The Hot Club's first album, 1998's ''
Swingin' Stampede is a collection of standards, fiddle tunes, and classic Western swing songs, including two written by Bob Wills. Their 1999 follow-up album, Tall Tales
, includes original songs by Smith and James, including "Darling You and I Are Through" by James, "Emily" and "When I Lost You" by Smith, and other Western swing standards by Bob Wills and Pee Wee King, among others. Later albums continued to mix classic Western swing and hot jazz, with originals in the same style, including the studio albums, Ghost Train
(2002) and Wishful Thinking
(2009). Their 2011 album What Makes Bob Holler'' was a tribute to Bob Wills and includes obscure B-sides with some of Wills' most popular work, including "Big Balls in Cowtown", "Stay a Little Longer", "Osage Stomp" and "The Devil Ain't Lazy".
What Makes Bob Holler has since been re-released by the Last Music Company worldwide in all formats, including vinyl. In 2012, the Hot Club of Cowtown released a live DVD,
Continental Dance Party, which was filmed at the Continental Club Gallery in Austin, Texas. In 2016, the Hot Club of Cowtown released its ninth studio album,
Midnight on the Trail (Gold Strike Records), a vintage mix of 12 Western swing songs and cowboy ballads "hand-collected to reflect the spirit and joy of the American West", including traditional songs as well as works by Cindy Walker, Gene Autry, Bob Wills, Johnny Mercer, and more. The band's previous release,
Rendezvous in Rhythm (Gold Strike Records, 2013) was a collection of hot jazz standards and gypsy instrumentals played acoustically in the style of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli (The Quintette of the Hot Club of France). "Often people at our shows, old-timers from West Texas, will come up and tell us that what they really like is those traditional, Romanian-sounding songs. This was the antidote to our Western swing CD. Our band is better known as a western swing act, and even though Western swing includes all kinds of jazzy bluesy idioms from back in the day, the western and country part of it are so prominent that it tends to overshadow the purely jazzy European side," said James. In 2017, in recognition of the band's 20th anniversary, the Hot Club of Cowtown re-released their first set of recordings,
Western Clambake, a cassette which had previously been released in 1997 when the band played for tips in and around San Diego, California, at farmers' markets, local cafes and coffee houses, and
Balboa Park.
Crossing the Great Divide, an EP of songs drawn from the first two albums by
the Band (
Music from Big Pink and
The Band) and re-arranged Hot Club of Cowtown-style, followed soon thereafter. The Hot Club of Cowtown's 11th studio album,
Wild Kingdom, was released on September 27, 2019, a fourteen-track collection of standards and original songs by Whit Smith and Elana James about star-crossed romances ("Near Mrs.") cavemen, Mongolian stallions, vintage candy, rodeo pick up men, and the real meaning of "Last Call."
Wild Kingdom was pulled during the pandemic in 2020 and re-released worldwide in 2022 on the London, UK label The Last Music Company. The band also released
The Finest Hour in early 2020, a collection of songs from the American pop chart at the end of World War II in 1945.
The Finest Hour was recorded in front of a live audience at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis. ==Awards and live performances==