Bob Wills › Similar Artists

Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys - 98% match to Bob Wills

Red Foley - 81% match to Bob Wills

Clyde Julian Foley, 17 June 1910, in a log cabin between Blue Lick and Berea, Kentucky, USA, d. 19 September 1968, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA. The son of a fiddle player, Foley learned guitar as a child and was encouraged to sing by his parents. After high school, he attended Georgetown College, Kentucky, where he was discovered by a scout for the noted WLS National Barn Dance Read more

Lefty Frizzell - 71% match to Bob Wills

William Orville Frizzell, 31 March 1928, Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas, USA, d. 19 July 1975, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The eldest of eight children of an itinerant oilfield worker, Frizzell was raised mainly in El Dorado, Arkansas, but also lived in sundry places in Texas and Oklahoma. Greatly influenced by his parents’ old 78s of Jimmie Rodgers, he sang as a young Read more

Jimmy Wakely - 68% match to Bob Wills

Clarence Wakely, 16 February 1914, near Mineola, Arkansas, USA, d. 25 September 1982, Mission Hills, California, USA. Wakely’s family relocated to Oklahoma when he was child, moving several times as they struggled to make a living, usually by sharecropping. He gave himself the name of Jimmy and attended High School at Cowden, Oklahoma, where he learned to play the guita Read more

Spade Cooley - 68% match to Bob Wills

Donnell Clyde Cooley, 22 February 1910, Grande, Oklahoma, USA, d. 23 November 1969, Vacaville, California, USA. His grandfather and father were talented fiddlers and he was playing at dances at the age of eight. Around 1930, the family moved to Modesto, California, where Cooley played local venues. In 1934, his resemblance to Roy Rogers found him employment as a stand-in and Read more

Ernest Tubb - 67% match to Bob Wills

Ernest Dale Tubb, 9 February 1914, near Crisp, Ellis County, Texas, USA, d. 6 September 1984, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Ernest was the youngest of five children of Calvin Tubb, the foreman of a 300-acre cotton farm, and his wife Sarah. In 1920 the family relocated to Benjamin, and then moved again, to Kemp, in 1925. The following year, his parents divorced and initially he Read more

Floyd Tillman - 67% match to Bob Wills

8 December 1914, Ryan, Oklahoma, USA, d. 22 August 2003, Bacliff, nr. Houston, Texas, USA. Tillman was the youngest of 11 children of a sharecropping family who moved to Post, Texas, when he was a few months old. He first learned to play mandolin and banjo but later changed to guitar, performing with Adolph Hofner’s band, even singing a few songs, although later admitti Read more

Roy Acuff - 65% match to Bob Wills

Roy Claxton Acuff, 15 September 1903, Maynardsville, Tennessee, USA, d. 23 November 1992, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The third of five children born to Neill and Ida Acuff, Roy learned to play the harmonica and Jew’s harp as a child and was involved with music from an early age. His father played the fiddle, his mother the piano and guitar and Roy sang with his siblings Read more

Pee Wee King - 62% match to Bob Wills

Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski, 18 February 1914, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, d. 7 March 2000, Louisville, Kentucky, USA. His parents, whose families had been Polish immigrants, relocated to Abrams when he was a child and he grew up in the Polish community there. His father, who played fiddle and concertina, ran a polka band and the boy was encouraged to play instruments from Read more

Hank Thompson - 61% match to Bob Wills

Henry William Thompson, 3 September 1925, Waco, Texas, USA, d. 6 November 2007, Keller, Fort Worth, Texas, USA. Thompson, as a young boy, was fond of records by Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family. He first learned the harmonica and then his parents gave him a guitar for his tenth birthday. He also played Hawaiian guitar, learned conjuring tricks and had a ventriloquist
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Hank Snow - 55% match to Bob Wills

Clarence Eugene Snow, 9 May 1914, Brooklyn, near Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Canada, d. 20 December 1999, Madison, Tennessee, USA. After his parents divorced when he was eight years old, Snow spent four unhappy years with his grandmother, finally running away to rejoin his mother when she remarried. However, he was cruelly mistreated by his stepfather, which prompted him to absc Read more

Tex Ritter - 55% match to Bob Wills

Maurice Woodward Ritter, 12 January 1905, near Murvaul, Panola County, Texas, USA, d. 2 January 1974, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. The youngest of six children, he grew up on the farm that the Ritter family had worked for over 70 years. He attended High School in Beaumont and then entered the University of Texas in Austin. Here he began his studies for a law degree in Governme Read more

Carl Smith - 51% match to Bob Wills

Johnny Bond - 51% match to Bob Wills

Cyrus Whitfield Bond, 1 June 1915, Enville, Oklahoma, USA, d. 12 June 1978, Burbank, California, USA. Born into a poor farming family, Bond taught himself to play ukelele and guitar and played at local dances In 1934 he moved to Oklahoma and worked on radio, appearing as Cyrus Whitfield, Johnny Whitfield and then Johnny Bond. In 1937, he worked with Jimmy Wakely and Scotty H Read more

Merle Travis - 50% match to Bob Wills

Merle Robert Travis, 29 November 1917, Rosewood, Kentucky, USA, d. 20 October 1983, Tahlequah, Oklahoma, USA. Travis was the son of a tobacco farmer but by the time he was four years old, the family had moved to Ebenezer, Kentucky, and his father was working down the mines. Travis’ father often remarked, ‘Another day older and deeper in debt’, a phrase his son Read more