Al Stricklin
01/29/1908  -  10/15/1986
Al Stricklin was a jazz pianist whose lively playing helped give Bob
Wills and His Texas Playboys the band's unique western swing
flavor. Ironically, when Stricklin first heard Wills play the fiddle during
an audition at a radio station where Stricklin was in charge of hiring,
he thought Wills' routine was more of a comedy act than any serious
musical offering. It wasn't long before Stricklin's opinion changed
and he became a key part of the Texas Playboys' lineup, staying with
the band from 1935 through 1942. He played piano on several
hundred of the group's recordings, including Wills' nationwide hit in
1940, "New San Antonio Rose."

The piano player was born Alton Meeks Stricklin in 1908 in Antioch,
TX. He never had the benefit of music lessons, and has said that his
major inspiration was jazz great Earl "Fatha" Hines. When he was
about four or five years old, Stricklin started teaching himself how to
play with his father, who was a fiddler. By the time he left high school
and headed to Weatherford Junior College in 1927, and later Baylor
University, the self-taught pianist was teaching others how to play to
help pay for his schooling. While at Weatherford he performed with
two bands, a jazz group named the Texans and a Dixieland band
named the Rio Grande Serenaders. Stricklin, a history major, was
almost ejected from Baylor because of his involvement with a jazz
group. When the administration of the Baptist university got wind of
his association with a group called the Unholy Three, and learned
that he played in the trio at local dances, only a dean's intervention
kept him from being expelled.

Stricklin ended up leaving school anyway, thanks to the lean years
of the Depression. To help support his family, he took work in 1930
at Fort Worth's KFJZ radio station, where he later auditioned Wills.
Before joining the Texas Playboys, Stricklin also was employed as
an elementary school teacher and principal in Island Grove, TX, and
later he played with the Hi Flyers dance band back in Fort Worth.
When Wills heard him play at a club called the Cinderella Roof in
1935, he lured Stricklin to the Texas Playboys with a job that paid
$30 weekly.

The piano player left the Texas Playboys to work at North American
Aircraft during World War II. In 1943 he turned down a chance to
reunite with the Texas Playboys in California, instead marrying and
settling down. He put his musical career behind him until United
Artists asked for another recording from Wills and his band. The
double album was Wills' last, and the recording of it came to be
viewed as an historic event. It won a Grammy Award and attracted
new listeners to western swing.

Wills died in 1975. Stricklin and some of the other band members
continued for about ten years to record and perform under the name
Bob Wills Original Texas Playboys. Stricklin also had a brief solo
career. He wrote My Years With Bob Wills, a memoir, in 1976.
Stricklin, along with Wills and the Texas Playboys, is an inductee of
the Country Music Hall of Fame. He passed away in 1986 in
Cleburne, TX.
Al Stricklin