Western swing

The tradition & historical record

Western swing, also known as country jazz, is a subgenre of traditional country music. The movement was an outgrowth of country music and jazz. The music is an amalgamation of rural, cowboy, polka, early Honky Tonk, old-time, Dixieland jazz, and blues blended with swing; and played by a hot string band of fiddles, mandolin, upright bass, electric and acoustic guitars, banjos, and often augmented with drums, saxophones, trumpets, trombones, pianos, accordion and most notably, the steel guitar. The electrically amplified stringed instruments, especially the steel guitar, give the music a distinctive sound. Western swing differs in several ways from the music played by the nationally popular horn-driven big swing bands of the same era. In Western bands, even fully orchestrated bands, vocals, and other instruments followed the fiddle's lead, though like popular horn-led bands that arranged and scored their music, most Western bands improvised freely, either by soloists or collectively. According to country singer Merle Travis, "Western swing is nothing more than a group of talented country boys, unschooled in music, but playing the music they feel, beating a solid two-four rhythm to the harmonies that buzz around their brains. When it escapes in all its musical glory, my friend, you have Western swing."

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Western swing”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.

Western swing is subgenre of American country music, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ¹

The source record links this tradition to 19 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ¹