Ep. 119: Ray Benson and the Roots of American Music

Talking Beats with Daniel Lelchuk

"That's what we always thought was fun: to take a style and either lyrically or sonically update it so it ends up just a little different."

American Western music icon Ray Benson is here. He is celebrating fifty years as bandleader of Asleep at the Wheel, and he and Daniel delve into a lot of issues that a musician deals with over a career. What does time do to one’s perception of music and sound? How can one inspire but not dictate? What does a young musician looking to make his mark need to do to balance tradition and creativity? This and much more in an honest, candid talk with an American musical legend.

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In 1970, singer and guitarist Ray Benson formed Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel while farmsitting in the tiny town of Paw Paw, West Virginia – a stretch, both physically and conceptually, from the style’s Texas and Oklahoman roots. It was a fittingly atypical start for Philadelphia-born Benson, who taught himself to play guitar when he was 9 by mastering the song from a Ballantine beer commercial that played during the Phillies games. At age 11, he was performing with his sister as a folk group, The Four Gs, and had fallen in love with Western music.

At Willie Nelson’s urging, Benson and his bandmates settled in the city, eventually becoming an Austin institution and a nationally acclaimed group, with more than 25 studio and live albums, nine GRAMMY Awards, and the 2009 Americana Music Award for Lifetime Achievement in Performance. Though the band’s lineup has changed many times throughout the years (more than 80 musicians are alumni), Ray is a constant, thanks to his ongoing love of Western swing – or what he calls “jazz with a cowboy hat.”

In addition to his work as a performer, Benson owns a recording studio and affiliated record label (Bismeaux Studios/ Bismeaux Records) and co-founded the Rhythm & Blues Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of R&B. He hosts Texas Music Scene, a television program shown on stations around the country. His autobiography Comin’ Right at Ya was published in 2015.