PAT O'DANIEL HILLBILLY BOYS - OLD TIME RADIO - 1 CD-ROM - 74 mp3 - Total Playtime: 18:21:13

W. Lee O'Daniel's musical career began in January 1931, when a West Texas fiddler named James Robert (Bob) Wills entered his Fort Worth office at Burrus Mill and Elevator Company. As general manager of the firm, O'Daniel had just canceled a radio program on which Wills and his fiddle band had been advertising Burrus Mill's Light Crust Flour. O'Daniel canceled it, as he said, "because I didn't like their hillbilly music." So many cards and letters came into station KFJZ that O'Daniel had to put the show back on the air, and the band became known as the Light Crust Doughboys. When O'Daniel realized how much flour the show was selling, he became the announcer for the show and manager of the band. According to Wills, O'Daniel was an asset to the show. He had a flair for dramatization and publicity; he wrote poems and read them on the air and often had the band work out music for them. Though his songs never became national hits, they became known throughout Texas and the Southwest. He wrote "Beautiful Texas," "Put Me in Your Pocket," and a song for Franklin D. Roosevelt's war on the Great Depression, "On to Victory Mr. Roosevelt" (all in 1933). The Doughboy broadcast became one of the most popular and longlived shows in the history of the Southwest. The original Light Crust Doughboy show consisted of O'Daniel as announcer, Bob Wills on fiddle, Herman Arnspiger on guitar, and Milton Brown as vocalist. By the mid-1930s all had left the Doughboys, and each eventually had an important place in Texas music.