Louise Rowe was only 19 years old. The legendary Bob Wills spotted her on the Dallas stage and escorted her to the history of the Western Swing.

In the evening of 1952, when the Qiluo Brothers (from the Qiluo Brothers Band) summoned their big-eyed little sister to sing with them on the Dallas Club stage, she cut out a blues song "Reminds You of Me". At that moment, the young woman's asylum life tilted towards the band master legend Bob Wells, his "Aha!" Holler and White Stetson signaled that the performance dog was in the house that night. At that time, the pioneer of Western swing invited the teenager from Duncan, Oklahoma to join his Texas Playboy band and toured 18 cities as a singer. 

Things will never be the same after that. Not suitable for Bob Wells, and certainly not suitable for Louise Rowe.

Western swing is a sub-genre of jazz or country music, depending on your expert. Willie Nelson once explained: "If you cut apart their so-called Western swing music, you will find some jazz and some blues, maybe that's it." Ray Benson, who fell asleep on the wheel, put the two They separated and called it "Jazz playing the violin, Earl Bessie wearing a cowboy hat".

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When Louis lived in rural Oklahoma with her extended family in the 1930s, she knew nothing about these differences and watched her father coach her brothers in the manner of Bob Wells. She was ignored rather than excluded in the outdoor course of Peeling Pea by Chicken Dog and Mom. She absorbed music through penetration. 

Today, at her home in Hearst, Texas, a painting of her homestead is hung, and boys line up in a row in the front yard, playing musical instruments, and following their father’s baton. It is fascinating folk art. A little girl in a red dress sits in the lower corner of the picture, hiding in the shade of the tree-Louise's childhood. "Although everyone plans to let me learn cooking and sewing," she said, "but my little heart was stolen by a Western-style swing."

Some of these courses have been haunting the boys. After Luo's father passed away, Louise and her mother followed Luo Qi brothers to the south, because they were caught by the bright lights of North Texas and a red neon-winged building in the town. Attracted by the tall buildings of horses. That night in 1952, the brothers played at Rosa's Barn on Industrial, where they played a band game with Bob Wills and his Texas playboy.

So on that stage, after Wells invited Louise to join his band, she answered every question she asked: "You have to ask my brothers."

"He is sitting with my brothers," Louise said in the living room of her Hirst house today. "He promised that he would take care of me like a daughter-he did. He is my Lu Dad. I just turned 19 and will soon be 12 years old. I am protected by my brothers. I am a country girl. I didn't grow up until I ran away from home."

During the Big D Jamboree at Dallas Stadium, Louise was the partner of the Rowe brothers. "Before I left here and worked with Bob Wills, I thought no one knew my name," she said. "When I got home, I was Louis Rowe of the Texas Playboys."

The 18-city tour and the subsequent bass performance for the Wills band played Louise's music history tickets. She continued to sing and play bass on two Great Opry tours, and traveled with other country music stars. She is the only female instrumentalist employed by Wells. 

Decades later, about 2008, when she was almost 80 years old, Louise stopped singing because of trembling vocal cords. But she can still (and does) beat time on her bass. She was recognized in eight Western Swing Halls of Fame and became a living legend in Cleburne's Cowtown Society of Western Music. She is an idol. She did not give up, although she reluctantly admitted that she was already a little slow.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Al Dressen hired Louise to play bass, and her second husband, Buddy Beasley (her former member of the Southernaires band) to play the violin for several years. A perfect storm has exhausted Drayson's band, and as a big show drew near, he turned to Louis. "I will call the Texas Playboy. I don't think they are doing anything," she said. Recalling when Louise, Buddy and Playboy brought Wills style to his Super Swing Revue, Dressen's voice was full of emotion. "This is an important part of our lives. It is a special feeling to have band members who know how to do it and are capable of doing it."

Dreison founded the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame, and he invited Louise to participate in the annual celebration weekend. "As a bassist, she always comes forward," he said. "She has a strong musical ability. She is now old and exhausted, but she wants to play and find a way to do it."

Indeed, she did. Before the pandemic, drummer Mark Minton played for Louise’s own Texan Playboys on Friday night at Euless’s Texan Kitchen for five years. . Compared with the 89-year-old Louise, Minton is more like the Woodstock generation and awesome. "Everyone who plays with Louis is famous," he said. "She and her daughter Marci make shirts and let us wear cowboy hats. I have never worn a hat in my life."

Minton is helping Louise print her road stories and cookbooks, titled Louise Rowe's Beans and Cornbread, where musicians cook and tell road stories, recipes and joke books. He commented on her as "quiet, sweet and almost insecure at times-but she is the leader of the band."

Louise did show a wonderful combination of self-deprecating and self-promotion. Her chorus with the Texas Playboy was really to be able to sing harmonies, which she thought was something she was born to do. She sang on Amarillo's live radio show, but never worked as a recording studio. She said, "I don't have the charm of a solo singer. I don't'feel' like Ramona Reid," a well-known singer. Before Louise appeared, she would Jordle and tour with Playboy.

