Dear folks, This is a lifetime project. Collecting the complete Jimmie Widener discography in several exemplary because some 78’s sides are poor looks like the Hercules labors, but here we are finely today.
I started collecting western-swing in the late 90’s and i was quite curious about that very talented artist, that had everything you need to meet succes …
Jimmie Widener always had my preference, not only as a guitar player, but also as a singer, his unique voice was so sincere, fresh and swingin’ at the same time. I never really quite understood why his carrer ended nowhere, after 3 recording sessions at the KING studio and what sessions ! The cream of the cream of the Hillbilly Jazz was there !
What hapened and why, the KING recording label, only put out these 1946 recordings in the early 1950’s ? Today we still have no clue…
this young man had everything…He is probably the most obscure and undercover talent of the 40’s western-Swing scene. Not to mention this story of the three same « Jimmie Widener » is just so hard to believe ! So Folks, this is my tribute to the one and Only, JIMMIE WIDENER !
Rodolphe Guiheux / DOGHOUSE & BONE Records


JIMMIE WIDENER NOTES
Fans of western swing know the name Jimmie Widener well. Not only did Widener work several stints with the legendary Bob Wills, he also worked with other great names in the music, including Spade Cooley, Tex Williams and T. Texas Tyler. Widener’s efforts at forging a solo career are far less known, but he left an impressive and uniformly excellent -- if tantalizingly small -- body of recordings. His sessions for King, Imperial and other labels used the cream of West Coast western swing musicians, like guitarists Jimmy Wyble and Jimmy Bryant, steel men Joaquin Murphey, Noel Boggs and Speedy West, fiddlers Harold Hensley and Tex Atchison, and others, and yielded classics like “Jimmie’s Jump” and several songs that were popular enough to be covered by other performers, like “Wake Up, Babe” and “What A Line.” Although some of his recordings have been reissued over the years – a various artist CD collection on the Westside label a number of years ago featured him heavily, including a number of previously unissued sides -- a collection devoted to Widener is overdue and this fantastic LP gathers a number of his best sides, from 1946-53.
Part of the problem in dealing with Jimmie Widener’s legacy is that there was more than one performer using the name. There was reportedly a Jimmy Widener in the Pacific Northwest and there was unquestionably another musician active in the Southern California western swing scene at the same time as Jimmie with the same name. Often known as “Alabama” Jimmy Widener, to differentiate him from the artist featured here -- who was from Oklahoma --this other California-based Widener also sang, but was known chiefly as a lead guitarist, in which capacity he worked with Deuce Spriggins, Hank Penny, Carolina Cotton, Tommy Duncan and many others. Having two guitarists with the same name working the same scene led to some confusion, not least when “Alabama Jimmy,” who later moved to Nashville and worked with Hank Snow, was murdered in 1973. Some discographical listings have added to the confusion; Bear Family Records, for example, assumed that the two Wideners were one, puzzlingly resolving the discrepancy in their full names by combining them: Jimmie Leon Widener and James P. Widener became James P. “Jimmie” Leon Widener.
“Oklahoma” Jimmie Widener was born James Leon (sometimes given as Jimmie Leon) Widener just northwest of Tulsa, either in Cleveland or 10 miles north across the Arkansas River in Hominy, Osage County, on February 15, 1924. His father Carl was a fiddler and Jimmie took up tenor banjo and was playing around town and on radio by the time he was 6. When the new Tulsa sensations Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys came to Hominy when Jimmie was 10 0r 11, Widener’s father took him. “My dad took me up to the bandstand and told Bob I was a banjo player,” Widener recalled. “Bob said, ‘Let’s just hear him, then.’ I got up on the bandstand and they let me play Johnnie Lee’s banjo.” After the gig, Wills told him, “You go ahead and finish your education. [When] you finish high school, you come wherever I am -- and when you do you have a job.”
The Wideners were living 90 miles south in Seminole, Oklahoma by 1940. Although Jimmie was apparently in Illinois in July 1941 when he applied for his social security card, he was back in Seminole when he registered for the draft in June 1942. Soon after that, the Wideners headed to California. Bob Wills was in town filming the last of eight Russell Hayden westerns made for Columbia that year, using a cut down version of the Texas Playboys made up mostly of members of Johnnie Lee Wills’ band. Widener decided to take Bob up on the promise made at Hominy seven or eight years earlier. “Ignorant and bull-headed,” as he later described himself, he looked Wills up. “They were staying at a hotel in Hollywood…I borrowed my dad’s car and drove down on Vine Street…went up and knocked on the door. Junior Barnard and Millard Kelso opened the door, and Cotton Thompson and Leon [McAuliffe], the other guys were in the room. I said, `My name is Jimmie Widener and Bob told me as soon as I got out of high school to come see him and I had a job…I’m here.’” Wills was true to his word and told Widener to come down the next day “and bring your mother, ‘cause I want to meet her.” Widener went to work with Wills that night, and played with him over the next few weeks before Wills disbanded his orchestra soon after returning to Tulsa in December and entered the Army.
