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Southwest Shuffle: Pioneers Of Honky-Tonk, Western Swing and Country Jazz

Author: Rich Kienzle

Publication date : 2003

Routledge

From the back cover:

While Nashville has long been considered the epicentre of country music, Southwest Shuffle documents the important influence of country music styles of the region stretching from Texas to California.

In this book you'll read about:

  • Spade Cooley, the western swing fiddler and bandleader whose career was cut short by his imprisonment for murdering his wife in 1961

  • Hank Thompson, a Texan whose durable meld of barroom music and western swing anticipated George Strait

  • Jimmy Bryant and Speedy West, legendary pickers whose incendiary instrumental records earned them the nickname "The Flaming Guitars"

  • Tennessee Ernie Ford, who went from local LA TV star to household word in the '50s

  • Willie Nelson, who struggled for years in the Nashville wilderness convinced that someday his Texas style eclecticism would prevail
Kienzle's vibrant writing, based on original interviews and archival digging, reflects his long-time love for these musical styles. Southwest Shuffle will enthral everyone from the new-country to alt-country to the hardcore traditionalist.
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