Jewish Texan Country Singer (NOT Kinky Friedman)

In a previous post I posted a slideshow of pictures of the Austin, Texas-based Western Swing band Asleep at the Wheel, whose leader and anchor over the past more than 35 years is my old friend Ray Benson, performing at the Country Rendez-vous festival in Craponne, France. I've known Ray since we were teen-agers. He, like me, hails from suburban Philadelphia, but he moved to Texas in the early 1970s and has transformed himself from an east coast suburban Jewish boy to one of the top country music performers around -- he's won nine Grammy awards as the leader of Asleep at the Wheel and maintains a full-throttle recording and performance schedule.

Ray is not a "Sauerkraut Cowboy." But he is an example of how people can transform themselves, reinvent themselves, even "live their dreams". I've talked to him several times about this. And this, of course, is "the American way." People immigrated to America from all over the world and became Americans. Texas, too, is an "immigrant state." My own great-grandparents immigrated there from what is now Lithuania.

The imaginary wild west is an immigrant state of mind. People I've met in the European country and western scene immigrate internally, for a variety of reasons, into an imaginary wild west that they make real.

Here's an article I wrote about Ray -- it's for the Jewish media, so it focuses on his Jewish background.


A Jewish singer towers over country western scene

Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber Published: 09/26/2008

CRAPONNE SUR ARZON, France (JTA) -- Think Jews and country music and you'll probably come up with Kinky Friedman, the cigar-chomping frontman of the iconoclastic Texas Jewboys, who is also a humorist, mystery novelist and failed but flamboyant candidate for Texas governor.

The real Jewish king of country music, however, is Ray Benson, the nine-time Grammy-winning leader of the country western swing band Asleep at the Wheel.

At 6-foot-7, Ray Benson has been described as a "Jewish giant" and "the biggest Jew in country."

He literally and figuratively towers over the stage in a Stetson and fancy tooled boots, with a grizzled beard and long, thinning hair pulled back in a pony tail.

"I saw miles and miles of Texas, all the stars up in the sky," he sings in his deep, mellow baritone. "I saw miles and miles of Texas, gonna live here 'til I die."

Now 57, Benson was born in Philadelphia but has lived in Austin for 35 years. He talks with a twang, plays golf with Willie Nelson, has recorded more than 30 albums and was named Texas Musician of the Year in 2004.

By his own estimate, he is the only Jewish singing star in the country western scene.

"Kinky's not a country western singer -- he's Kinky!" Benson laughed during a conversation with JTA this summer at the annual Country Rendez-vous festival in south-central France, where Asleep at the Wheel wound up a five-nation European tour.

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