Asleep at the Wheel and Western Swing: The Band That Kept a Dying Genre Alive
pplpod13 Jun

Asleep at the Wheel and Western Swing: The Band That Kept a Dying Genre Alive

Picture a packed venue around 1970, the crowd buzzing for shock-rock pioneer Alice Cooper and blues-rockers Hot Tuna. Then the opening act walks out: a full Western swing band with fiddles, pedal steel, and a horn section, looking and sounding like they stepped out of a 1945 Texas dance hall. That gloriously out-of-place band was Asleep at the Wheel.

This episode tells the story of how Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel devoted a career to keeping Western swing alive long after the industry left it for dead. We trace the genre's roots, the band's improbable persistence through decades and lineup changes, and the Grammy-winning legacy that preserved a uniquely American sound for new generations.

  • The surreal night they opened for Alice Cooper
  • What Western swing is and why it nearly disappeared
  • Ray Benson's decades-long mission to preserve the genre
  • A Grammy-winning legacy keeping an American sound alive

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(7739)

The Great Emu War: How Birds Beat the Australian Military

The Great Emu War: How Birds Beat the Australian Military

In 1932, the Australian military marched into Western Australia armed with Lewis machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Their target was not a human enemy but a flock of 20,000 flightless birds...

24 Jun 38min

The Somerton Man: Cracking Australia's 70-Year Beach Mystery

The Somerton Man: Cracking Australia's 70-Year Beach Mystery

A well-dressed man is found dead on an Adelaide beach in 1948, every label cut from his clothing, an untraceable poison in his system, and a scrap of Persian poetry sewn into his trousers. For more th...

24 Jun 24min

The Demon Core: Two Deaths and a Slipping Screwdriver

The Demon Core: Two Deaths and a Slipping Screwdriver

A scientist in blue jeans and cowboy boots leans over a sphere of plutonium capable of leveling a city, prying apart two reflector shells with the blade of an ordinary screwdriver. This is the true st...

24 Jun 44min

The Wow! Signal: 72 Seconds That Still Haunt SETI

The Wow! Signal: 72 Seconds That Still Haunt SETI

In August 1977, a radio telescope nicknamed Big Ear caught a 72-second roar of radio noise so striking that astronomer Jerry Ehman circled it in red pen and wrote 'Wow!' in the margin. Decades later, ...

24 Jun 1h 1min

The Bone Wars: How Spite Built Modern Paleontology

The Bone Wars: How Spite Built Modern Paleontology

Two brilliant, wealthy scientists once hired armies of frontier workers to spy on each other, throw stones across ravines, and dynamite priceless fossils into dust, all to spite a rival. This deep div...

24 Jun 49min

The Radium Girls: How Glowing Paint Rewrote Worker Rights

The Radium Girls: How Glowing Paint Rewrote Worker Rights

In the 1920s, young women painted glowing radium onto watch dials and, for fun, onto their fingernails and teeth, told the miracle element was perfectly safe. It was killing them. This deep dive tells...

24 Jun 20min

The Great Molasses Flood: 2.3 Million Gallons at 35 MPH

The Great Molasses Flood: 2.3 Million Gallons at 35 MPH

On a January afternoon in 1919, a massive storage tank in Boston's North End burst, sending 2.3 million gallons of molasses surging through the streets at 35 miles per hour. The wave hurled a truck in...

24 Jun 20min

Tarrare: The Man Whose Hunger Defied Human Biology

Tarrare: The Man Whose Hunger Defied Human Biology

A slim, hundred-pound teenager devours a meal meant for fifteen laborers, including four gallons of milk, then collapses with his stomach stretched like a balloon. This deep dive examines Tarrare, an ...

24 Jun 41min

Populært innen Underholdning

enkel-servering
papaya
harm-og-hegseth
big-5-med-nils-og-harald-2
storefri-med-mikkel-og-herman
tusvik-tnne
topp-3-med-wold-og-fladseth
kjendiscrush-med-sofie-karlstad
konspirasjonspodden
hovla
tore-og-haralds-podkast
ma-pa-behandling-med-morten-ramm
folk-flest-med-linn-og-nils
vitnemal
gi-meg-alle-detaljene
nare-venner
rss-gammal-maiden
feedback-med-egon-holstad
singel
rss-backstage-historier-om-legender