History

Watch Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys Perform “San Antonio Rose”

By  | 
Tony Maples Photography

 

Before it became the title of a Willie Nelson and Ray Price album in 1961, the Texas Swing originator himself Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys sang “San Antonio Rose” to loving audiences across the nation.

You may have heard it, and it goes a little something like this:

Deep within my heart, lies a melody / A song of old San Antone / Where in dreams I live with a memory / Beneath the stars all alone

The “King of Western Swing” is of course from right here in Limestone County, Texas and he became the most influential man to make the Lone Star brand of swing music popular, and he did it over this newfangled medium called “television” way back in the 1940s.

Recordings of such blissful tunes from a bygone era are hard to come by, but if you search hard enough and have a listen, it can elicit some fine memories of a country style close to all of our hearts here in the Hill Country.

Watch Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys perform “San Antonio Rose” live in 1944: