Discover Oklahoma Features Cains & Some New Wills Videos
5May 16, 2009 by Tyson Wynn
Found a segment from Discover Oklahoma, in which Tulsa’s historic Cain’s Ballroom was featured, on YouTube.
Also found this, which purports to be from WFAA in Dallas. Bob introduces Billy Jack Wills, who sings “Rockabye Baby Blues,” which he wrote.
And this appears to be from the same show. Luke Wills sings “Take Me Back to Tulsa.”
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“Drop me off at Archer, I’ll walk down to Greenwood.” You don’t hear that line on very many recordings of the song. I wonder if it’s because of the obvious racial implications.
I dunno if it was a racial issue or not. I would assume not because the earlier versions of TMBTT include a line other than “Little man picks the cotton, Big man gets the money.” Maybe if Michael Bates checks out this post he’ll have some insight. I would be more prone to think it was due to the practice of live bands changing a line here or there when they tour (which we still see today). I would bet it breaks up the tedium of playing the same songs over and over.
Just checked Wikipedia, and it includes:
Interesting. Thanks for looking that up and posting the videos.
I’ve just checked the nine different versions of the song I have in iTunes (four by Bob Wills — Columbia in 1941, a Fresno radio broadcast from 1945, Tiffany in 1946, Liberty in 1960; one by Tommy Duncan with his Western All-Stars, one by Billy Jack Wills, and three tribute versions by George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Asleep at the Wheel).
The 1941 Columbia recording (when the band was actually based in Tulsa), the three tribute versions and the Billy Jack Wills version (sung by Tiny Moore) don’t have the Archer and Greenwood verse.
Here’s my guess: Either the Greenwood reference hadn’t been added to the song yet in 1941, or it was considered too racially charged (Greenwood as a place you’d want to go!) to include in a recorded version of the song.
When the tribute bands recorded the song, they went back to the earliest recorded Texas Playboys version. Billy Jack may have done the same thing — he wasn’t in the Tulsa version of the Playboys, nor were any of his band members, so perhaps the Greenwood reference would have been lost on them. (Billy Jack wound up here, though, and is buried next to big brother Bob in Memorial Park Cemetery.)
Oddly, the Old Possum uses the non-PC version of the cotton-picking line long after Bob himself dropped it.