Known primarily for popularizing Western swing, Wills topped the national charts for more than 20 years and helped change the face of country music in Nashville. Wills and his Texas Playboys have been called a dance band with a country string section that played pop songs as if they were jazz numbers. Whatever they were, their music expanded and erased the boundaries between musical genres.

Commemorating his 100th anniversary last year, Legacy has compiled what should be very close to the definitive Bob Wills collected works. Legends of Country Music: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, the first in a planned series of such packages from the label’s signature artists, is an impressive four-CD box set with 105 tracks spanning Wills’ lengthy career from 1932 to 1973. The original tracks have been re-mastered and come in a sumptuous new package, with previously unseen photos and background material.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Bob Wills is included here, starting with his first recordings with the Fort Worth Doughboys in 1932, through his chart-topping era on the ARC, Okeh, Columbia and MGM labels in the ’40s, when Wills’ Texas Playboys boasted some of the finest musicians in the country.

Listening to the whole set back to back, it is first of all astounding just how many undeniably catchy and seductive popular hits Wills forged through the prism of country ragtime and Western swing – “Steel Guitar Rag,” “Take Me Back to Tulsa,” “Twin Guitar Special” and the signature “San Antonio Rose,” to name just a few. What is even more remarkable within the sheer mass of work Wills recorded in his more than 40-year career, through numerous line-up and vocalist changes, is the length and breadth of the musical spectrum he covered, changing, adding and borrowing riffs from jazz and blues and hillbilly sources and really creating for the first time a band of highly-skilled musicians in the country idiom.

Add to this the charm and character of vocalists Tommy Duncan and, on occasion, Leon McAuliffe and others, and Wills’ Texas Playboys could rival any big band in the country for both musicianship and entertainment value.

After the war, the Playboys’ popularity was as big as ever with "Texas Playboy Rag," “Stay A Little Longer” and perhaps their biggest hits, "New Spanish Two Step" and the iconic "Bubbles in My Beer." As the Western swing craze declined, however, so did Wills' popularity and, by 1950, "Ida Red Likes the Boogie" and the future country standard "Faded Love," with Rusty McDonald’s lead vocal, would signal the end of the golden era.

Ill health also slowed Wills in the ’50s, and the Playboys recorded again only a handful of times in the ’60s to early ’70s, with a few of those tracks concluding the final disc. But the heart of the magic here is in the midst of the second and third discs, when you hear a high country wail, then a mean fiddle solo into a nonstop rocking band behind a sly, seductive vocal. Bob Wills’ maverick spirit has given country music, and indeed all of American popular music, a style, sophistication and flair that is ably demonstrated by this extensive set.

Sound
Many of these tracks are more than 50 years old, some as old as 70, and although evidence of the early recordings in particular is still present, the re-mastering is excellent and the instrumentation sounds fantastic. The inspired musicianship and spontaneity of the original performances allows for a clear and crisp sound these many years later.