THE CAPITAL OF
g n i w S BOB WILLS IS CONSIDERED BY MANY TO BE THE KING OF WESTERN SWING. PHOTO COURTESY JOHN WOOLEY.
156
OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE | JULY 2014
“Well, frankly, when I think of western swing, I think of Tulsa first.” – Bruce
Forman, leader of the West Coast cowboy-jazz band Cow Bop
Many years ago, late in his long life, Mr. O.W. Mayo told me how Tulsa came to be the focal point for the country- and cowboy-accented, jazz-infused dance music known as western swing. He was in a position to know. In 1933, he’d been in his home state of Texas, weighing a couple of different oil-company job offers, when he chanced to hear a band that his brother-in-law had brought to Waco, Texas, for an engagement. Most of the group and its leader, a charismatic fiddler and occasional vocalist named Bob Wills, had recently fled a Fort Worth-based act called the Light Crust Doughboys, which played daily on the radio in support of Burrus Mill’s