Cliff Bruner

Cliff Bruner
One of Cliff Bruner's recordings
Background information
Birth name	Clifton Lafayette Bruner
Born	(1915-04-25)April 25, 1915 Texas City, Texas, U.S.
Died	August 25, 2000(2000-08-25) (aged 85) Texas City, Texas, U.S.
Genres	Western swing
Years active	1930s - 1980s
Associated acts	Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies The Texas Wanderers

Clifton Lafayette Bruner (April 25, 1915 – August 25, 2000), known professionally as Cliff Bruner, was a fiddler and bandleader of the Western Swing era of the 1930s and 1940s. Bruner's music combined elements of traditional string band music, improvisation, blues, folk, and popular melodies of the times.^[1][2][3][4]

Biography[]

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Bruner was born in Texas City, Texas, and spent most of his childhood near Houston. He learned to play fiddle, and traveled with medicine shows to begin his musical career. Milton Brown's Musical Brownies drafted Bruner in 1935. Bruner played with the ensemble's classically trained fiddler Cecil Brower to create the memorable double fiddle sound of Milton Brown's group. Bruner recorded with Brown's group on the Decca music label, until Brown was killed in an automobile accident in 1936. This ended Bruner's involvement in the group.

That same year (1936), Bruner moved to Houston and formed The Texas Wanderers, a band that included Lee Bell (de) on electric guitar, Bob Dunn on electric steel guitar, Leo Raley on mandolin, J. R. Chatwell on fiddle, Dickie McBride on guitar and vocals, and Moon Mullican on vocals and piano.^[5] The Wanderers recorded on the Decca and Mercury Records labels. His songs had a special southern characteristic including songs about truck driving, lost love, the draft, and ill repute.

Cliff Bruner is an unsung star of the little-noted Country music charts that appeared in Billboard prior to 1944. His hit "It Makes No Difference Now" spent twenty weeks atop the chart. Other hits in 1939–1942 included "Sorry," "Kelly Swing", "I'll Keep On Loving You", and "When You're Smiling".

Perhaps his most famous hit was "Truck Drivers' Blues," the first truck driving song. Many of these recordings featured future singer piano star, Moon Mullican, on vocals. Bruner's big band disbanded in the 1950s, however, he continued to play music, and his trio appeared in the 1984 Sally Field movie Places in the Heart.

Death[]

Bruner died of cancer on August 25, 2000, aged 85.^[6]

Selected discography[]

• Milk Cow Blues (Decca, 1937)
• Can't Nobody Truck Like Me (Decca, 1937)
• Corrine Corrina (Decca, 1937)
• Sunbonnet Sue (Decca, 1938)
• Oh How I Miss You Tonight (Decca, 1938)
• River Stay 'Way From My Door (Decca, 1938)
• I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate (Decca, 1938)
• When You're Smiling (Decca, 1939)
• Truck Driver's Blues (Decca, 1939)
• San Antonio Rose (Decca, 1939)
• Because (Decca, 1940)
• Draft Board Blues (Decca, 1941)
• That's What I Like About The South (Decca, 1946)
• Unfaithful One (AYO, 1949)
• I'll Try Not To Cry (Coral, 1950)

See also[]

• Moon Mullican
• Bob Dunn

References links[]

General references

• The Jazz of the Southwest, An Oral History of Western Swing, by Jean A. Boyd, University of Texas Press, 1998 OCLC 44955610 ISBN 978-0-292-70860-0
• A Guide to the Delmer Rogers Collection, 1987-1994, Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin

The Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame:^{[permanent dead link]} Interview with Cliff Bruner and Roy Lee Brown OCLC 26919202

• Cliff Bruner Biography, by James Manheim, Allmusic, Rovi Corporation (retrieved March 15, 2013)

External links[]

• Cliff Bruner recordings at the Discography of American Historical Recordings.

Inline citations