by Molly Boyle on
THE BITTERSWEET WHINE of Bob Wills’s fiddle is a fitting soundtrack for the high lonesome country of the eastern plains. In the village of Roy, the King of Western Swing’s face greets motorists from the side of the vacant Floersheim Mercantile building. “Bob Wills Is Still the King,” the sign proclaims, detailing the short but influential residency of the Texas-born bandleader (1905–1975). In 1927, Wills settled in Roy for two years, cutting hair for a living and playing local dances on the side. The region’s musical DNA seeped into his repertoire. Wills first rearranged a traditional tune into the “New Spanish Two Step,” then later turned the same melody into “San Antonio Rose,” a standard for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. In his 1992 memoir, Cowboy Fiddler (Texas Tech University Press), Playboy Frankie McWhorter says both songs originated in Roy when a Spanish-speaking customer took a turn on the barber’s violin. Wills told McWhorter, “He played ‘The Spanish Two Step,’ and I locked the door where he couldn’t get out and nobody else could get in, and I made him stay there until he taught me that.” Roy resident Sandy Ray says visitors began stopping “in the middle of the street” after the chamber of commerce mounted the sign in 2010. “People get their picture taken in front of it, especially the Texans who know all about Western swing.” Bob Wills’s gravestone in Tulsa bears the first line of “San Antonio Rose”: “Deep within my heart lies a melody.” He found that tune in New Mexico.