Cliff Bruner
Musician · 1915–2000 · Texas City, Texas
Best known for
Songwriter
Cliff Bruner was a Texas-born fiddler and bandleader who helped invent the Western-swing twin-fiddle sound — first in Milton Brown’s Musical Brownies and then at the head of his own Texas Wanderers — and whose 1939 recording of “It Makes No Difference Now” spent twenty weeks at the top of the country chart. He led the Wanderers out of Houston through the late 1940s before the death of his wife pushed him into a long second career in the insurance business.
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- Born Clifton Lafayette Bruner on April 25, 1915, in Texas City, Texas; raised near Houston.
- Played medicine shows as a teenager before being hired by Milton Brown’s Musical Brownies in 1935; teamed with classically trained fiddler Cecil Brower on the Brownies’ Decca recordings.
- Moved to Houston after Milton Brown’s 1936 traffic-accident death and formed Cliff Bruner and his Texas Wanderers, which featured Bob Dunn on electric steel guitar, Lee Bell on guitar, and Leo Raley on amplified mandolin.
- The Wanderers’ 1939 cut of Floyd Tillman and Jimmie Davis’s “It Makes No Difference Now” topped the country chart for twenty weeks.
- Scored further late-1930s and early-1940s sides including “Sorry,” “Kelly Swing,” “I’ll Keep on Loving You,” and “When You’re Smiling.”
- Dissolved the Wanderers in the 1950s during his wife Ruth’s illness and moved into the insurance business.
- Inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame, the Western Swing Society Hall of Fame, and the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame.
- Died of cancer in Houston on August 25, 2000, at age 85.
