do you like Western Swing?
What a coincidence: I just spent the last couple of days transferring "Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys Live In Concert" from vinyl to CD. I just pulled the jacket out and looked at it, and despite 2 full pages of liner notes by a musicologist PhD, there's not a word about musician's credits or where it was recorded! I guess when you're that smart the details don't matter. It's a classic, anyhow, with San Antonio Rose, Beaumont Rag and a new one to me, La Golondrina, a very pretty waltz. I know what you mean about corny: many years ago, in N California (Mendocino) I was listening to ol Bob with some friends and at the first "yeehaw" one young lady said, "Is this some kind of a joke?" Not having listened to him for several years, I got a fresh impression. Tight rhythm section, soloists who knew no fear: apparently Mr Wills would take it into his head that he wanted a fiddle solo (or whatever), would point his bow at the person selected, and off they'd go into an improvisation. The Playboys were always full of hot players. The ones you mentioned, and I believe Johnny Gimble played with them too. The rhythms are sounding dated, but they were for dancing, not pogoing. He's still a hot number around here.
I'm 'way North of Corpus, in Nacogdoches. We're closer to Shreveport than any big Texas city (unless you count Tyler).
From your references to Bill Evans I get the impression you're a keyboard player. (As an aside, several years ago, a friend who was also a gifted pianist -- he taught music at the local state U -- came over and we listened to some Bill Evans on CD. About midway through the second song, he said "you've got a rattle in your speaker." I listened, and sure enough....Fortified with some Guiness stout, we disassembled the speaker [a giant PA cab with a 15" woofer], braced it with some 3/4" dowel he happened to have in his car, and listened again. The rattle was still there. After several more attempts we gave up trying to fix it. At last he wended his say home, having borrowed the CD. An hour later he called: "The rattle's on the recording!")