You Can Tell A Texan Every Time CD

Tex Williams
You Can Tell A Texan Every Time CD

He wasn’t a Texan by birth, and he wasn’t based in Texas, but Sollie Williams and his California-based, stellar musicians of the Western Caravan were, for many years, exceptional musical ambassadors of the Western Swing style that largely originated in the Lone Star state.
‘Tex’ honed and earned his reputation as the featured singer with the legendary band of Spade Cooley before being fired by the mercurial Cooley and starting the Western Caravan with other Cooley musicians who had been shown the door by their former paymaster.
It quickly became the premier big Western Swing band of its era - and the most successful, racking up over a dozen Hillbilly Hit Parade chart records in just over two years.
You can hear virtually all of those hits on this 28 track collection, starting with the hymn to nicotine that kickstarted the Western Caravan’s string of successes, Smoke Smoke Smoke That Cigarette, which spent 16 weeks at #1 in 1947 and established the template for a lot of what followed.
Also included are a number of duets with his Capitol label mates Jo Stafford and Tennessee Ernie, and Tex’ second biggest hit of the period, Life Gets Tee-Jus Don’t It?