Leon Rausch, The Voice of Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys, Has Died
This story has been updated.
Fans of country music most all recognize the name of Bob Wills as the King of Western Swing. But if you’re listening to the music of Bob Wills, it’s often Leon Rausch you hear singing. A fixture of Western Swing for some 60 years and known as “The Voice of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys,” Leon Rausch has passed away at the age of 91. He died Tuesday morning (5-14) in Ft. Worth according to the Texas Playboys.
Born in Billings, Missouri on October 27th, 1927, Leon Rausch was raised in the Show Me State and started singing and playing guitar at local dances with his father as a small child. Rausch performed throughout high school until he joined the military like many of his generation. After leaving the service, he played with multiple local bands in the Missouri area until eventually moving to Tulsa in 1955 to pursue his Western Swing career. It was a 1956 appearance on The Louisiana Hayride that is given credit for launching Leon Rausch’s career in earnest, and on St. Patrick’s Day 1958, he officially joined Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys as the lead vocalist, replacing Glynn Duncan, who had replaced his brother Tommy Duncan.
Leon Rausch played in the Texas Playboys throughout the 60’s until briefly joining the band of Johnnie Lee Wills, and then forming his own group called the New Texas Playboys based out of Ft. Worth. Rausch would later reunite with Bob Wills in 1973 after the ailing country legend contacted him about making a final record called For The Last Time. When Bob Wills died in 1975, Leon Rausch took over as the leader of the legendary Texas Playboys.
Under the leadership of Leon Rausch, the Texas Playboys helped keep the legacy of Western Swing alive, continuing to record albums and perform, including a famous appearance on Austin City Limits. As styles changed, attention to the legendary outfit waned, but Rausch was there to play the official last show of the band at the Will Rogers Auditorium in Ft. Worth, Texas, on November 16th, 1986. Even after the Texas Playboys, Rausch was a regular at Western Swing shows and gatherings, performing and telling stories of his time in the influential outfit.
Along with the Playboys, Leon Rausch has played music with the likes of Glenn Campbell, Roy Clark, Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Jim Reeves, Ernest Tubb, Patsy Cline, Mel Tillis, Roy Acuff, and helped pass the Western Swing torch to Ray Benson and Asleep At The Wheel. Rausch also co-authored a book with Dr. John E. Perkins Jr. called Leon Rausch…The Voice of the Texas Playboys about his time with Wills.
Leon Rausch is survived by his wife of 69 years, Vonda.
May 14, 2019 @ 2:52 pm
I think you mean that he replaced Tommy Duncan. The end of an era. I think he was the last of the Playboys. The Texas Playboys are off the air.
May 14, 2019 @ 2:54 pm
Did you change the article while I was posting or am I losing my mind?
May 14, 2019 @ 2:58 pm
Probably. Like with many developing news stories, I try to get something up as soon as I can, and then tend to add to the story later. Leon did replace Glynn Duncan, who replaced Tommy Duncan. Tommy is the other guy many people think of when it comes to Bob Wills singers.
May 14, 2019 @ 3:05 pm
Ya. I had never heard of Glynn singing for the Playboys. I thought there were only two. Well before my time.
