Boy, talk about your instant classics. For the past 30 years or more, Ray Benson’s ensemble Asleep at the Wheel has been the standard-bearer of western swing music; and of course for even longer than that, Willie Nelson has exemplified Texas music. The only question I have is, what took the two so long to get together and make this album? Especially since the great impresario Jerry Wexler, former head of Atlantic Records, had been wanting to record a western swing album with Willie for some 30 years, since shortly before Willie left Atlantic for CBS.
This is a marriage made in hillbilly heaven. Benson has put together a smokin’ hot group, including a horn section, for this project. Floyd Domino plays some of the nicest piano you’ll hear on a country record, and when Jason Roberts and Eddie Rivers team up on fiddle and pedal steel, it just can’t be beat.
Benson also took Wexler’s suggestion for songs to include. There are some that you’ll recognize as well-worn standards, like “Sweet Jennie Lee, “Bring It On Down To My House, “Right or Wrong,” “Corrine Corrina,” and “I’m Sittin’ On Top of the World.” Then there are some surprises, like the jumping “Oh! You Pretty Woman,” the jaunty New Orleans style blues of “Fan It,” and the bawdy two-step of “I Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None O’ This Jellyroll.” It opens with a traditional “Hesitation Blues,” which everybody from Taj Mahal to the Holy Modal Rounders has recorded; and it closes with “Won’t You Ride in My Little Red Wagon,” a charming little ditty that Willie previously covered on his *Over The Rainbow* album in the ’70s — I like this version better.
By tradition, every western swing album needs at least one instrumental track, and that part here is filled by the sweet “South,” which features Paul Shaffer on piano and Vince Gill on electric guitar. The latter’s sweet solo would do Chet Atkins proud.
Wexler is listed as executive producer, but he unfortunately passed on before it was completed. I’m sure he’s shaking a leg in heaven whenever this one’s on the turntable, though.
(Bismeaux, 2009)
