Memphis, Texas: Where Bob Wills Learned to Fiddle

Memphis is the seat of Hall County on the Texas Panhandle, born in eighteen eighty-nine when J. C. Montgomery purchased land north of the existing town of Salisbury on the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway.

When the county held its first seat election in June of eighteen ninety, Memphis, the new railroad town, beat out two rivals in a hard-fought contest. Businesses were moved on wheels from Salisbury to the winner. This stretch of the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River country would produce one of the most important musicians in American history.

Bob Wills was born in Limestone County in nineteen oh five, but in nineteen thirteen his family moved to Hall County, settling in the Turkey area. Wills learned to play the fiddle here in those rolling Red River plains and played his first dances as a boy. He went on to invent Western Swing.