July 27, 2020 @ 7:45 pm
No Tommy Duncan quit Bob Wills in 1948, he got fired by Wills when Wills overheard Tommy complaining to other band members about Wills drinking problem, which meant Wills not showing up for gigs where people payed to see Bob Wills, or Wills showing up too drunk to play. Tommy took half the band with him when that happened. Wills had a series of singer through the late 40s and 50s, often letting band members like Jack Lloyd or Johnny Gimble, or Bob’s brother Luke sing through the 1950s. One of the latter ones was Tommy’s Brother Glenn Duncan who sang with the band. Rausch joined the band as a singer but more as an electric bass player. He remained in the band when Tommy Duncan reunited with Wills in LA around 1959 through 60s, Rausch and Duncan actually did a few duets during this period before Rausch went off to Tulsa to work with Johnny Lee
August 6, 2020 @ 6:45 pm
Mr. Thomas has outlined this correctly. Bob Wills fired Tommy Duncan in 1948. Over the next 11 years Wills used a number of vocalists, sometimes with a singer fronting the band or, at other times, utilizing various band members to sing. Glynn Duncan was not yet in the band at the time of their Feb. 1957 recording session and he was replaced by Leon Rausch in March 1958, so his tenure with the band only lasted around a year at most. Rausch was hired as a singer to front the band and he did so until Wills reunited with Tommy Duncan in the latter part of 1959. Wills did not record in 1958 and 1959. When Duncan returned, Rausch moved to electric guitar (I don’t believe it was electric bass, as that was Luke Wills’s gig) playing rhythm as he was not a lead guitarist. Several of the recordings made for Liberty in 1960 and 1961 that were intended for release as singles were Duncan and Rausch duets. He also sang harmony with Duncan on a few other recordings that were almost duets. The 1960 Top 5 hit “Heart to Heart Talk” was one of those. Rausch left the band either late in 1961 or early in 1962 to join Johnnie Lee Wills’s band. Johnnie Lee recorded a couple of albums around 1962-63 with Rausch doing most of the vocal work. In 1964 Bob Wills “sold” The Texas Playboys to a Texas businessman named Carl Johnson. Johnson hired Rausch as band leader/front man for the Playboys. Wills worked with the band extensively over the next couple of years until he became dissatisfied with the arrangement. Wills’s first Kapp LP in 1966 was recorded using the Playboys with Rausch doing most of the vocals. These recordings were the first solo vocals Rausch recorded with Wills. The Johnson-owned Playboys disbanded around 1968. He may have performed with Wills on other occasions, but his next recorded work with Bob was in 1973 in the sessions that produced the “For the Last Time” album. Over the years it’s been accepted as fact that Rausch was Bob Wills’s vocalist for many years and was the vocalist on many of his hit records, which is simply incorrect. Overall, Rausch was not a significant figure in the history of The Texas Playboys when they were Bob Wills’s band.
May 14, 2019 @ 2:55 pm
Man, I was literally just listening to Bob Wills and Texas Playboys today. I always just assumed it was Bob that handled the singing.
R.I.P.
May 14, 2019 @ 2:59 pm
You are not alone, and I wouldn’t feel weird about that. That’s how our music brains are trained, but bob was just the bandleader and primary business guy. Almost makes you like him more when you realize that. It’s a throwback to the big band era.
May 14, 2019 @ 3:15 pm
Yep, definitely a throwback to the bandleader era. In fact, one of my favorite things about listening to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys is the way they revisit those old jazz/swing standards with traditional country/western instrumentation. So good.
July 27, 2020 @ 7:57 pm
Wills made records with the Texas playbouys from around 1935 until around 1963 as explained. More than 300 different musicians were on his payroll over these years, not counting members of “farm team” bands his brothers Johnnie Lee, Billy Jack, and Luther G (Luke) Wills maintained during the heyday of Western Swing in the 40s. From 1932 until 1948 starting before Wills started the Texas Playboys, The chief singer was Tommy Duncan. Wills did sing a tune now and then and often chimed in rap comments and his famous holler. Duncan was the man, but he let all sorts of other people in the band sing songs during Duncan’s tenure. Duncan joined the Navy right after Pearl Harbor but was back by 45, and Wills himself had a brief sojourn in the Army, 43. He had a couple different singers before Tommy came back in 1945. Tommy was important as a song writer, though as usual in big bands the publishing credit went to the band leader, but he was given some credit for hits like San Antonio Rose and Stay A Little Longer. I love Rausch as a singer, but he was with Wills for only the last few years mainly as a bass player, and in the pickup bands that Wills put together after the Texas Playboys were folded. Where Rausch really shines is in the reunion records the surviving Texas Playboys made after Bob Wills died in 1974. He cut some great tracks with them in the late 70s
May 14, 2019 @ 2:58 pm
Take it away, Leon! R.I.P.
