Biography
Benny Leaders & the Western Rangers belonged to a circle of Texas ensembles that shuttled among western swing, country, and nascent rock & roll during the 1950s. Frontman Link Davis stood out as the group’s best-known participant, and the surviving recordings supply the scattered remnants of the band’s work. Davis, whose extensive partnerships and individual projects encompassed sessions with country songwriter Floyd Tillman, later received a career-spanning collection titled Let the Good Times Roll: 1948-1963; that set, however, preserves only a single brief selection featuring the Leaders lineup. On the Krazy Kat imprint, collectors instead encounter three full performances by the group within the anthology Heading Back to Houston: Texas C&W 1950-1951. The agitated “I’ll Be Jumped Up and Down,” the plea “Boots Don’t Leave Me” that Nancy Sinatra ought to cover, and “Naggin’ Woman,” an ideal rejoinder should she do so, all appear on this disc whose title simultaneously evokes a travel recommendation and a set-list prompt. Further Leaders sides surface across additional anthologies, among them the downcast yet wholesome “Clean Town Blues,” arguably his strongest composition. Although Leaders played bass, any supporting work he contributed to other artists remained confined to obscure regional pressings that never achieved even the modest circulation of his own band’s releases.