Of all the western swing bands in the Fort Worth-Dallas area, the one that enjoyed the greatest and longest success was the Light Crust Doughboys, whose history covers more than half a century. In 1929 James Robert (Bob) Wills moved from West Texas to Fort Worth and formed the Wills Fiddle Band, a rather unimposing aggregation made up of Wills as fiddler and Herman Arnspiger as guitarist. In 1930 Milton Brown joined the band as vocalist, and in 1931 the Wills Fiddle Band-Wills, Arnspiger, and Brown-became the Light Crust Doughboys. With help from friends and fans in Fort Worth, Wills persuaded Burrus Mill and Elevator Company to sponsor the band on a radio show by advertising the mill's Light Crust Flour. After two weeks of broadcasts, W. Lee O'Daniel,qv president of Burrus Mill, canceled the show because he did not like "their hillbilly music." However, a compromise, inspired by Wills's persistence and the demands of thousands of fans who used Light Crust Flour, brought the group back to the air in return for its members' agreement to work in the mill as well as perform. People listened at noon each day for a couple of licks on Bob Wills's fiddle and Truett Kimsey's enthusiastic introduction: "The Light Crust Doughboys are on the air!" Then the Doughboys sang their theme song, which began: "Listen everybody, from near and far if you wanta know who we are. We're the Light Crust Doughboys from Burrus Mill." This went over so well that it became the permanent salutation of the Doughboys.

So impressed was O'Daniel with the band's following that he became the announcer for the show and organized a network of radio stations that broadcast the Doughboys throughout Texas and most of Oklahoma. The Southwest Quality Network included such radio stations as WBAP and KTAT, Fort Worth; WOAI, San Antonio; KPRC, Houston; and KOMA, Oklahoma City. The show became one of the most popular radio programs in the Southwest. In 1932 the original Doughboys began leaving the band. Brown left the show that year to form the Musical Brownies, and in 1933 O'Daniel had to fire Wills for missing broadcasts, especially because of drinking. In 1933 Wills organized the Playboys in Waco. Of all the early Doughboys, Wills was the most influential. The Light Crust Doughboys never departed from the fiddle-band style that Wills established in the band's formative years. In October 1933 O'Daniel took a new and talented group of Doughboys to Chicago for a recording session with Vocalion (later Columbia) Records. O'Daniel, who deserves much credit along with Brown and Wills for the initial success of the Doughboys, continued as manager and announcer until the mid-thirties. In 1935, when Burrus Mill fired him after a series of disputes, O'Daniel formed his own band, the Hillbilly Boys, and his own flour company, Hillbilly Flour. O'Daniel used this band in his successful bid for the governorship in 1938.

The years between 1935 and World War IIqv were the most successful in the long history of the Doughboys. By 1937 some of the best musicians in the history of western swing had joined the band. Kenneth Pitts and Clifford Gross played fiddles. The rhythm section consisted of Dick Reinhart, guitar; Marvin (Smoky) Montgomery, tenor banjo; Ramon DeArman, bass; and John (Knocky) Parker, piano. Muryel Campbell played lead guitar. At various times Cecil Brower played fiddle. Almost from the beginning, the Light Crust Doughboys enjoyed a successful recording career; their records outsold those of all other fiddle bands in the Fort Worth-Dallas area. Their popularity on radio had much to do with their success in recording. By the 1940s the Light Crust Doughboys broadcast over 170 radio stations in the South and Southwest. There is no way of knowing how many millions of people heard their broadcasts. Though the Doughboys played good, danceable jazz, the band was basically a show band whose purpose was to entertain. Their shows took the listeners' minds off the economic problems of the thirties and added joy to their lives.

In the early months of World War II members of the band went into either the armed forces or war-related industries. In 1942 Burrus Mill ended the Doughboys' radio show. The mill reorganized the band in 1946, but the broadcasts were never as appealing as they had been in the prewar years. The company tried various experiments and even hired Hank Thompson and Slim Whitman in the hope that somehow the radio show could be saved. By 1950 the age of television had begun, however, and the dominance of radio was over. With its passing went the radio show that Texans had enjoyed since 1931. The Light Crust Doughboys were no longer "on the air." In 1991 Burrus Mill still owned the Doughboy name and employed Doughboy-great Marvin Montgomery and others to play special events and to make promotional recordings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bill C. Malone, Country Music U.S.A. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968). Charles R. Townsend, San Antonio Rose: The Life and Music of Bob Wills (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976).