Jimmie Widener

Western Swing Musician and Guitarist

“Oklahoma” Jimmie Widener was an American western swing musician, singer and songwriter. Born February 15, 1924 northwest of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Died in Seminole in 2001, aged 77. This artist is not same as Jimmy Widener (Jimmie Phillip Widener) aka “Alabama” Jimmy Widener. Not only did Widener work several stints with the legendary Bob Wills, he also worked with other great names in the music, including Spade Cooley, Tex Williams and T. Texas Tyler. Widener’s efforts at forging a solo career are far less known, but he left an impressive and uniformly excellent -- if tantalizingly small -- body of recordings. His sessions for King, Imperial and other labels used the cream of West Coast western swing musicians, like guitarists Jimmy Wyble and Jimmy Bryant, steel men Joaquin Murphey, Noel Boggs and Speedy West, fiddlers Harold Hensley and Tex Atchison, and others, and yielded classics like “Jimmie’s Jump” and several songs that were popular enough to be covered by other performers, like “Wake Up, Babe” and “What A Line.”