Rob:  Few people know Oklahoma’s music scene better than my next guests.  Hugh Foley is the author of the Oklahoma Music Guide, a detailed look at both artists and genres.  Also joining me here in our studio is John Wooley, long-time TULSA WORLD music critic and author of From The Blue Devils To Red Dirt: The Colors Of Oklahoma Music.  So John using the word colors in a book about music, why that?
John Wooley:  Well, for one thing, it’s book ended by two movements with colors in their name.  You have the Oklahoma City Blue Devils, from 1923, coming out of Oklahoma City; and then you’ve got Red Dirt at the end of the book.  So the two things seem to just lend themselves to being called colors.
Rob:  Let’s talk about early Oklahoma music, and Hugh, let’s start off with Native American music.
Hugh Foley:  All right, well, I’m happy to talk about that.  Of course, the first music of the state of Oklahoma is that of the American Indians, and the first style of music that emerges from that realm is the music of the plains tribes, such as the Kiowa and the Comanche, and the Cheyenne-Arapaho, the Ponca, and others who provided the music that formed what we really know today as the contemporary pow-wow.  Then you start to deal with all the other tribes who came into the state as a result of the relocations and removals, and so you have quite a wide variety of music, such as the stomp dance music of the Cherokee and Muskogee Creek, as well as the Christian hymns that come in along with the tribes or that evolved here, some of which, like in the case of the Muskogee Creek, that go back to 1600 Scotland.  
Rob:  So, John, what were some of the early influences for what is kind of called the Oklahoma sound?
Wooley:  Well, I’ll tell you, Hugh was talking about the removals and how a lot of the tribes came here.  One of the things that happened was that they brought slaves with them, and the slaves were freed, and that’s why early on in Oklahoma, we have a lot of blues and jazz, which essentially came from Africa, was African folk music.  And so you had a place like Muskogee in the 1920s where it had been Indian Territory, where people gravitated and became a jazz scene.  Muskogee, for instance, has turned out way more than a town its size should, when it comes to jazz players.  And then you go down to Oklahoma City and you have the deep deuce people on 2nd Street in Oklahoma City, and that’s where the Blue Devils came out of, and Jimmy Rushing was there; later on, Count Basie became a member of that band.  And they really, they went to Kansas City and through a bunch of different things happened to them; but ultimately, we’re kind of responsible for that 4, 4 beat Kansas City jazz sound that’s typified by Count Basie.  So, that’s how it started, and of course it goes into western swing.  You’ve got Woody Guthrie; you’ve got the Tulsa Sound Guys from the 50s.  It’s constantly evolving, and it’s constantly pulling from its past.
Rob:  I want to throw this out to both of you gentlemen.  You mentioned Woody Guthrie; you mentioned western swing; these are almost movements that have originated here in Oklahoma.
Wooley:  Exactly.  I think the thing between, about Hugh’s book and my book, and I referred to Hugh’s book all of the time when I was writing mine, the difference between the two books is I was dealing with the movements that came through Oklahoma that had a national impact, and I considered those to be the Kansas City Jazz Style, Western Swing, the Tulsa Sound, and Red Dirt and a couple of other things.  Hugh has been so exhaustive in finding, if you really look at Hugh’s book, there’s not a musical genre that goes un-represented by Oklahoma people; I can’t think of one, Hugh.
Foley:  Well, that’s one of the things that we wanted to do, was make sure that we showed America and the world that musicians from Oklahoma have not only impacted country music, which is what people typically think of, but also jazz and blues as mentioned, gospel music, someone like Albert E. Brumley who wrote the song, I’ll Fly Away, which is probably one of the best known gospel songs, period.  He’s from Spiro, Oklahoma.  When we talked about the African-American tradition in the state, the first time Swing Low Sweet Chariot was ever transcribed was in the state of Oklahoma.  So, you can look at that deep, gospel tradition, as well as contemporary Christian music.
Rob:  So, John, you covered the music scene here in Oklahoma for over two decades for the TULSA WORLD.  How has it evolved?
