VIA PRESS RELEASE | Back in 2014, with its critically-acclaimed release of Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys: Riding Your Way—The Lost Transcriptions for Tiffany Music, 1946-1947, Real Gone Music offered folks a chance to own some of the most revered—and rare—recordings in the history of American music. Now, some seven years later, Real Gone is back with another 2-CD, 50-track volume of Tiffany Transcriptions from Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys. And guess what? It’s every bit as good as the first.That’s because Wills and his band drew from a seemingly inexhaustible well of everything from Wills hits to western swing standards to sentimental ballads to blues and hot swing instrumentals, all played by some of the greatest musicians in country music history.
Here’s a little background. In 1946 and 1947, Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys cut nearly 400 full songs for Tiffany Music, Inc., recordings that came to be known as the Tiffany Transcriptions. These recordings were distributed only to radio stations on 16-inch transcription discs, and were intended for airplay as part of a syndicated radio show featuring Wills and the Playboys. However, the transcriptions proved to be a financial failure, and Tiffany Music, Inc. folded by the end of the ‘40s, seemingly relegating the Tiffany Transcriptions to obscurity (and leaving over 200 recordings in the can).
But that was not the end of the story. The Tiffany Transcriptions were unlike anything else in the King of Western Swing’s discography. Typically recorded on a Monday in between tours, they usually consisted of on-the-spot arrangements of tunes drawn from the band’s vast songbook, and the 16”, 33 1/3 rpm recording format allowed some of the songs to be longer than the normal, three-minute limitation of the 10-inch, 78 rpm commercial records of the day. This meant that Wills and his incredible band—with the great Tommy Duncan on vocals—had a chance to stretch out and have fun with the material. The result: the Tiffany Transcriptions are generally regarded as the best recordings Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys ever made.
For decades, the Tiffany Transcriptions were more legend than fact. Finally, in the early ‘80s, Kaleidoscope Records began releasing a series of vinyl volumes of the Tiffany Transcriptions, followed by a CD release on Kaleidoscope and Rhino Records in the ‘90s. But those releases accounted for less than half of the songs recorded for Tiffany Music by Wills and the Playboys.
Now, Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys: Way Out West—The Lost Transcriptions for Tiffany Music, 1946-1947 Volume 2 serves up another 50 of those long-lost Tiffany sides—some of which never were even released by the company on transcription discs—inside a package just like the first, a 6-panel DVD-style digipak featuring photos and memorabilia from the collection of Kaleidoscope Records co-founder Tom Diamant.
The oversized booklet includes notes from A&R legend James Austin describing how Bob Wills became one of the first rock stars with testimonials from folks like Billy F Gibbons of ZZ Top, Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel, and Chris Isaak. And, just like on Ridin’ My Way, the recordings are miraculously mastered by Bob Fisher to preserve their vintage sonic vibrancy while eliminating excess background surface noise.
