Hoyle Nix and the West Texas Cowboys (“That’s ‘
Cowboys,’” says Nix, “not ‘Playboys’”) have been together since 1946. If he seems adamant about the name, it’s because he’s had a lifetime of being confused with Bob Wills’ band. Both are Western swing bands, but while Wills achieved national recognition in the thirties and forties, Nix’s group is a household word only in the 250-mile radius around Big Spring in West Texas, where the Cowboys play every Saturday night at Hoyle Nix’s Stampede club. The Stampede is a dancing crowd where you can expect to see deftly executed Texas two-steps, cotton-eyed Joes, and put your little foots. “We play by ear,” says Nix. “I might whistle a tune in the car on the way to a dance, but we’ve never rehearsed in the thirty years the band’s been together.”