hard to hear echoes of Western swing in that arrangement.<ref name="hill"/>  <!-- studio version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLrJ250Gao8
3:00 long or 2:58 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxHu_71sU1E
at 2:20 fade plays Wills' "Faded Love" theme
live version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55DO5sNGZ_s'
3:20 long
no fade theme -->
The album ''[[Waylon Live]]'', released in December 1976, was recorded at the same performances that produced "Bob Wills Is Still the King," and included that version again.
==Charts and performance==
By October 1975, the single had reached the top ten of country charts, with Billboard showing both side of it in its listings.<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/17870704/?terms=%22Are%2BYou%2BSure%2BHank%2BDone%2BIt%2BThis%2BWay%22 | title=Neil Has Top Spot On List | agency=United Press International | newspaper=The Daily News | location=Huntington and Mount Union, Pennsylvania | date=October 17, 1975 | page=3 | via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/7909322/?terms=%22Are%2BYou%2BSure%2BHank%2BDone%2BIt%2BThis%2BWay%22|title=Boogie Time | first=Melissa | last=deBin | newspaper=The Paris News | location=Paris, Texas | date=October 13, 1975 | page=HS Supplement | via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref>  Indeed, some outlets such as [[WTHI-FM]] in [[Terre Haute, Indiana]] listed "Bob Wills Is Still the King" first rather than "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way".<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/84944749/?terms=%22Are%2BYou%2BSure%2BHank%2BDone%2BIt%2BThis%2BWay%22 | title=Records | newspaper=Terre Haute Tribune-Star | date=October 11, 1975 | page=6A | via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref>
By early November 1975, the single had reached the top spot on both the Billboard country chart (with both sides listed)<ref name="bb-early-nov"/> and the Cashbox country chart (with just the A-side listed).<ref name="cb-early-nov"/>  "Bob Wills Is Still the King" did well both on traditional hits-oriented country stations, such as [[KVET (AM)|KVET-AM]] in Austin, as well as on the newer [[progressive country]] stations, such as [[KOKE-FM]], also in the Austin area.<ref name="spitzer"/>
==Themes and interpretations==
The piece, which Jennings introduces in the live version as "a song I wrote on a plane between Dallas and Austin," appears on the surface to be plainspoken tribute to Bob Wills.<ref name="hill"/>  After all, Jennings says in the introduction that it was "about a man that has as much to do with why we're down here as anybody."<ref name="mellard"/>
But in fact it took aim at country trends, including the outlaw country movement that he and friend Willie Nelson had done so much to create. As author Michael Striessguth observes, "It was another delightful example of Waylon's eagerness to poke fun at the highfalutin music industry, in this case, Willie Nelson and the redneck rock thing down in Texas.  ''It don't matter who's in Austin/Bob Wills is still the king''."<ref>{{cite book|author=Streissguth, Michael|year=2013|title=Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville|publisher=Harper Collins <!--isbn=978-0-062-03820-3-->|pages=189–190|location=New York}}</ref>
In Nicholas R. Spitzer's essay "Romantic Regionalism and Convergent Culture in Central Texas", which was published in 1975 and contains a determined exegesis of the song, he states that "The crowd hoots and hollers on cue in a manner that from participant-observation I would describe as self-conscious. That is, they are themselves performing in a fashion presumed to be truly Texan."<ref name="spitzer">{{cite journal | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8_afNI8SL6UC&pg=PA90 | title=Romantic Regionalism and Convergent Culture in Central Texas | first=Nicholas R. | last=Spitzer | journal=John Edwards Memorial Foundation Quarterly | volume=12 | number=4 | date=Winter 1975 | pages=191–197| isbn=9780879725747 }}</ref>
In part inspired by Spitzer, the song has since generated a fair amount of culturally based scholarly attention. Indeed, American Studies professor Barry Shank has presented a sort of historiography of it.<ref>{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Zj7HBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA68 | title=Dissonant Identities: The Rock'n'Roll Scene in Austin, Texas | first=Barry | last=Shank | publisher=Wesleyan University Press | date=2011 | location=Hanover, New Hampshire | pages=68–69 | isbn=9780819572677 }}</ref>
Lecturer Trent Hill believes that the song best exemplifies the "complexities of country tradition as well as its differences with the modernist, 'rockist' version of tradition".<ref name="hill">{{cite book | title=Rock Over the Edge: Transformations in Popular Music Culture
