Western music was always a bit hard to classify. Yodeling seemed to be its most distinctive element. Swing style was another feature? I guess because swing music was popular in the 40’s and it influenced Western.
The costumes had string ties made from shoelaces or a bandana . Tex Ritter comes to mind. I think Bob Wills did some Western music? Lots of others that my dad had in his record collection.
It used to be C&W Country and Western. Two genres lumped together.
I can’t even find examples by searching google image for western singer I get country artists and not the old timey Western singers.
Just to counter, I think the only instance of “Western music” I’ve ever heard is in the spoken tag end of a Jimmy Buffett song - might be “Ragtop Days” - where he’s monologuing in the background about going over the state line and “listening to some Western music.” Just not a phrasing that’s very common since C got permanently welded to W.
Just so long as they don’t yodel. I can not stand even being in the room when that was playing on my dads stereo. It’s Worse than fingernails on a blackboard.
Bob Wills was the defining artist in Western Swing, which is fairly synonymous with Western music for modern practical purposes. For some more recent examples, try anything from Asleep at the Wheel, several by George Strait (Ace in the Hole is a prime example) or Joe Diffie’s If the Devil Danced in Empty Pockets. All are highly danceable.
Tom Russell still sings plenty of cowboy songs, and has just released two compilations of all his Western material. In this case it’s more the lyrical theme than musical style that’s “Western”.
There are still plenty of artists who perform it, but it’s often just a part of their acts.
The genre itself is now mixed into “Americana” which is the catch-all term for roots music, including Western, Bluegrass, traditional folk, Delta blues and several others.
I strongly disagree with those citing Western Swing as synonymous, or even largely derived from, True Western. The latter is epitomized by the aforementioned Ritter plus Roy Rogers and The Sons of the Pioneers. Another modern keeper of the flame is Michael Martin Murphey, who has left Wildfire far behind. (Murph was also in an earier life an instigator of the Great Progressive Country Scare of the Late 1970s.
Country originally derived from the folk music of the Appalachian mountains. Western, as the name implies, came from cowboy songs and the folk music of the west.
Western Swing is pretty much a mix of string band dance music (think the type of stuff you see people dancing to in Western films) and big band music, as the name kinda implies.
Problem with that theory is that what you’re considering cowboy songs by Roy Rogers, Tex Ritter, Gene Autry et al are purely products of the movies. In reality, cowboys of the wild west usually just had their own twist on Appalachian and Spanish folk music.