Wooley:  Well, when I first started, I think it was right after, as far as country music goes, it was right after the Urban Cowboy thing which we didn’t have a whole lot to do with.  It took a little while; Reba in the late 80s was starting to sort of, she was really one of the first to come through, of all those people from Oklahoma that took over Nashville in the 90s.  Reba McEntire was kind of the first.  Vince Gill had been kicking around about that time.  And all of a sudden, all of these people swept in to Nashville and you’d look at the awards shows and they were just stocked with our people; and, that was the biggest thing that I personally witnessed.  I saw Garth Brooks first solo appearance in Tulsa, and that’s where all of this started, just exploded in the early 90s.  Then, of course, at the same time, and Garth will even tell you that, I mean, he’ll kind of allude to the fact that he kind of thinks maybe he had something to do with Red Dirt too, as will Steve Ripley if he’s pressed, from the Tractors, of course; and both of those guys in Stillwater a little bit before the movement officially started.  A lot of people think Jimmy LaFave, who’s now in Austin, was the first real Red Dirt artist.  I saw the Red Dirt thing start to happen in the early 90s with the Red Dirt Rangers; and that’s really, on my watch, I mean the rest of it’s history to me; but, on my watch, when I was actually starting to write about it, the big thing has been, I think, first of all Nashville being taken over by Oklahomans for a time; and then second, the emergence of Red Dirt music.
Rob:  And you talk about Red Dirt, for someone that maybe is not familiar with the genre, describe it to us.
Wooley:  Hugh, you want to take that one?  No.  I will, I’ll try that, and you add.  I think it is, well, if I can backtrack just a little bit.  One of the things I wanted to do with my book was find out if anything actually made Oklahoma music different.  Every state has great musicians in it.  What makes us different, and I really believe that it goes back to the dust bowl and to the depression, because we got a double whammy around here; and people learned that they had to take care of one another.  Again, and again, you’ll hear people refer to the brotherhood among Oklahoma musicians; that they look out for one another, they take care of one another.  This begins with the Oklahoma City Blue Devils whose motto was taken from the Three Muskateers, All for One and One for All; they were a common wealth band which means they split everything equally, and it goes right on up through Red Dirt.  So there’s and element of brotherhood, of looking out for one another, of not seeking the spotlight so much as just seeking to make music.  Lyrically, it’s as Brad Piccolo of the Red Dirt Rangers says, it’s generally not about looking sexy on your tractor.  The lyrics have something to say.  It’s very earthy music, and if you really go back and kind of look at the ancestors, I believe it combines Bob Wills’ sense of abandon and joy and dance and celebration with Woody Guthrie’s social consciousness.  I think that’s what Red Dirt is.
Foley:  I think you can also add to what John said with regard to Western Swing music and Bob Wills.  If we remember, what Bob Wills did is combine many different musical elements into one particular style.  So, for example, the western music of the singing cowboy emerges with the swing music that’s popular in the 1930s and so you get a danceable, jazz, swing music played in a traditional western environment.  The same with Red Dirt music; in that there are elements of blues, bluegrass, rock, mariachi music, folk, all of these things come together, and a lot of these guys who are part of the Red Dirt scene really come of age with Oklahoma’s country music in one ear, and Rock music in the other ear.
Rob:  So, John, you get the final word.
Wooley:  Well, I agree with Hugh, that’s it.  All laugh.  No, Hugh’s right, of course, and we have just barely touched on some of the figures behind the scenes like Tim DuBois who graduated from Oklahoma State University and became a record company executive in Nashville and was responsible; it used to be said, if you were from Oklahoma he gave you an extra 25 points.  So you have people like that, that are behind the scenes, Tim’s still working; as a matter of fact, it’s his label, Universal South, that signed Cross Canadian Ragweed, the biggest of the Red Dirt acts.  So, it’s hard to say what’s going to happen, but we do know that we have some things that started in this state that no one else can lay claim to.  Now, you can say that Western Swing began in Fort Worth with Bob Wills and the Bob Wills Fiddle Band; but, it flourished and it took hold out of Tulsa.  Tulsa Sound, the same way; they all went west, they had to go to the west coast to get it done, but they got it done; all of these guys from Tulsa in the 60s, early, late 50s, early 60s, starting to migrate; and now the Red Dirt sound, which is not quite what Texas music is, although they tend to be lumped together, especially by people in Texas.
Rob:  Well, we have just scratched the surface; we have much more.  We have links on our web site to both of your books, and there is plenty more to talk about, but we are running out of time.  Gentlemen, thank you both for being here.
Wooley:  Thank you so much for having us.
Foley:  Our pleasure!
Rob:  And, to see more on Oklahoma’s musical heritage and a web-only feature on Oklahoma’s Jazz Hall of Fame, visit us at OkHorizon.com and click on value added.