Hall of Fame by Bob Wills & Tommy Duncan (Vinyl record album review)

Record basics

Album name: Hall of Fame

Group name: Bob Wills & Tommy Duncan

Year: 1972

Number of discs: two

Label: United Artists Records

Collection: Brenner / Gessner

Who owned it: my father

Buy the CD on Amazon: $39.41

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never heard of Bob Wills or Tommy Duncan, or probably any of the songs on this record.

What I expected

Big band music?

What it was actually like

I listened to a double-LP swing compilation a couple of months ago called Big Bands’ Greatest Hits, and wasn’t a fan of it, so when I saw this double-LP compilation with a picture of guys on the cover who looked like the guys on the cover of that one, I thought it would be similar.

And it was similar in a way, but it was not at all like what I expected.

At first I thought I was listening to bluegrass, but it wasn’t like bluegrass either. I had to look it up, and learned about the existence of the western swing genre. And it turns out that western swing, rather unlike its eastern and/or nationwide counterpart, is actually pretty good!

To explain western swing a little… lots of it did sound like bluegrass, but there also wasn’t a point where it didn’t sound like big band jazz. So if you can imagine a cross between those two styles, or a blend of them, that was it. And it does make some sense, as I’ve long noted that bluegrass and some kinds of jazz already have elements in common, such as the style of musicians taking turns doing virtuosic solos.

Stay A Little Longer was familiar to me, but it was the only song I kind of recognized.

Grade

4/5: would listen again