YESTERDAY AND
TODAY
Charles R. Townsend
Of all the western swing bands in the Fort Worth-Dallas area,
the one that has enjoyed the greatest and longest success is the Light Crust
Doughboys. Its history covers more than half a century of American music.
In 1929 Bob Wills moved from West Texas to Fort Worth and formed the Wills
Fiddle Band, a rather unimposing aggregation made up of Wills as fiddler
and Herman Arnspiger as guitarist.
In 1930, Milton Brown joined the band as vocalist, and in 1931, the Wills Fiddle Band -- Wills, Arnspiger, and Brown -- became the Light Crust Doughboys. With help from friends and fans in Fort Worth, Wills persuaded Burrus Mill and Elevator Company to sponsor the band on a radio show by advertising the mill's Light Crust Flour.
After two weeks of broadcasts, W. Lee O'Daniel, President
of Burrus Mill, canceled the show because he did not like "their hillbilly
music." The Light Crust Doughboys were literally "brought back by popular
demand" when thousands of fans and housewives, who used Light Crust Flour,
demanded that Burrus Mill sponsor their radio show. People listened at noon
each day for a couple of licks on Bob Wills' fiddle and Truett Kimsey's
enthusiastic introduction: "The Light Crust Doughboys are on the air." Then
the Doughboys sang their theme song which began:
Listen everybody,
from near and far
if you wanta know
who we are. We're the
Light Crust Doughboys
from Burrus Mill.
This went over so well, it became the salutation of the Doughboys and
has lived to the present.
W. Lee O'Daniel became the announcer for the show and created a network of radio stations that broadcast the Doughboys throughout Texas and most of Oklahoma. The "Southwest Quality Network" included several radio stations, among them WBAP and KTAT, Fort Worth; WOAI, San Antonio; KPRC, Houston; KOMA, Oklahoma City. The show became one of the most popular radio shows in the history of the Southwest.
In 1932, the original Doughboys began leaving the band. Milton Brown left the show that year to form the Musical Brownies, and in 1933, O'Daniel had to fire Wills for drinking and failure to make the broadcasts. In 1933, Wills organized the Playboys in Waco. Of all the early Doughboys, Wills' influence was the most significant and enduring; the Light Crust Doughboys never departed from the fiddle-band origins Bob Wills established in the band's formative years. In October, 1933, O'Daniel took a new and talented group of Doughboys to Chicago for a recording session with Vocalion (later Columbia Records). O'Daniel, who deserves much credit along with Brown and Wills for the initial success of the Doughboys, continued as manager and announcer until the mid-thirties. In 1935, when Burrus Mill fired him, O'Daniel formed his own band, the Hillbilly Boys, and his own flour company, Hillbilly Flour.
The years between 1935 and World War II were among the most successful in the long history of the Doughboys. By 1937, some of the best musicians in the history of western swing joined the band. Kenneth Pitts and Clifford Gross played fiddles. The rhythm section consisted of Dick Reinhart, guitar; Marvin Montgomery, tenor banjo; Ramon DeArman, bass; John "Knocky" Parker, piano. Muryel Campbell played lead guitar. At various times Cecil Brower played fiddle in the string section. Almost from the beginning, the Light Crust Doughboys enjoyed a good recording career; their records outsold all other fiddle bands in the Fort Worth-Dallas music scene. Their popularity on radio had a good deal to do with their success in recording. By the 1940s, the Light Crust Doughboys broadcast over 170 radio stations in the South and Southwest. There is no way of knowing how many millions of people heard their broadcasts. Though the Doughboys played good danceable jazz, the band was basically a show band whose purpose was to entertain. Their shows took the listeners' minds off the economic problems of the thirties and added minutes of joy to their lives each day.
In the early months of World War II members of the band either went into the armed forces or war related industries. In 1942, Burrus Mill ended the Doughboys' radio show. The mill reorganized the band in 1946, and they tried various experiments, even hired hank Thompson and Slim Whitman, hoping somehow the radio show could be saved. By 1950, the age of television had begun, and the age of radio was over. With its passing went the radio show that Texans had enjoyed since 1931. "The Light Crust Doughboys" were no longer "on the air" with a daily radio program.