| editor-first=Roger | editor-last=Beebe | editor2-first=Denise | editor2-last=Fulbrook | editor3-first=Ben | editor3-last=Saunders | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qxn8mPy5x3IC&pg=PA169 | pages=169–170 | publisher=Duke University Press | location=Durham, North Carolina | date=2002 | chapter=Why Isn't Country Music 'Youth' Culture | first=Trent | last=Hill | isbn=0822383373 }}</ref>  Hill says that it is possible that the song is best viewed as "a complicated joke", with it being unclear exactly who all the targets of the joke are.<ref name="hill"/>
In a somewhat similar vein, cultural historian Jason Mellard writes that the song illustrates how the Wills tradition and Western swing became "strange bedfellows" of the progressive country movement: "... for 1970s cosmic cowboys to ground a performance of Anglo-Texan masculinity of the figure of Bob Wills connoted, at different times, either a subtle recognition or a willed erasure of the patchwork nature of that identity's cultural forms."<ref name="mellard">{{cite book | title=Progressive Country: How the 1970s Transformed the Texan in Popular Culture | first=Jason | last=Mellard | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=204WBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT91 | publisher=University of Texas Press | location=Austin | year=2013 | page=91| isbn=9780292754676 }}</ref>
In terms of regular music criticism, Fred Schruers' review of the containing album in ''[[The Rolling Stone Record Guide]]'' of 1979, which he gave four out of five stars, termed the song "live and fierce in Austin" and contributing to the album's ability to "showcase a determinedly history-minded Waylon."<ref>{{cite book | title=The Rolling Stone Record Guide | url=https://archive.org/details/rollingstonereco00mars | url-access=registration | editor-first=Dave | editor-last=Marsh | editor2-first=John | editor2-last=Swenson | publisher=Random House/Rolling Stone Press | location=New York | date=1979 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/rollingstonereco00mars/page/192 192–193]}}</ref>  Stephen Thomas Erlewine's review for [[All Music Guide]] states that the A- and B-sides of the single, which open and close ''Dreaming My Dreams'', make Jennings "an heir apparent to [the] legacies" of the subjects of those two songs.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.allmusic.com/album/dreaming-my-dreams-mw0000035975 | title= Waylon Jennings Dreaming My Dreams | publisher=All Music Guide | access-date=October 22, 2017}}</ref>
And in any case, people in Texas came to identify with the song.<ref name="bb-1999"/>  The work of the Austin-based group [[Asleep at the Wheel]] helped to keep popular knowledge of Wills going, and they collaborated with [[Clint Black]] on a new version of "Bob Wills Is Still the King" on a 1999 tribute album ''Ride With Bob''.<ref name="bb-1999">{{cite news | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9AwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA38 | title=Wills Is King On 'Ride With Bob' | first=Deborah Evans | last=Price | magazine=Billboard | date=June 19, 1999 | pages=38, 40}}</ref>  Another recording of the song by Asleep at the Wheel, this time in collaboration with Waylon's son [[Shooter Jennings]] together with [[Randy Rogers]] and [[Reckless Kelly (band)|Reckless Kelly]], appeared on the 2015 effort ''[[Still the King: Celebrating the Music of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys]]''. The song itself is collected on several Jennings live sets, compilations, and box sets, including ''[[RCA Country Legends (Waylon Jennings album)|RCA Country Legends]]'' (2001 compilation, includes studio version), '' [[Live from Austin, TX (Waylon Jennings album)|Live from Austin, TX]]'' (recorded 1989, released 2006), and ''[[Nashville Rebel (box set)|Nashville Rebel]]'' (2006 box set including studio version). Perhaps the most unexpected appearance was a performance by [[The Rolling Stones]] in Austin in 2006 during their [[A Bigger Bang (concert tour)|A Bigger Bang Tour]].<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.acountry.com/rolling-stones-in-austin-bob-wills-is-still-the-king/ | title=Rolling Stones In Austin : Bob Wills Is Still The King | publisher=ACountry.com | date= October 24, 2006 | first=Jarrod | last=Vrazel}}</ref>  Their arrangement featuring [[Ronnie Wood]] playing pedal steel guitar was captured on their 2007 ''[[The Biggest Bang]]'' concert DVD release.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwEOZtJm8pU | title=The Rolling Stones – Bob Wills Is Still The King – Live Official | publisher=YouTube | access-date=October 26, 2017}}</ref>
