Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys (1944) User Reviews

A nice departure...

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 28 August 2011]

This is one of the newest of the Vitaphone shorts--known as a "Melody Master". However, in a radical departure from earlier shorts, this one has a narrator who gives a tiny bit of background information about Bob Wills. This was to become the norm through most of the rest of the series.

"Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys" is a radical departure in another way. It features a country western band--the sort you might expect to hear playing music for a Gene Autry film. It wasn't at all to my taste, but I must admit the band was pretty good (better than the follow year's "Spade Cooley, King of the Western Swing") and I actually enjoyed it...a bit. Plus, the film deserves kudos for at least trying to be different. If you love this sort of music, then you are in luck!

The reigning kings of country music

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 1 October 2016]

A faux biographical plot set the stage for Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys to perform several of the songs that they are identified with. Most particularly San Antonio Rose which crossed over from the country to the pop charts and provided Bing Crosby with one of his gold records.

Wills himself was popular enough in what we now call the red states. Some of you might remember that in Clint Eastwood's Honky Tonk Man, a dying and tubercular Eastwood was traveling to Nashville to get Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys to record one of the songs Eastwood had written.

The short subject is a good introduction to Wills and his act who were the reigning kings of country music at the time.

Hi-Ho, Rickenbacker, AWAY!

[Calaboss · 5/10 · 19 March 2010]

This was a short about Bob Wills and his band of country playboys. They were portraying Old West, 1800's cowboys playing the simple, honest, country music of an earlier time. Yet, I'm pretty sure not many cowboys were riding around with electric slide guitars and amplifiers on their saddles. "Hi-Ho, Rickenbacker, AWAY!" (OK, I'm picking nits.)

Bob and his boys play a few country tunes. The singing and playing were fine, but I'd never heard of these guys before. I was surprised to read that they had sold over a million records, but I certainly didn't see or hear anything to get overly excited about. It WAS rather amusing to see modern day (1944) ballroom patrons in tuxedos and ball gowns square dancing though. What a hoot!

Oh, and the dancing that young lady was engaged in was in no way of the 1800's variety.

Nice Story, Decent Music

[Michael_Elliott · 19 March 2010]

Bob Willis and His Texas Playboys (1944)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

MGM short introduces us to Bob Willis, his style of music and the story behind how he started singing and why he ended up forming his own band. Songs include "My Adobe Hacienda", "San Antonio Rose" and "Mama Don't Allow No Fiddle Playing Around Here". This was one of the later shorts in the long-running MGM series that introduced current musicians and just let them play their music. That trend ended and a new style of short came in when we not only got to hear their music but also get the mini-bios of their life. This short actually does a better job at telling his story than showing off the music as some of the Western settings were pretty entertaining and how Willis ended up getting into music was rather interesting. What didn't work too well with me was the music, which I found to be decent but nothing that really stood out as needed to have a short to capture it.

America did not have to wait for the 1971 premier of . . .

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 29 November 2018]

. . . THE LAST PICTURE SHOW to be notified that there was something rotten in Texas, or at least that there would be by the early 1950s. Ten years before the events depicted in LPS, the always eponymous Warner Bros. warned the USA of the terrible trouble brewing in the so-called "Lone Star State" with BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS. Half a century before Hurricane Harvey turned Houston into a literal cesspool, LPS revealed the desolate Panhandle Region to be a Moral Morass during America's "Leave it to Beaver" Period. However, Warner's prophetic prognosticators beat everyone to the punch, depicting the downward glide path of the U.S. Achilles Heel with each successive song in this BOB WILLS expose. By the time "San Antonio Rose" rolls around, viewers are creeped out just as much as when the preacher's son abducts the little girl in LPS. The falsetto tones of this short's title singer produce more bad vibes than LPS broom-pusher "Billie'" being forced into a "date" with the $1.50 good times gal. When Warner's clairvoyant narrator talks about BOB WILLS square dances storming across the U.S. Motherland, it clearly foreshadows the sort of amoral musical beds hopping LPS only saw two decades in its rearview mirror.

Western Swing

[boblipton · 6/10 · 12 October 2021]

Bob Wills and his band play some of their hits amidst a bit of history of western music and Wills' family's place in it.... almost certainly made up.

At this period,western swing was the biggest-selling genre of music on record, and this episode of Warner's "Melody Masters" series took advantage of that. I expect it played very nicely in the smaller towns.

Though some viewers may pair this with a feature such as . . .

[cricket30 · 6/10 · 20 March 2021]

. . . THE LAST PICTURE SHOW, I think it might go better with BLOOD SIMPLE. Of course, PICTURE SHOW and BLOOD SIMPLE are both set in Texas, as is BOB WILLS AND HIS TEXAS PLAYBOYS. However, since shooting irons are endemic in the Real Life "Lone Star State," the lack of firearms in PLAYBOYS and PICTURE SHOW is really glaring. However, Peacemakers punctuate (and perforate) the SIMPLE plot. No wonder the Old Movie Land network is pairing the latter film with Bob Wills tonight.