But from the first-"The Light Crust Doughboys are on the air" in 1931, and continuing through their silver age renaissance in the 1990s and beyond, the Light Crust Doughboys and their illustrious alumni like Bob Wills, Milton Brown, Herman Arnspiger, Tommy Duncan, Johnnie Lee Wills, W. Lee O'Daniel, Leon McAuliffe, Marvin Montgomery, Cecil Brower, Knocky Parker, Kenneth Pitts, Muryel Campbell, Leon Huff, Dick Reinhart, Hank Thompson, Slim Whitman, Jim Boyd, Johnny Strawn, Ronnie Dawson, Carroll Hubbard, Jerry Elliott, Bill Simmons, John Walden, Art Greenhaw and others wrote a large and important chapter in the history of both Texas and American music.
The legend of the Light Crust Doughboys continues in the release of new recordings, music publications, and concerts throughout the world. This collection of old and new selections reflects the enduring appeal of the Doughboy musical tradition. This collection also includes the best of past Doughboys and the best of a new generation. Marvin "Smokey" Montgomery represents the link to the past. If he is not the best musician in the history of the band, he was certainly among the best. Bob Wills referred to Smokey as a "genius on that banjo," and added he would select Marvin as banjoist if he were forming an all-star western swing band. The "new generation" is made up of the following: Marvin Montgomery, banjo and guitar; Bill Simmons, piano; Jerry Elliott, electric guitar; Art Greenhaw, electric bass and guitar; John Walden, Jim Baker, fiddles; Bob Krenkel, tenor saxophone, clarinet; Bud Dresser, trombone, flugabone; John Anderson, trumpet; Bob Venable, Dale Cook, drums; Frank Greenhaw, baritone horn; Jerry Elliott, Jamie Shipman, John Walden, Art Greenhaw, vocals; Walter Hailey, announcer.
From its origin in 1931 throughout its long and distinguished career, the Doughboy band was versatile and eclectic. As these recordings and music reveal, the band has always played whatever was popular and borrowed from all areas of American music. Sugar Blues represents both the blues and pop music. Doughboy music has always swung-it has generally been danceable. For example, hear the Doughboys' version of Big Beaver. Big Beaver was a Doughboy and Bob Wills favorite. The band even included a song by an original member of the Doughboy broadcasts, Beautiful Texas composed by "Pappy" O'Daniel (as Marvin Montgomery always referred to the Governor and United States Senator from Texas). Under the Double Eagle/Wildwood Flower featured the fiddles, guitars, and banjo that reflects the fiddle band origins of the Light Crust Doughboys and western swing. A band without fiddles just would not be the Light Crust Doughboys.
The religious faith of the musicians in this collection is very important in both their lives and music. For example, hear Lord, Take All of Me and The Chair That Never Got Mended. There is a tradition that originated in the early years of the Doughboy broadcasts-that of including a hymn on each radio show. Marvin Montgomery laughed as he told of how certain Doughboys, some half drunk and some "hungover," played and sang hymns with a pious look on their faces. This writer assures you that this was not the case when these religious songs were recorded.
There is everything on these recordings, from country to dixieland, from western swing to big band swing, from blues to cool jazz. These selections capture every mood, from the sadness of The Streets of Laredo to the flippancy of Talkin' Too Much Taxes Blues, from the seriousness of religious music to light-hearted ragtime, from the happy sound of Marvin Montgomery's banjo in Bells of Saint Mary's to the brilliant, swinging recording of Sugar Blues.
"Some time when we're down your way, we'll drop in and spend the day, we're the Light Crust Doughboys from Burrus Mill!" is the way the Light Crust Doughboys go off the air and end their personal appearances-their "Closing Theme." Let us hope it merely closes their many concerts and that there will always be the familiar sound that lightened the burdens and lifted the spirits of millions of Southwesterners:
Charles R. Townsend
Professor of History
West Texas A & M University
Dr. Charles R. Townsend, Professor of History at West Texas A&M University, is the author of the definitive biography of Bob Wills, San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976). In 1975, Townsend won a Grammy Award for his brochure notes accompanying the album Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys for the Last Time. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin where he studied Cultural and Intellectual History of the United States with Merle Curti.