May 14, 2019 @ 4:07 pm
Who would say “ahhhhaaaaa!!!!”?
May 14, 2019 @ 5:39 pm
Bob did the ah haaaa. Bob Wills baby!
May 14, 2019 @ 8:36 pm
That “ah haaa” was Bob Wills.
May 14, 2019 @ 4:12 pm
I got to hang out with Herb Remmington years ago at a steel guitar show, what a great guy and had so many cool touring stories from the mid forties. Sadly Herb passed away last year in Houston, most are gone now but I still listen to their music as well as many of the great western swing bands that are around today. REST IN PEACE LEON!
May 14, 2019 @ 4:31 pm
Wasn’t it leon mcauliffe?
May 14, 2019 @ 5:06 pm
Yes. That’s who “Take it away, Leon!” refers to.
May 14, 2019 @ 5:13 pm
I’m pretty sure that Leon Rausch was also the recipient of some Take It Away Leon’s in his day too.
May 14, 2019 @ 6:41 pm
Leon McAuliffe was the steel guitar player. Take it away Leon.
May 14, 2019 @ 6:50 pm
The article was updated hours ago to reflect that. That said, Bob Wills would throw it to Leon and say, “Take it away Leon” as well.
July 27, 2020 @ 8:04 pm
Leon joined the band when they moved to Tulsa and stayed with them until 1942 when they relocated to Los Angeles, but went back to Oklahoma where he joined the Navy or was drafted into the Nav. In the late 1930s the Playboys were such a big operation that they had an airplane of their own to fly to distant dates and Leon had learned to fly it and spent WWII in Oklahoma training pilots for the Navy. He stayed in Oklahoma and set up his own banjo called the Cimmaron Boys based in Tulsa that had more of a swing approach although their big hits were in Western tunes like Leon’s immortal Pan Handle Rag. Wills had about 5 or 6 steel guitar players after Leon, with the greatest being the great Noel Boggs who together with Cameron Hill and Jimmy Wyble extended the guitar trio concept first with Bob Wills and then with Spade Cooley. He was folloed by another great Herbie Remington who worked with Wills from around 45 or 46 until around 1950. Much neglected wias Gene Carnover (probably spelled wrong) who worked with Wills in the Albums Wills cut in La for Liberty Records
May 14, 2019 @ 7:48 pm
I love Western swing. RIP and hats off to a life well lived.
May 15, 2019 @ 12:47 am
I was a little kid when we followed the Playboys around in the early 80’s. My parents were at a couple of the ACL performances and we sat in the front row at the final concert in 1986 at the request of Leon Rausch and Leon McAuliffe. I’ll be playing every recording I have this week. Not sure what lies beyond this life, but whatever it is they’re getting an amazing reunion performance tonight.
May 15, 2019 @ 5:47 am
“Take it away Leon” was referring to Leon McAuliffe who was the steel player for Bob,
May 15, 2019 @ 6:04 am
Hey was “Take it away Leon” referring to Leon McAuliffe?
This is how Facebook/Twitter threads influence thought. People follow the thread, don’t even read.
May 22, 2019 @ 12:21 pm
FYI. There is one playboy still living. Steel guitar player Bobby Koefer. He lives in Bend Oregon.
He was not an original, but like Leon Rauch, he joined the band later.
I attended Leon’s funeral service today and it was beautiful! Jason Roberts and the “new TEXAS Playboys” played many of the songs we all love. Doc, Ray Benson and Jody Nix all paid wonderful tributes to Leon.
He was truly the voice of Western swing but even more, a wonderful, kind, funny, talented and unforgettable man.
I thank God for his friendship.
DR
June 27, 2023 @ 5:40 pm
The singer on Deep In the Heart of Texas, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys sounds so much like George Strait that I was trying to find out who it was.