Western Swing
In the 1930s Bob Wills took the old tune and set it to a 2/4 dance beat to be played by his Western swing dance band, the Texas Playboys. His 1938 recording (Vocalion 05079) became a hit. The song, as originally recorded by Wills, borrowed lyrics from an 1878 popular song written by Frederick W. Root ("Sunday Night"). The Wills version opens with:
- Light's in the parlor, fire's in the grate,
- Clock on the mantle says it's a'gettin' late,
- Curtains on the window, snowy white,
- The parlor's pleasant on Sunday night.
"Sunday Night" opens with:
- The light is in the parlor, A fire is in the grate;
- The clock upon the mantle Ticks out "it's getting late"
- The curtains at the windows Are made of snowy white,
- The parlor is a pleasant place To sit on Sunday night, To sit on Sunday, Sunday night.
Wills and his Texas Playboys performed this arrangement of "Ida Red" in two of his movies; 'Go West, Young Lady (1941) and Blazing the Western Trail (1945). It has been revived by the award-winning Western Swing band The Hot Club of Cowtown and features on four of their albums: Swingin' Stampede (1998), Continental Stomp (2003; live version), Four Dead Batteries (film soundtrack, 2005), and Best Of The Hot Club of Cowtown (2008).
Read more about this topic: Ida Red
Famous quotes containing the words western and/or swing:
“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brain that is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious—to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“Every profound new movement makes a great swing also backwards to some older, half-forgotten way of consciousness.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)