Chicago Sun-Times columnist and Route 66 roadie Dave Hoekstra was in Prescott Valley, Ariz., for the first show of the Last of the Breed tour, the lucky dog.
In case you haven’t heard, the Last of the Breed tour features country-music legends Ray Price, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson with Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel doing most of the accompaniment. There also is a “Last of the Breed” double-album, which will be in stores a week from Tuesday.
It sounds like Hoekstra enjoyed the show a lot.
The tour is coming to Tulsa at the Mabee Center on Thursday. I mention this for several reasons. One, Asleep of the Wheel performed “Route 66” at the show in Arizona, and with Tulsa being a Mother Road community, this likely will happen again.
Second, chances are excellent that the Tulsa show will turn into Western swing heaven. Why? Let me count the reasons:
- Tulsa was ground zero for Western swing because this was where Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys popularized the genre.
- Nelson also recently released a tribute album to Texas songwriter Cindy Walker, who wrote numerous hits for Wills.
- Haggard is a huge Western swing fan, and his Wills tribute album in 1970 kept alive the genre when it was in danger of dying out.
- To my ears, Price’s hit records from the 1950s and early ’60s owed a lot to Wills’ fiddle sound and rhythms.
- Asleep at the Wheel remains the best band carrying the Western swing torch today.
If you want to see, hear and read more about Western swing, surf over to Batesline.com’s Western swing section. Proprietor Michael Bates is a big Western swing fan and has posted a lot of video and audio clips and bits of the genre’s history.
Tickets are still available for the Mabee Center show. And, at less than $50 for face value, it’s a bargain to see so many country legends in one place.
Thanks for posting. Readers may also be interested in John England and the Western Swingers’ who play a nice version of “Rhodes Bud Boogie” which is on their CD, “Thanks a Lot”