Short Essay: Although the Great Depression was a time of economic suffering, it was also a time of creativity in country music. Wester swing appeared in Texas in the 1930s and quickly spread to other states. The exciting new sound appealed to many teenagers in the 1920s. In the 1930s they took the reels, waltzes, fiddle breakdowns and other styles they had learned from their ancestors and combined them with blues, rags, jazz, swing and pop to create a remarkably different and new sound. dynamic that would come to prominence. be known as Western swing (Hartman, 144). The “King of Western Swing,” Bob Wills, was a prominent figure from the 1930s to the 1950s. At a young age he learned to play the violin, and he and his father performed at dances and other social gatherings. As a boy he was exposed to other musical genres such as blues, conjunto and mariachi, but it was the new sounds of jazz that inspired him to experiment with traditional country music. In 1929 Wills moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he formed a band, the Wills Fiddle Band, which would soon change to the Light Crust Doughboys. Their music was played on Fort Worth radio station KFJZ Radio, and their unique sound quickly spread, something radio advertisers needed during the economic crisis. However, in 1933 Wills left the band and formed a new one called Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys and they toured together over the next forty years. In 1945 Wills appeared on the Grand Ole Opry and insisted that there be a horn and drum section on stage. The audience was surprisingly satisfied with this unwanted change on the part of the directors. Despite his somewhat strained relationship with Nashville, the local country music establishment formally recognized Wills and his overall important impact on country music when the Country Music Association Hall of Fame inducted him in 1968 (Hartman, 146). Bob Wills died in 1975, but still had a major influence on emerging young country artists such as Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, George Strait and Lee Ann Womack.