She thinks the vivid pictures her brothers hang above the red electric bass in her home are "unprofessional." She also said that she never thought she was "Potti", but anyone with two eyeballs would convict her of perjury in a common sense court. Albert Tully: "She is a water moccasin", a musician means to be eliminated in appearance or talent. When he was 17 years old, they met a pedal steel guitarist at the Longhorn Ballroom (formerly Bob Wells' Ranch House). At the Longhorn drunk party, she walked into the busy traffic drunk, and he rescued her. She is divorcing the guitar-wielding western swing artist Tommy Allsup, who later became famous for giving way to Ritchie Valens on the decisive air travel-but This is beyond the development of the story. 

Bob Wills discovered that his new singer could also play an instrument on the second night of a tour of 18 cities, when rhythm guitarist Eldon Shamblin missed the only performance of his career in Muskogee, Oklahoma. "I walked over and picked up the guitar and started to beat the rhythm," Louise said. "Bob Wells looked at me and said,'Child, I don't know you can do this.'" 

When Louis freed bassist Jack Loyd, he could walk up to the microphone to perform vocal solo, which once again impressed Wells. "Child, can you do it too?" he asked.

Louise heard Wells mutter to herself, "I received a request for "Faded Love", but no one sang the third part harmony." That was Chamblin's job. "I walked up to Bob and said,'I can sing.' He looked at me with those dark eyes. "Are you sure, kid?" "" A strict will must know that he will not be disappointed. "When my voice started to sing the third part of the harmony, I have never seen him so happy," she said. "It knocked Bob around."

On the last night of the tour, they returned to Dallas and danced at the Baker Hotel in the city center. Louise said, "He called me to sing and announced that Playboy is going back to California to watch some TV shows and Western tours, and'Louise is going with us.'" That's how I knew I had a job. "             

"He was sitting with my brothers. He promised that he would take care of me like a daughter—he did it."

Since then, Louise has played with her family of famous musicians on Xinlu, as if there is no tomorrow. Jack Lloyd quit the band because of marriage, and Wells asked her to play bass. Since the singer did not have the calluses of a musician, she soon developed broken blisters. "When I first started playing, I wrapped my fingers with tape and they called me a chicken," she said. "I took off the tape and let the blood fly." Despite this, she started running with a vigorous 4/4 beat. "Get it, girl!" Shablin shouted. She won the admiration of the famous playboy. This water moccasin shoe can be placed flat.

Louise toured with Wills until August 15, 1953. "We did a TV show with Chill Wills in Amarillo," she said. "We stayed at Clover Club five nights a week. We visited Colorado on the weekend. From there to Cheyenne Rodeo in Wyoming and up and down the California coast. We visited Arizona and New Mexico and returned to Dirk. Saskatoon had 3 tours.

"In Hollywood, Bob took me to Nudie's and put me on the same uniform as the boys, except where they have pants, I have a skirt," she said. He also bought her a musicians union card and an AFTRA union card for television and radio work.

Wells is sometimes busy taking care of his young students, and he has promised to protect them like his daughter. On the road, she only had two or three dates, and they had to see Wells, and Wells would tell them his expectations. Wells also told Louise of his expectations. One morning, at the elegant Rice Hotel in Houston, she wore a backless and strapless dress that was popular at the time. When Wells came down for breakfast, he walked to her table and said, "Go upstairs and put on your clothes. Don't wear them anymore."

Like Louise and Playboy, Chris O'Connell fell asleep on the original wheels and enjoyed the only female status. When she played with Louise in Alderson's band, she was fascinated by the story of Bob Wells. "Louis is the only woman on the stage with Bob Wells, which is an extraordinary thing in itself," O'Connell said. "She supported the bottom [rhythm] of a big band, which is a serious duty.

"Louis considers herself to be one of these people. She wants to be seen as a musician, not a female singer or a female performer-just as an equal musician. She is a rock-solid player. The performance on the stage is excellent, fun and easy to cooperate.

"Louis and Bob signed that kind of self-evident contract, you will show up, you will be professional, it looks like you are a good fit on the stage, you smile and make them dance. That's a big deal. If they There is something wrong without dancing," O'Connell said.

This is rarely wrong on a Texas Playboy venue crowded with hundreds of dancers. "The reason for the large crowd is fun and excitement," said Bobby Cover, the pedal steel player who Louise joined the previous year. "When you see the Texas Playboy, you see excitement. They create happiness, not something sad, and they don't have an intermission."

After Louis’s tour with the Texas Playboy ended, Eldon Shabrin drove her to Amarillo Airport. She cried all day because she was leaving her road friend. Wells booked Playboy a year ago, when Louise was not with them, and the contract would not pay for the female singer. Wills did arrange for her to play bass and sing with the family band at the huge Reo Palm Isle Club in Longview. He told her that she and Playboy would reconnect after his tour.

Not long before friend Tommy Camfield (co-creating the Western swing classic "Miles and Miles of Texas"), she summoned her to Oklahoma on Tommy Camfield Lawton, MA, listen to the Southernaires of the Southern Club. "I was sitting inside, playing bass, and sang a song," Louise said. But Tommy Allsup led the band and she was fascinated. Six months later, they got engaged.

Louise lives in Lawton with her cousin Oletha, Allsup called her to Las Vegas, and they married on April 30, 1955. They spend their honeymoon at the newly opened Riviera Hotel.

The couple returned to Lawton to reunite with the Southerners, and they played for six months. Allsup's life is very fulfilling. On their first anniversary of their marriage, he hired a chef and waiter to cook and serve, and invited "Gypsy Violinist" Caesar Massey to serenade. "Tommy gave me a five-string bass violin. This is the best party I have ever attended," she said.

They moved to Hobbs, New Mexico, to unite the Southerners again, this time with the two Texas dudes, the brothers Louis and Mansell Tierney, and began to perform at the Morris Club. Soon they learned that Norman Petty, the producer, needed a studio musician in Clovis. Allsup's professional guitar skills ensured this performance. He worked on several Buddy Holly recordings, including "It's So Easy!" and "Lonely Tears". Allsup was invited to participate in three tours with Buddy Holly and Crickets.

During the last tour—when Louise, Althorpe, and Southerners were working in Odessa—the cricket charter crashed near Clear Lake in Iowa. When the national news interrupted the death of singer Buddy Holly, Louis was watching TV. "Tommy should be on that flight," she said. "I just jumped up, but not long after, Tommy called and told me that he was not on the plane." 

Allsup told Louise that he had given up his seat because Valens had persuaded him. Valens, Holly, JP "The Big Bopper" Richardson and pilot Roger Peterson were all killed. "This is Tommy. You can persuade him to do anything," Louis said. "That's why he has so many wives." She added that Allsup had never told her anything about Valens' coin toss about who would get a seat on the plane, but pointed out that this didn't mean it didn't happen.

In any case, her marriage had begun to break down. Louise said that at that time, “a girl started to come to the Silver Saddle Club in Odessa, where southerners played.” As the situation progressed, Louise went to the hospital with a kidney infection. . Louise said: "That woman came to the hospital to pay for my stay. She said Tommy sent her." By the way, he wanted to get a divorce. ""

The divorce news crushed Louise and plunged her into a three-month chaos, but she could still work. "Drunk didn't bother me playing bass," she said. She left Allsup and fled to Dallas, where she played bass and sang with the Aragon All-Star team in the Aragon Ballroom. That night, she fell to the bottom after the party in Longhorn, when Albert Talley snatched her off the path of an oncoming car. Years later, at the commendation ceremony of the Swing Hall of Fame in Western Texas, she told Tully, "I need to thank you again for saving my life."

Around 1984, after reuniting with other women who had sang and toured with Wells at different times at the 50th Bob Wells Texas Playboy Party in Tulsa, Louise composed a lively song The song "Texas dude in a skirt". Soon after, when Louise was teaching them the song, the four women gathered in the motel room for another reunion celebration. "They like it," she said. "They want to sing the next day. When we performed, I heard someone say that we should make records."

Everything is in place, breaking records in Sacramento with Buddy Beasley and some Texas dudes. Texas Playgirls With Some of the Boys features Louise’s daughter Marci “Gena” Mercadante as the violinist, singers Dean and Evelyn McKinney, Darla Daret and Ramona Reed. 

Jason Roberts now leads the historic Texas Playboys named Bob Wills under the direction of Jason Roberts. band. He learned about Louis and her second husband Buddy Beasley through a book and tape tutorial that Louis patented in the early 1980s, which color-coded finger positions. "They call it the buddy system, and I learned it," Roberts said. "I met Louise in Austin in 1986-87, when I was in Alderson's band. Louise is special because she is a singer and musician, and she defeated fools with bass."

The marketing of Buddy System inspired Louise and Buddy's travel enthusiasm, so they drove their RV on the road, from the east coast to the west coast to the south, and sold it to music stores. Along the way, she directed and played bass from four CDs, one of which was Sentimental Journey with her ex-husband Allsup. Before COVID-19 closed, she often played with her band The Texan Playboys in Euless's Texan Kitchen, and she was still full of creativity. Her latest project is a classic recipe book.

Louise and Buddy retired in the early 1960s, raised their daughters Rhonda and Massey, and devoted a lot of time to religious activities, but they were not ready to quit completely. When one of her brothers suffers from Alzheimer's disease, Louise will perform for him on a nearby show, and Buddy will also play the violin.

"Buddy and I have started to straighten out our lives," she said. They believe that as Jehovah's Witnesses, travel requires time and energy. "We can't be on the road because we can't meet the congregation." Buddy died in 2016.

Louis now imagines that her music will bring eternal happiness. She said: "I think we will play what we like, because Isaiah 65 says that we will'enjoy the work of our hands for a long time.' 

"Well, this is a Western swing for me."

Write to [email protected] This story was originally published in the October issue of D Magazine.