Jesse James (9)

US Western swing guitar player, singer and band leader from Mississippi. He was active in the Austin, Texas area in the late 1940s and early 1950s. December 5, 1916-April 16, 1972. By the early 1940's, he was performing as a single on local radio as Jesse James, The Bad Man Of Melody, an obvious allusion to the western outlaw Jesse James. He formed his first band from Grouchy Tatsch's Texas Pioneers in the 1940's. James later disbanded to serve in the U.S. Army in Italy during WWII, then regrouped after the war(up-and-coming fiddler Johnny Gimble was an early postwar band member). A rather bland singer, James astutely surrounded himself with topnotch instrumentalists (and better vocalists, like Hub Sutter and Claude Hallmark). Jesse James and All the Boys became a Central Texas fixture, broadcasting in prime time over KTBC and playing area dance halls like the fabled Dessau Hall. The band first recorded in 1947, on Blue Bonnet, with a lineup that included steel guitarist Lefty Nason and the excellent twin fiddle team of Joe Castle and Baldy Rambo. James signed to Bill McCall's Four Star label in 1949 and "Rag Mop" offers ample evidence of the quality of musicians James consistently employed. Fiddler Roddy Bristol, heard in a typically wild solo as well as playing striking full-textured harmony behind Junior Burrow's lead fiddle on some swinging ensemble passages, was a graduate of Julliard who had come to Texas with Paul Howard's Arkansas Cotton Pickers in early 1949. Steel guitarist Jimmie Grabowske, not yet twenty when this recording was made, was an obvious devotee of West Coast steel kingpin Joaquin Murphy; a very inventive, jazzy player, he was one of the best Texas steel players of his generation. James' band was bass-less during this period, a surprisingly common occurrence in Texas dance bands of the era; drummer Dowell Smith, pianist Hal Horner (another ex-Paul Howard musician), with James himself supplying rhythm guitar, do their best to make up for this (on some later recording sessions, James brought in Austin bassist-bandleader Steve Lightsey.) James recorded for Four Star into 1951 and his band also backed KTBC personality Cactus Pryor on his Four Star sessions. The Austin dance scene was deteriorating by the mid-1950's, as was James' personal life, and he disbanded.