Al Stricklin

Al Stricklin was a jazz pianist whose exciting playing helped offer Bob Wills and His Tx Playboys the band’s exclusive western swing taste. Ironically, when Stricklin initial noticed Wills play the fiddle during an audition at a radio place where Stricklin was responsible for hiring, he believed Wills’ regular was even more of a humor work than any significant musical providing. It wasn’t a long time before Stricklin’s opinion transformed and he became an integral area of the Tx Playboys’ lineup, sticking to the music group from 1935 through 1942. He performed piano on many hundred from the group’s recordings, including Wills’ countrywide strike in 1940, “New San Antonio Rose.” The piano participant was created Alton Meeks Stricklin in 1908 in Antioch, TX. He never really had the advantage of music lessons, and provides stated that his main motivation was jazz great Earl “Fatha” Hines. When he was about 4 or 5 years of age, Stricklin began teaching himself how exactly to play along with his dad, who was simply a fiddler. By enough time he still left senior high school and going to Weatherford Junior University in 1927, and afterwards Baylor College or university, the self-taught pianist was teaching others how exactly to play to greatly help purchase his schooling. While at Weatherford he performed with two rings, a jazz group called the Texans and a Dixieland music group called the Rio Grande Serenaders. Stricklin, a brief history major, was nearly ejected from Baylor due to his involvement using a jazz group. When the administration from the Baptist university or college got blowing wind of his association with an organization known as the Unholy Three, and found that he performed in the trio at regional dances, just a dean’s treatment held him from becoming expelled. Stricklin finished up departing school anyway, because of the lean many years of the Depressive disorder. To greatly help support his family members, he took function in 1930 at Fort Worth’s KFJZ radio train station, where he later on auditioned Wills. Before becoming a member of the Tx Playboys, Stricklin also was used as an primary school instructor and primary in Isle Grove, TX, and later on he used the Hi Flyers dance music group back Fort Well worth. When Wills noticed him play at a golf club known as the Cinderella Roof in 1935, he lured Stricklin towards the Tx Playboys with employment that paid $30 every week. The piano participant still left the Tx Playboys to just work at North American Airplane during World Battle II. In 1943 he rejected an opportunity to reunite using the Tx Playboys in California, rather marrying and settling down. He place his musical profession behind him until United Performers requested another documenting from Wills and his music group. The double recording was Wills’ last, as well as the recording from it had become considered an historical event. It received a Grammy Honor and attracted fresh listeners to traditional western swing. Wills passed away in 1975. Stricklin plus some of the additional band members continuing for about a decade to record and perform beneath the name Bob Wills Initial Tx Playboys. Stricklin also experienced a brief single career. He published My Years With Bob Wills, a memoir, in 1976. Stricklin, along with Wills as well as the Tx Playboys, can be an inductee of the united states Music Hall of Popularity. He passed on in 1986 in Cleburne, TX.