By early 1948, Wills and his group had left the Columbia label and signed with MGM. Their tenure with MGM started out promising with the #4 hit, Cindy Walker’s “Bubbles In My Beer” (which became a classic of sorts in the Wills catalog), but the Playboys’ career was starting to wane by the late 1940s and MGM, like Columbia before it, was beginning to lose faith in Wills’ brand of music. With the record-buying public’s tastes changing after World War II, the Playboys’ style of dance music seemed old and outdated. Solo acts were now ruling the charts, and most of the hot artists were a good deal younger than Wills (who was in his mid-forties at the time). The days of swing music seemed numbered, and MGM doubted that Bob could or would change the Playboys’ sound to conform to country music’s new direction.
Wills, too, could see that his place in country music was shaky. Other swing acts were either fading from the national spotlight or trying to change their sound. The kids who had once come to dance to his group’s music were now seeing their own children heading out to see Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb and Eddy Arnold. The band leader was keenly aware that changing times often meant the changing of the guard, but yet he felt that there was still a bit of magic left in his swing music.
Sitting down with his brother Johnnie Lee, Bob began to jot down words to fit his father’s old fiddle tune. In short order, the two siblings had given a new look to the family anthem. With Rusty McDonald now supplying the lead vocal (replacing Tommy Duncan) and the Playboy trio hitting background harmonies, Wills returned to the MGM studios. He had a much smaller band than when he cut “San Antonio Rose” a decade before, but the sound that had earned Bob the title “King of Western Swing” was still there. So maybe, he thought, they did have a chance of scoring another winner.
