Ray Benson – Beyond Time / Suzy Bogguss – Swing!
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Posted On July 1, 2003
After 33 years of driving Asleep At The Wheel and nearly single-handedly keeping western swing alive, Ray Benson has built up a considerable amount of good will. This disc — remarkably, his first solo collection — cashes in on a lot of it all at once.
Apparently a little constrained by the Wheel repertoire, Benson doffs his 10-gallon hat for a snap brim fedora and switches the fiddles to violins in a twelve-song sampler of American music (eleven of them originals) ranging from Nelson Riddle orchestrations to jazz guitar improvisation to blue-eyed blues.
Benson is stretching here, and the effort is admirable. Backed on most of the cuts by Wheel regulars and irregulars — drummer Dave Sanger, fiddler/guitarist Jason Roberts, bassist Spencer Starnes and pianist Floyd Domino, as well as a roomful of special guests — Benson is in very good hands; the instrumentation is top-notch, and the arrangements are spot on.
But a down-tempo, Vic Damone-like romantic ballad with a brass and strings crescendo? Is he kidding? It’s called “Sorry”, and while it doesn’t live down to its title, it comes off as karaoke-ish. The funk-blues “Hands Of Time” plays like ’70s R&B, saved only by Stanley Jordan’s guitar. The ballad “Haven’t I Gotten To You Yet” succeeds in creating a dreary mood. In each case, Benson’s limited vocals can’t match the sentiment required by the melodies.
Among the positives are “Annabelle” and “Mary Anne” (with Jimmie Vaughan on guitar), “Leave That Cowboy Alone” (a duet and co-write with the always-game Dolly Parton), and a faithful version of Marty Robbins’ “El Paso”, a Wheel live show staple spiced up here by Flaco Jimenez’s accordion. The rich instrumental “Ain’t Chet Yet” showcases Benson’s underappreciated guitar playing.
One wants to enjoy the record as much as Benson seems to enjoy singing the material, but there’s a sense of self-indulgence that is difficult to share.
Much easier to keep in the changer is Suzy Bogguss’ Swing!, which was produced by Benson, who also plays guitar. The album shares many of the same core musicians with Benson’s album (Sanger, Roberts, Domino, Starnes ), as well as its retro sensibility. Bogguss, clearly inspired by the opportunity to forgo pop country, bounces her lovely soprano right down the melody lines, her smile nearly audible through the speakers.
She does right on songs by the masters — Nat King Cole’s “Straighten Up And Fly Right”, Duke Ellington’s “Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me” — but the revelations here are the five tunes by April Barrows, two of them co-written with David Hungate, which have the same appealing charm of the time-tested standards. Barrows’ “My Dream Is You”, “Jumpin’ Into Spring”, “Burning The Toast”, “Stay Out of My Dreams” and “Cupid Shot Us Both With One Arrow”, a duet with Benson, are finger-poppingly playful and memorably melodic invitations to sing along.
