Asleep At The Wheel. Ten/Live & Kickin’/Western Standard Time/Keepin’ Me Up Nights. Retroworld

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1566Asleep At The Wheel are a fine example of how musical fashions come and go. They kicked off in 1969 when many bands were coming down from their psychedelic highs and discovering their roots with even The Grateful Dead featuring pedal steel. Asleep At The Wheel, with Ray Benson at the helm, played Western Swing with Bob Wills their guiding light and the hippies loved them. Along with Commander Cody & The Lost Planet Airmen they conjured up good times with beer, whisky and trucking their drugs of choice.

Punk and New Wave kind of took the wind out of their sails with resultant  line up changes but country punk and the nascent alt country scene of the late 80’s allowed the band to grow their audience once more as they themselves grew into an institution of sorts. Their tributes to Wills (which gathered the old guard and young upstarts together) and their collaboration with Willie Nelson are essential listening and they are the recipients of nine Grammy Awards.

This release is a two disc CD containing four albums Asleep At The Wheel recorded from 1987 to 1990 and, it has to be said, it’s a bargain. The first, Ten, from 1987, commenced  their renaissance as they delivered their usual good time Western Swing and applied it to writers such as Billy Joe Shaver, Joe Ely and Guy Clark while there was an audacious cover of Huey Lewis’ I Want A New Drug which knocks spots off of the original. Western Standard Time was recorded the following year and it delved deep into their Western Swing Roots kicking off with an excellent version of Chattanooga Choo Choo with Willie Nelson sharing vocals with Benson. Their big band sound (horns, pedal steel, piano, fiddle  along with guitar, bass and drums) really swells into its own here and there’s a thumping great version of Hot Rod Lincoln while Ernest Tubbs’ Walking The Floor Over You is a textbook example of homage. 1990’s Keepin’ Me Up Nights does pale somewhat in comparison but its 12 songs still swing with Boot Scootin’ Boogie and Beat Me Daddy (Eight To The Bar) quite feisty while Dance With Who Brung You, a Ray Benson original, is yet another Western Swing gem.

Live & Kicking, as its name suggests, is a live recording from the late 80’s in their adopted homeland of Austin, Texas and it’s a perfect capture of the band in full swing. Rowdy and boisterous they rip through standards such as Route 66, Jambalaya, Choo Choo Boogie and Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens. Let loose from the studio the band let fly with the piano, fiddle and horns given free rein to extemporise. Again it’s Bob Wills who provides the inspiration for the best performance here as the band parlay an excellent take on Take Me Back To Tulsa/Stay All Night with Benson at his best, a laconic master of ceremony.

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Asleep At The Wheel. Still The King. Proper Records

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Celebrating The Music of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys runs the banner under the album title and aside from that there’s precious little to say about this fabulous album; if you’re a fan of Asleep At The Wheel or Western Swing then you’ve probably already bagged this one. However there are folk out there who might not be so enamoured of the genre and who might be persuaded to dip a toe in the water, if so then this is as fine a place to start as any.

Western swing was a jazzy big band country pop phenomenon in the late thirties and forties, fiddle and pedal steel taking the place of sax solos and Bob Wills And His Texan Playboys were the kings of Western Swing. Asleep At The Wheel, led by the irrepressible Ray Benson appeared from the Austin, Texas melting pot of the early seventies, swinging with a vengeance and have been doing so ever since. Still The King is in fact their third tribute to Wills and pretty much follows the same formula, a roster of well-known country artists backed by Benson and the band. With several of the songs featured on all three albums (along with a few of the guest artists) one might wonder why Benson continues to record these. Well, Still The King features some of the younger country musicians who have come to prominence over the past decade with Old crow Medicine Show, The Avett Brothers and Pokey LaFarge all making an appearance. As Ray Benson told Rolling Stone recently “This album is just me trying to get younger and older Bob Wills aficionados together. Every time we put one of these out, I always say it’s the last one. But I shouldn’t say that because it’s not like this music ever died.”

