Merle Haggard

Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys photographed in October of 1945 in Fresno, California.

Bob Wills relocated from Texas to California after World War II, and his live radio broadcasts from Bakersfield’s Beardsley Ballroom made him a hero to transplanted Southerners. From the first time he heard Wills, Haggard wrote in his 1981 autobiography, Sing Me Back Home, “that beautiful fiddle... was piercing little holes right through my head.”