Alexander Joins George Strait Tour

 

Local musician and recording artist Dave Alexander has been invited to tour with the most successful selling artist in country music, George Strait

 

Alexander will perform in Dallas on June 10 at Texas Stadium along with fellow bandleader and friend Ray Bensonand Asleep At The Wheel.

 

“It means a lot to me and I am grateful that George keeps western music alive and well on his yearly tour,” says Alexander, “Western Swing has always played a major role in Texas music.”

 

The three time Grammy nominee has landed several awards in his career as one of the nation’s top selling Western Swing Artists.

 

The academy of Western Artists named Alexander “Entertainer of the Year” in 1999 and has nominated him again this year for the Will Rogers Award.  He is the youngest of the Texas Playboys and is a featured entertainer for many large rodeos in the country, appearing on his palomino horse Missy.

 

Alexander scored, arranged and performed on the feature film “The High Low Country” with Willie Nelson and Marty Stuart, which received a western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1999.

 

Alexander resides in Coppell with his family.  For more information on Alexander, log on to www.davealexander.com.

 

 

Take Me Back to Tulsa

 

The last time Dave Alexander played for a Broken Arrow audience, it was 1974 – and he wasn’t even in Broken Arrow.

 

“That was the first time Broken Arrow had its high school graduation at ORU,” he recalled recently.  “It was my graduating class, and it was a tradition for a trumpeter to play ‘Auld Lang Syne,’ by himself, for the class.  I was picked to do it, and it was a privilege and an honor.”

 

Friday, he’ll be back, this time as a featured performer for the 69^th annual Broken Arrow Rooster Days.  He’ll be brining in his band, the Legends of Western Swing.  And he’ll be doing the kind of music his father, Ashley Alexander Jr., played in the outfits of western-swing originators Bob and Johnnie Lee Wills.

 

“I met Johnnie Lee Willis when I was about three years old,” recalled Alexander.  “He was the first western-swing star I ever met.  He was doing the (Johnnie Lee Wills Stampede) rodeo in Tulsa, and he rode in on this big black stallion.  I remember him telling me he was going to take me on a ride on that horse, kidding me, and standing there holding onto my dad’s legs and saying. ‘No you’re not.’”

 

“Dad played trombone and some trumpet with Johnnie Lee, and sometimes he and the rest of Johnnie Lee’s horn section would go out on the road with Bob,” he added.  “But that didn’t mean anything to me then.”

 

In fact, improbably enough, it took an upscale department store Neiman Marcus to convert young Alexander to western swing.

 

“After I graduated from Broken Arrow, I went to North Texas State University to pursue a career in jazz performance.  While I was there, I got selected to model the Red River clothing line from Neiman Marcus,” he explained.  “That was during the big ‘Urban Cowboy’ thing, when everyone went cowboy.  Not to be left behind, Neiman Marcus created this Red River line of products, which included chips and toothpaste and just about anything you could wear, and then created a western band.  It was a big band, 13 or 14 pieces, and our job was to tour all the Neimans in the country, playing music and wearing their clothes.  I played trumpet and sang.”

 

“Our performances always included a few Bob Wills numbers, and they caught my attention.  Everything else was Dolly Parton’s ‘9 to 5’ or Eddie Rabbitt’s ‘I Love A Rainy Night’ – big band country Muzak.  But the Wills music swung.  We were allowed to improvise on it, and it was the only music I’ve ever seen that got the richest people I’ve ever known to stand up on their tabletops.”

 

“One night, I called my dad, and I said, ‘We’ll I’ve got this job, and every not and then we’re doing this great music.’  And he said, ‘Don’t you know what that is?  That’s western-swing music, and hell yes, it swings.’”

 

“With typical kid arrogance, I said, ‘If its so big, why haven’t I heard of it?’  And a couple of weeks later, about 600 hours of western swing – his entire record collection – came to me in a UPS truck, with a ‘listen to this, kid’ note.”

 

He laughed, “That music changed my life in a big way.  I loved the music, but the recordings weren’t good, because of their era.  This was about 1981, and I thought, if someone could take that music and record it using current technology, they’d be sitting on a gold mine.  So that’s what I did.”

 

At first, he enlisted the help of his father and the legendary steel-guitarist Leon McAuliffe, a friend of both his father and his grandfather, Ashley Alexander Sr.  But as David Alexander was preparing to go into the studio, his father and McAuliffe both died.

 

“I was going to my father’s funeral in Perry when I saw the paper that said Leon had died of cancer.” Remembered Alexander.  “So I did the first album as a tribute to them both.”

 

Word got around about the project, and soon Alexander had the help of western-swing legends like fiddler Johnny Gimble and Tulsa guitarist Eldon Shamblin.  In the subsequent years, Alexander has done two more discs – featuring a blend of veteran and younger performers – with a forth one on the way.

 

A Texas resident since leaving NTSU, Alexander has become one of the biggest western-swing acts in the country, playing more than 150 dates last year.  He’s also the longtime music director for the Dallas Cowboys football team, writing and arranging all the music played during the games.  In addition, he produces music for major national rodeos, including the National Finals Rodeo and the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo.

 

“I make appearances at these rodeos on the back of a golden palomino named Missy and do a few minutes of western-swing music,” he said.  “Then after the rodeo, my band and I do a concert.  So, at these rodeos, I promote western swing on horseback.”

 

He may not be doing it on a big black stallion, but there’s not doubt Johnnie Lee Wills – and Ashley Alexander Jr. – would be proud.