Cecil Brower

Cecil Brower
At KECK-AM in Odessa, Texas in 1947
Background information
Birth name	Cecil Lee Brower
Also known as	Cousin Cecil
Born	November 28, 1914 Bellevue, Texas
Died	November 21, 1965(1965-11-21) (aged 50) New York City
Genres	Western swing, country and Western, jazz
Occupation(s)	band leader, session musician
Instruments	fiddle, viola
Years active	1931–1965
Labels	Cumberland, Mercury
Associated acts	The Southern Melody Boys Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies The Light Crust Doughboys The Kilocycle Cowboys Jimmy Dean
Notable instruments
fiddle

Cecil Lee Brower (November 28, 1914–November 21, 1965) was a classically trained American jazz violinist who became an architect of Western swing in the 1930s. Perhaps the greatest swing fiddler, he could improvise as well as double shuffle and created his own style which became the benchmark for his contemporaries. Brower played in many Western bands, including his own, and was a renowned Nashville session musician. He performed with some of the biggest names in country music until his death at age 50 while a member of Jimmy Dean's band. Brower is a member of the Texas Music Hall of Fame.

Cecil Brower was born in Bellevue, Texas northeast of Dallas on November 28, 1914. He moved to San Pedro, California with his family as a boy, but they returned to Texas in 1924, settling in Fort Worth. His father, Hubert, insisted he learn an instrument so he received formal violin lessons from Wylbert Brown, who was also teaching Kenneth Pitts. Brown later said it gave Brower an edge on other "hillbilly" fiddlers "who had no bowing technique." Brower and Pitts played together locally in the Junior Harmony Club, and both were influenced by jazz and big bands.

In 1931, he joined Pitts to form The Southern Melody Boys with Bob Wren and Burke Reeder, which became the first string band to feature improvised solos, patterned after jazz violinist Joe Venuti, who Brower idolized. He was the first to master the double shuffle, a bowing technique devised by Venuti in the late 1920s described as an off-beat shuffling movement. Brower used it to great effect and passed it along to other Texas fiddlers in the early 1930s. The Southern Melody Boys played popular music and appeared on WBAP-AM and KTAT-AM in Fort Worth.

Brower majored in music at Texas Christian University and played briefly with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, but his big break came when he became a member of the first true Western swing band, Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies. In January 1933, Brower, playing harmony, joined fiddler Jesse Ashlock to create the first example of harmonizing twin fiddles. Brower learned the art of breakdown fiddling from Brown's banjoist, Ocie Stockard, and developed a free-swinging style which became the cornerstone of fiddlers in Western swing bands. The twin fiddles often heard in the Brownies' music (setting a pattern that lasted for decades in country music) are those of Brower and Cliff Bruner, a later addition to the band. Like their contemporaries, the Light Crust Doughboys, the Brownies played a mixture of country, pop, and jazz, but had a harder dance edge.