1941-47

Recent years have seen a flurry of Spade Cooley reissues that allow a far fuller assessment of his legacy than would have ben possible just a few years ago. Although the Club Of Spade label's eight LP reissues in the 1970s allowed some insight, more than half focused on late period airchecks from beyond Cooley's most significant years as a bandleader. The currently available batch of Cooley CDs gives a truer picture of the band at its height, and also of how it changed and developed during the late 1940s and 1950s, when Cooley grew from a major ballroom and radio attraction and musical innovator to a huge West Coast television star.