Rick Jobe and the Wonderin' Cowboys

​is a classic Western Swing band. The band can include bass, guitar, steel guitar, fiddle and drums. The original group included clarinet and mandolin!

The Wonderin' Cowboys is virtually a replication of the music of Bob Wills and Milton Brown. The style started in the 1930s as basically a marketing ploy for musicians in Oklahoma and Texas. The musicians there and then were beholden to play the fiddle music that was transplanted and adapted from Appalachia to the middle southwest. But the musicians were listening to the music that was coming out of the clear channel, powerful radio stations in places like Chicago. What they were hearing on their radios was the combo and big band swing of bands like Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. 

They wanted to jam like those cats but the people were used to hearing and dancing to fiddle music like "Cotton Eyed Joe." The musicians played a trick on their audience. They played the fiddle tunes and then moved into the swing jams that excited their improvisational impulses. When the beer bottle started flying they went back to Cotton Eyed Joe!

​The result is a rich and diverse music called Western swing which includes elements of country, jazz, New Orleans blues and much more. It's downright happy time music!

Eldon Shamblin Style guitar

My style of rhythm guitar is based on the flowing, walking, progressions of Eldon Shamblin. He began with Bob Wills in 1937 and Bob soon noticed that all the bass players he encountered played a basic, static pattern. Bob asked Eldon to move the music around and he developed a way of walking the bass note around while playing a chord after each note. I have adopted that style of playing and moved it a little further with more modern harmonizations that enhance the vocals. I call it "Walking Rhythm" guitar!