Bob Wills' Texas Playboys

Schedule

Sat Mar 04 2023 at 06:00 pm to 11:00 pm

Location

Cain's Ballroom | Tulsa, OK

Bob Wills' Texas Playboys will take the stage on Saturday, March 4 under the direction of Jason Roberts as we celebrate the legacy of Bob Wills.
Tickets on sale Friday, December 9 at 10am CT.
Doors :: 6pm
Show :: 7pm
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bobwillstexasplayboys.com
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When Texas Playboys front man Jason Roberts steps onto a stage with his fiddle and utters his first “AH-ha” of the evening, western-swing fans know they're seeing and hearing nothing less than the living embodiment of a tradition that stretches all the way back to 1933. That was the year the charismatic fiddler Bob Wills and several other musicians in a group called the Light Crust Doughboys broke away from Fort Worth's Burris Mills and its autocratic business manager, W. Lee “Pappy” O'Daniel, to form their own band. As Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, they became one of the most popular touring and recording acts in the nation, offering audiences the highly danceable musical mixture that came to be known as western swing.
Following Bob's 1975 death, a group of ex-Playboys led by former Wills steel-guitarist Leon McAuliffe and hand-picked by McAuliffe and Bob's widow, Betty, came together to keep the Bob Wills sound alive. Those men made a promise to one another that when the first of their number died, they would disband – and, true to their word, the group dissolved in 1986, following the death of piano player “Brother” Al Stricklin.
Eventually, with the blessing of the Bob Wills estate, guitarist-producer Tommy Allsup, a longtime Wills collaborator, and Leon Rausch, the Playboys' last great vocalist, took over Bob Wills' Texas Playboys. They continued squarely in the Wills style, delighting old fans and making new ones, until 2018, following the death of Allsup and the retirement of nonagenarian Rausch.
Today, the Bob Wills sound continues, as big and bright and brassy as ever. The newest Texas Playboys aggregation is led by two-time Grammy winner Roberts, hand-picked by both the Wills estate and Leon Rausch, whose nearly two decades in the famed western-swing band Asleep at the Wheel includes an eight-year stint actually playing Bob Wills in the Wheel's nationally touring musical-theatre production, A RIDE WITH BOB. And, like Bob's original band, this group of Playboys includes some of the best swing musicians both Oklahoma and Texas have to offer.
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Advance :: $32+
Mezzanine (21+) :: $48+
Day of Show :: $32+
Door :: $40

Where is it happening?

Cain's Ballroom, 423 N Main St, Tulsa, United States

Event Location & Nearby Stays:

Host or Publisher Cain's Ballroom

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