“Makes me proud to be from Texas, where Bob Wills is still the king.”

—From song written by Waylon Jennings

I SHARED that sentiment with the hundreds who filled the Eisemann Center in Richardson Saturday night to enjoy the musical play, A Ride with Bob, written and starred in by Asleep at the Wheel leader Ray Benson.

I’ve attended many a performance over many a year, but this audience topped any I’ve ever experienced in sheer enthusiasm. The story of Western Swing icon Bob Wills and his music simply rings a lot of bells.

Hill Hall at the Eisemann Center must seat well over 1,000, but A Ride with Bob was sold out before I noticed the Dallas area date. My sister Mary Kirby and I got in with a couple of widely-separated unsold single seats.

AT THE END of a nearly 3-hour show, Benson explained that he and Anne Rapp wrote the play four years ago as a tribute to Bob Wills on the 100th anniversary of his birth, thinking it would be a one-time thing. But the response was so great that it just won’t let him go. In the words of one Benson song, The Wheel Keeps On Rollin’.

The plot was inspired by an actual incident in the rich musical life of Benson, who was Texas State Musician in 2004 and is a close associate of Willie Nelson and others on the Austin music scene.

In 1973 Benson had a date with Bob Wills to discuss his role in creating Western Swing, a musical genre that combines country, rock and roll, jazz, big band and other sounds that give it a lasting appeal. On that very day Wills had a severe stroke and never recovered consciousness before his death in 1975.

IN THE PLAY, Benson, playing himself, imagines how the conversation might have gone.

In a bus mock-up at the side of the stage Wills’ ghost, played by actor Marco Perella, has returned from heaven to tell his story as the bus travels to Tulsa. One of the first among many great musical numbers is, quite logically, Take Me Back to Tulsa.

A cast of 25, some playing multiple roles, acts out Wills’ progression on a set backed by a collage of old gasoline signs representing the highways of yesteryear.

Wills goes from West Texas cotton fields and ranch dances to a medicine show and barber shop on the way to his final departure from Turkey, Texas. As the scenes changed so did the dancing couples, from square dance to jitterbugging.

WILLS LED THE original Light Crust Doughboys, but fell out with W. Lee (Pappy) O’Daniels in Pappy’s flour-salesman, pre-governor days. The band moved on as the Texas Playboys, broadcasting over radio stations in Waco and Tulsa as well as making it big on records and in dance halls.

Though tunes like Cherokee Maiden, Roly Poly, Miss Molly and Milk Cow Blues were well received, it was Faded Love and New San Antonio Rose which, as they say, just about brought the house down.

Jason Roberts, a member of Benson’s Asleep at the Wheel band, did a superb job of both fiddling and acting in his role as the young Bob Wills.

The second act featured a hilarious scene of the Texas Playboys working on a movie in Hollywood, Wills’ own “faded loves” and his encounter with the Grand Ole Opry. When the bus reached Tulsa the play ended with what seemed a full evening’s entertainment.

BUT IT WASN’T over yet.

“Are you ready for some music?” Benson asked.

No question about it. A more-than-ready audience was treated to nearly an hour of Asleep at the Wheel playing numbers like Miles and Miles of Texas, Route 66 and a medley sung by special guest Leon Rausch, onetime vocalist for the Texas Playboys.

Having been impressed with two young teenage girls who won awards in the 2008 Yamboree fiddlers’ contest, I was interested to hear from Ruby Jane Smith, 14, billed as “one of the world’s premiere junior fiddlers and a fast-rising star in country and bluegrass-American music.” She played both Bob Wills as a kid fiddler and Mary Louise Parker Wills.

EQUALLY A HIT was the Quebe Sisters Band, featuring triple fiddles and 3-part harmony singing by Grace, Sophia and Hulda.

The cast came together to wish Happy Trails to a reluctant-to-leave crowd.

In the fall of 2005 the play began touring regionally, selling out, getting great reviews and standing ovations. By the summer of 2006 the show broke out of Texas and was entertaining audiences as large as 3,000 plus.

THE TOUR wrapped up at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. with President and Mrs. Bush in attendance. The Washington Post reviewer said it seemed to be someone other than Laura Bush who was heard to cry out “Yeehaw.”

Yankee-born Ray Benson, 6 feet 4 inches tall with a pony tail that has turned grey in his 36 years as a Texan, is an unlikely prospect to channel Bob Wills. Not bad for “a Jew from Philadelphia” (as Benson described himself in closing).

For as we often have heard from composer Waylon and other singers, “It don’t matter who’s in Austin, Bob Wills is still the king.”

A Ride with Bob will play five times this week in Galveston, Thursday through Sunday at the Strand Theater, and it is scheduled for March 13 at the Michael & Susan Dell Hall in Austin.

I hope it goes on and on. I expect I’m not the only fan who would like to see it again.

sgreene@tatertv.com

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