Widener was himself inducted into the Army in late April 1943. He spent the next two and half years in the service, discharged in October 1945 in California. Even before he was fully mustered out, he was sitting in with Spade Cooley’s band, which featured the Sunshine Girls, a trio that included Jimmie’s younger sister June, who would soon wed western swing fiddler Buddy Ray (the Sunshine Girls also included Colleen Summers, who would gain fame under another name: Mary Ford). There are air checks of Cooley’s band from that October with Widener sitting in for a vacationing Tex Williams. Widener was soon rooming with rising star Merle Travis, already an in-demand session man and soon to sign to Capitol Records. Travis had helped inaugurate Syd Nathan’s King label two years before and Nathan enlisted Travis as a West Coast talent scout and A & R man for the label. Among those Nathan signed at Travis’ urging was Jimmie Widener.
Widener’s first King session was held March 25, 1946 at Universal Recorders in Hollywood with an all-star studio line-up that included fiddlers Tex Atchison and Harold Hensley, the stunning steel guitarist Joaquin Murphey, lead guitarist Charlie Morgan, accordionist George Bamby, pianist Vic Davis and bassist Shug Fisher. This collection features all four tracks from this session: “There’s A New Day Tomorrow”, “What A Line” , “I Can Tell Just As Plain,” and “I’m All Through Trusting You.” There was a second session at Universal on May 29th and from this date we’ve drawn “Go On Your Way,” “She’s A Shady Lady” and the classic “Jimmie’s Jump.” Atchison, Hensley, Bamby, Morgan an Murphey returned from the March sessions, augmented by bassist Merle Hunter, drummer Warren Penniman, pianist Ossie Godson and trumpeter Truman Quigley.
By the time of the second session, Widener was working in Salinas in Northern California with the Fiddlin’ Linvilles, Charlie and Margie (who would gain wider fame later as Fiddlin’ Kate Warren), stalwarts of the LA scene who would also soon sign to King. He left the Linvilles that summer to join Bob Wills, who working nearby in Fresno. Tommy Duncan was Wills’ featured vocalist and Widener was hired to play tenor banjo and sing occasionally. He recorded one vocal, singing Cindy Walker’s “How Can It Be Wrong” at Wills’ sessions in September ’46 in Hollywood. It is included here. There was some friction about Widener having his own recording contract from Tommy Duncan, and when Widener opted to fulfil his King contract with a series of sessions a couple of weeks later, Wills let him go – it would not be the last time that Wills would hire and fire Widener in coming years. Widener’s four September sessions for King were uniformly excellent and we’ve chosen several tracks. Only trumpeter Truman Quigley and fiddler Harold Hensley returned from the earlier sessions, but the remainder of the line-up was truly all-star, including steel guitarist Noel Boggs and lead guitarist Jimmy Wyble, both former Texas Playboys who were then working with Spade Cooley. Hensley was joined by fiddlers Woody Applewhite and Widener’s brother-in-law Buddy Ray, Joe Bardelli was on piano, Bob Morgan (Charlie’s brother, who’d worked with Widener in Salinas) was on bass, and the drummer was Johnny D’Maris. From September 18, we’ve included “Take It Or Leave It” and the slow blues “She Done And Left Me,” while “Come A Little Bit Closer,” was cut on the 19th. From September 21 come “Me And The Doggone Blues,” “You Better Wake Up Babe,” and “I’ll Be Satisfied, “and the final session on September 23 produced “Don’t Count Your Dreams.” Although many of the 1946 tracks would not be issued for several years, these would be Widener’s last recordings under his own name until 1952-3.
After Wills, Widener worked for a time with T. Texas Tyler, then re-joined Wills when Eldon Shamblin took a leave of absence following the death of his son in early 1947. Following Shamblin’s return, Jimmie went back to Tyler’s band for until rejoining Spade Cooley in 1948. He worked briefly for Wills in late ’48, then joined the Texas Playboys once again when Wills relocated to Oklahoma City for a while in late summer 1949, playing tenor banjo, singing solos and in trios. He was featured on Wills’ April 1950 recording “I Laugh When I Think How I Cried Over You,” which features great solos from pianist Mancel Tierney, Johnny Gimble (on electric mandolin) and steel man Billy Bowman. Widener opted to remain in California when Wills returned to Oklahoma after the April recording session. He joined Tex Williams’ Western Caravan, and sang on one of Smokey Rogers Coral releases (“Trouble Then Satisfaction”). He nd remained with Williams when Rogers took most of the Caravan to San Diego a few months later. He cut some covers of current hits for the Ace-Hi label in 1952, then cut a fantastic lone session for Imperial in March 1953, featuring Speedy West, Jimmy Bryant, and others. His top-notch cover of the jazzy blues “Red Top” comes from this session. Widener also cut at least one unusual disc for the square dance label Featha (affiliated in some way with Doc Alumbaugh’s Windsor label) at some point in the early-to-mid-50s, a spare version of the 1951 pop song “Old Soft Shoe” that sounds like it might date from the period when he was working with the Western Caravan.
Beyond the scope of this set, Widener also recorded western gospel sides for the Biblical label in the mid-50s. He later cut a series of transcriptions with a group called the Country Gentlemen, a western act that boasted Sons of The Pioneers legend Hugh Farr on fiddle. He later returned to Oklahoma and was active in a number of Texas Playboys-related events through the 1980s-90s, until his health no longer permitted. He died in Seminole in 2001, aged 77.
Kevin Coffey
December 2018
Thanks to Russ Wapensky, Dwight Adair (Jimmie Widener interview on youtube)