Leon Rausch was lead singer with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys in that band’s later years, starting in 1958. He was again enlisted as lead vocalist when Wills’s widow reformed the band as Bob Wills’ Original Texas Playboys in the 1980s when western swing was undergoing a revival. Ray Benson’s Asleep at the Wheel has been the leading western swing band since the 1970s, and Benson credits Rausch with helping to teach his band how to play the music.
As one of Benson’s ongoing series of records featuring guest vocalists and players on his own Bismeaux label, he enlisted Rausch to front the band on this album, It’s A Good Day!. Aged 82 when they recorded it in 2010, Rausch has a voice that’s obviously weathered but still strong and expressive.
Rausch sings a duet with Willie Nelson (who teamed up with Benson & Co. for the superb Willie and the Wheel in 2008) on “Truck Driver’s Blues,” and otherwise sings duets or ensemble pieces with regular members of the band Jason Roberts and Elizabeth McQueen, as well as Benson himself.
The title track, which opens the disc, is something of a standard, co-written by Peggy Lee and recorded by her in 1948. It’s a great way to kick off the album, with Rausch swapping lead vocals with Benson and Roberts, McQueen singing in the chorus, and some superb playing by Roberts on fiddle, Eddie Rivers on lap steel, Don Walton on piano and of course Benson on electric guitar.
Among the many highlights: Guest Floyd Domino’s boogie-woogie piano intro to “Alright, Okay, You Win”; Rausch’s solo vocal take on the great Earl Hines’s “Rosetta,” which reveal that one of Rausch’s vocal influences must have been Louis Armstrong; the rocking “Mean Woman With The Green Eyes”; the languid swing of “Snap Your Fingers” by Grady Martin, best known as one of the best session guitarists in the history of Nashville — Rausch sings solo on this one; and the group singing effort on one of Asleep at the Wheel’s signature pieces, the boogiefied “Route 66.”
As with any Wheel effort, another highlight is the excellent level of the instrumental performances. These include Dave Sanger and Dave Miller, who anchor things on drums and upright bass, respectively, as well as Rivers on steel and McRae on electric guitar. Things really shine when the band includes a horn section, as it does to varying degrees on “Rosetta,” “Basin Street Blues,” “Route 66″ and the rousing instrumental closer, Bob Wills’s “Osage Stomp” (on which Rausch plays bass guitar!)
It was indeed a good day when they put “sold” to this one. Kudos to Benson for helping give Rausch another well-deserved moment in the spotlight.
(Bismeaux, 2010)
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