Willie Nelson's 2015 memoir ''It's a Long Story'' interprets the song as a good-natured jibe against him, one that Jennings had specially prepared once he knew he would be recording a live album in Nelson's Texas Opry House.<ref name="willie-2015-234"/>  In his telling, he was present when Jennings sang it and praised it once the singer came offstage.<ref name="willie-2015-234"/>   And he wrote in 2015, "Truth be told, I really did like the song. And besides, he'd sung the gospel truth: far as I was concerned, Bob Wills ''was'' still the king."<ref name="willie-2015-234">{{cite book | first=Willie | last=Nelson | title=It's a Long Story: My Life | publisher=Little, Brown and Company | location=New York | date=2015 | pages=234–235| isbn=978-0316403542 }}</ref> Indeed, in his earlier 1988 work, ''Willie: An Autobiography'', Nelson had described growing up and witnessing Bob Wills as a charismatic, magnetic force – comparable to [[Elvis Presley]] or [[John the Baptist]].<ref name="willie-1988-66ff"/>    From watching Wills in action, through good nights and bad, Nelson said he learned how to be a compelling  front man of a band.<ref name="willie-1988-66ff">{{cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-1ZObbxKvnAC&pg=PA66 | title=Willie: An Autobiography | first1=Willie | last1=Nelson | first2=Bud | last2=Shrake | publisher=Simon & Schuster | location=New York | date=1988 | pages=66ff, 71| isbn=9781461661313 }}</ref>
Jennings wrote in liner notes for a later compilation box set of his, "I never was a big Bob Wills fan."<ref name="hill"/>
The singer says in his memoir that the song was about his early days in playing clubs in Texas that "had those big Bob Wills dance floors. ... I'd get up on the long bandstand, built for a twelve-piece cowboy orchestra, and I'd be telling my four guys to start spreading out."  He continues that the audience was frustrated by his songs he played that were difficult to dance to.<ref name="waylon-autobio">{{cite book | title=Waylon: An Autobiography | first1=    Waylon | last1=Jennings | first2=Lenny | last2=Kaye | publisher=Grand Central Publishing | location=New York | date= 1996 | pages=141–142, 278 | isbn= 9780446562379 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=smqH_h6UAmUC&pg=PT278}}</ref>
This was echoed on the 1990s cable television show ''Ryman Country Homecoming'', which featured country music legends discussing and playing some of their most famous songs to each other, host [[Ralph Emery]] asks him, "Waylon, were you like a lot of kids in Texas when you grew up, were you a big fan of Bob Wills?" To which Jennings replies, "No, I wasn't," provoking laughter from his fellow musicians, after which he added, "I liked two of his songs. I really did. That was a misconception."  Jennings then proceeds to say the song was about a couple of things, the first being the point about playing with a small group on a large Wills-sized stage. But he then digresses into an exchange in praise of [[Glen Campbell]] and never gets to the second thing. Then in his singing of it, he changes the reference in the next-to-last line to "It's the home of Willie what's-his-name", earning a playful bonk on the head from Nelson, who was sitting next to him and laughing.<ref name="youtube-2">{{cite web | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfAbOa11ZjM | title=Waylon Pays Tribute to Glen Campbell | publisher=YouTube | access-date=June 1, 2017}}</ref>
Indeed, one Nelson biographer, Joe Nick Patoski, believes that despite all the analysis, the song is a straight ode to Wills and that the rivalry aspect has been overstated: "Waylon's song simply put the whole [outlaw] movement in perspective: Both he and Willie were sons of Bob Wills, who put Texas music on the map."<ref name="patoski-213">{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/willienelsonepic00pato | url-access=registration | title=Willie Nelson: An Epic Life | first=Joe Nick | last=Patoski | publisher=Little, Brown and Company | location=New York | date=2008 | page=[https://archive.org/details/willienelsonepic00pato/page/213 213] | isbn=9780316017787 }}</ref>
==Personnel==
Players on the live version:<ref name="smithson"/>
*Waylon Jennings – vocals, lead guitar
*Richie Albright – drums
*Duke Goff – bass
*Larry Whitmore – 12-string guitar
*Roger Crabtree – harmonica
*Billy Ray Reynolds – guitar, harmony
*[[Ralph Mooney]] – steel guitar
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
* [http://images.45cat.com/waylon-jennings-bob-will-is-still-the-king-rca-victor.jpg Image of 45 rpm B-side]
* [https://img.discogs.com/QMlIsvjGzuCOe9PXZKHc1iQ45mg=/fit-in/600x597/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-7201329-1436024458-3888.jpeg.jpg Image of a different pressing of the 45 rpm B-side]
* [https://i0.wp.com/farm8.staticflickr.com/7140/8074704708_e452b2d293_b.jpg Back cover of the album with the studio version]
{{Waylon Jennings}}
{{authority control}}
[[Category:Cultural depictions of country musicians]]
[[Category:Songs about musicians]]
[[Category:1975 singles]] <!-- live version -->
[[Category:1976 songs]] <!-- studio version, different enough to warrant own cat -->
[[Category:Waylon Jennings songs]]
[[Category:Songs written by Waylon Jennings]]
[[Category:RCA Records singles]]
[[Category:Songs about Texas]]
[[Category:Songs about country music]]
[[Category:Song recordings produced by Ray Pennington]]
[[Category:Western swing]]  <!-- sort of fits top of cat -->
[[Category:Asleep at the Wheel songs]]
[[Category:Clint Black songs]]