Born in Texas City, Texas, Cliff Lafayette Bruner was a pioneer of Western Swing and one of the most influential musicians in Texas country music history. His sound blended traditional string band music with improvisation, blues, folk, and the popular melodies of the era. Bruner grew up in Tomball and, at age twelve, decided he didn’t want to pick cotton anymore—so he bought a fiddle. As a teenager, he traveled around the country attempting to form a band, and in 1935, at just twenty years old, he was invited to join Milton Brown’s ensemble, the Musical Brownies. Two years later, in Houston, Bruner formed his own group, the Texas Wanderers, featuring steel guitarist Bob Dunn, mandolinist Leo Raley, guitarist and vocalist Dickie McBride, pianist and singer Moon Mullican, and bassist Hezzy Bryant.

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The Texas Wanderers quickly became one of Houston’s top attractions before relocating to Beaumont, where they performed live radio shows three times a day. Bruner eventually recorded for both Decca and Mercury Records and achieved national success with Floyd Tillman’s “It Makes No Difference Now,” which spent an impressive twenty weeks at the top of the early country charts—an achievement often overlooked because Billboard did not establish its formal country chart until 1944. His discography carried a distinctly Southern flavor, with songs about truck driving, heartbreak, military service, and rough living. Between 1939 and 1942, Bruner scored additional hits including “Sorry,” “Kelly Swing,” “I’ll Keep On Loving You,” and “When You’re Smiling.”

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Bruner continued performing into the 1970s and even appeared in the 1984 film Places in the Heart. As a fiddler and bandleader during the golden age of Western Swing in the 1930s and 1940s, Cliff Bruner remains one of the genre’s most skilled and underappreciated innovators.