So here we have 22 Western Swing classics, every one a winner really. The old timers are all here, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Del McCoury, George Strait, Robert Earle Keen, Lyle Lovett along with two surviving members of the original Texas Playboys, vocalist Leon Rausch, now aged 86, and sax player, the 92 year old Billy Briggs. There’s a host of others, all bringing something unique to the project but we only have space to mention a few favourites. The Avett’s have great fun with The Girl I Left Behind Me as they get back to their roots. Lyle Lovett croons as only he can on the bluesy Trouble In Mind while Brad Paisley does a great job on My Window Faces The South. Robert Earl Keen dives headfirst into the tongue twisting Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas with Benson duetting (and a special mention here for the very fine pedal steel solo, sublime!). Old Crow Medicine Show deviate somewhat from the overall sound as they basically overlay their own act over Texan swing pedal steel on their fiddletastic and frantic version of Tiger Rag. Of the youngsters Pokey LaFarge perhaps comes out tops as he really lets rip vocally towards the end of What’s The Matter With The Mill, small wonder as he’s been playing this type of music for the past decade. As for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, well, they stamp their authority on their respective numbers (Navajo Trail and Keeper Of My Heart) and both are excellent.

Sure, the songs are somewhat corny but these days corny might actually be hip and there’s no denying that throughout these 22 songs the playing is exemplary with some excellent fiddle, mandolin, piano and pedal steel all present. If you dig classic country then this is a no brainer. Buy it, get the other tributes and then seek out other Asleep At The Wheel classics and maybe some Bob Wills originals, you’ll be a satisfied soul.

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Floyd Domino and Maryann Price. Upfront. New Tex Records

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Floyd Domino and Maryann Price are both veterans of the Western Swing revival of the seventies, Domino most memorably as a member of Asleep At the Wheel while Price was the voice on several of Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks’ finest recordings. Both have extensive CVs beyond these achievements with Price being an integral part of the Kinks’ 1974 line up and also spending time with (those guys again) Asleep at The Wheel, Domino playing and recording with Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, George Strait and Waylon Jennings. So far so pedigree.

Upfront finds them in the company of Gary Bristol on bass and Michael Holleman, drums along with Kenny Kosek (ex Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band) on fiddle as they delve into the jazzier roots of their respective careers on a selection of covers and self penned originals that run the gamut from Annie Ross vocalese to Gypsy swing and some sumptuous late night jazz sophistication. Price’s voice has moved on from her Hot Licks days, a little lower, more experienced but with a fine sense of mischievousness lurking within while Domino’s piano shines like Oscar Peterson’s or even the Duke himself at times. Allied to some very fine fiddle from Kosek and the solid rhythm section the set is as tight as the proverbial duck’s A while retaining the essential element of swing with all of the numbers at the very least toe tapping or (on the slower numbers) causing the listener to cast about for a dance partner.

Aside from the performances the song selection is something of a triumph. No dog eared covers here that have been trampled to death in the past. Dan Hicks has two numbers featured, Cowboy’s Dream #19 and O’Reilly At The Bar both of which recall the Hot Licks’ hip reinterpretation of swing music with the latter’s bar fight shenanigans wonderfully portrayed. Henry Hipken’s Who Knows What Tomorrow Might Bring swings mightily with Chico Marx piano (only better played) and vibrant gypsy fiddle opening a world of romance and danger. Another Hipkens cover, I Must Be Doing Something Right has Price playfully adopting a naive innocence delivered with a Mae West tongue in cheek as the band lay down a fantastic backdrop, cheeky and elegant. On The Last Day Of Pompeii (by Michael Peter Smith) is another number that recalls the vapid elegance of the pre war jet set, fiddling while Rome burns ( to mix a metaphor) as Price relates all the things she could have done had she known the top was about to blow. Is All Of this For Me is a velvet curtain of a song, dinky, late night, almost orchestrated as the fiddle hovers over an excellent piano solo and a Noel Coward like stiff upper lip romance.

Price maintains the quality with Everybody’s Talking About The Same Thing a witty and coquettish inquiry into love while The Apology (co-written with Domino) allows her voice to slip and slide within an update of Julie London’s Cry Me A River. They close the album with the excellent The Damndest Finest Ruins, written by Domino that pulls in Steely Dan and Charlie Mingus with the vocals adorning the jazz chops of the band with Holleman sparkling on cymbals while Domino plays his best.

It maybe odd to find what amounts to a jazz album coming from Texas but these guys have the chops and the end result encapsulates music from New York to San Francisco with a detour south in between. Some time spent looking at the New Tex website shows that they have several other tasty offerings with Domino featuring on piano on The Great Recession Orchestra’s album, Double Shot, a tribute to the Mississippi Sheiks and 1940’s Texas swing while there’s a tribute to Milton Brown featuring many of the same players. Hear over here to check them out.

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