MIKE KILGORE
The Daily Mountain Eagle
Published April 29, 2007 1:32 AM CDT

Beneath dark, ominous skies, through rain and raging winds, Ray Benson drove up 19th Street in downtown Jasper to check on his family on 7th Avenue. At the same time —it was just before 8 p.m. on April 3, 1974 — young certified public accountant George Deavours was working late, immersed in the overload of tax season. Suddenly, in his office at Third Avenue and 19th, upstairs from what is now the probate judge’s office, he heard what sounded like timbers in the building beginning to crack as a tornado plowed into the heart of the city.

Deavours bolted downstairs. He raced toward what he hoped would be the safety of his 1974 Pontiac, but the storm was on him too quickly. He couldn’t open the car door. He dove underneath, only to become trapped under the tires as the powerful twister lifted the car off the street.

Just steps away, in the face of the storm’s fury, Benson was forced to pulled over. Parts of downtown buildings were toppling. Traffic lights were twisted upward. He could only lie down in the front seat until, seconds later, eerie silence enveloped him on the heels of the tornado. As he rolled down the car window, he heard Deavours’ pleas for help.

“I can hear you, but I can’t see you!” Benson yelled back. Eventually, he found him, jacked up the car and pulled him out.

“Some people in a Volkswagen came by, and we asked them to take George to the hospital. He was hurting,” said Benson. “I was still focused on seeing if my family was OK.”

A couple of chance meetings later and a friendship was born that has spanned three decades, beginning with the devastating tornado outbreak of ‘74 and continuing on the strength of two men’s mutual passion for bluegrass music.

Benson and his band, Clear Blue Sky, are in the lineup for Deavours’ Blackwater Bluegrass Festival May 18-19 at Jasper’s Blackwater Park. It’s Deavours’ 12th bluegrass show at the scenic creekside park he built in 2001. Benson’s band has played most of the semi-annual shows and is always a festival favorite.

The spring festival’s headliner is Marty Raybon, former lead singer of the award-winning country group Shenandoah.

An introduction

Benson has been playing guitar and singing since childhood. Bluegrass, however, was new to him before he and Deavours met.

On a Sunday afternoon more than 30 years ago he visited the remote Manchester farmhouse Deavours shared with fellow bachelor and bluegrass musician John Elliott.

Elliott played guitar, Deavours played banjo — he’s an accomplished picker on a five-string he bought from the legendary Earl Scruggs. It wasn’t long until the subject of music came up.

“You pick? You sing?”, Deavours asked Benson. “We ought to pick some.”

Benson joined in on such bluegrass standards as “Rocky Top” and “Rank Stranger.”

“When I began to sing harmony with him and John, George’s eyes just lit up. I was in, then,” Benson said.

Weejuns to wallpaper

Benson, 59, grew up on Longbrook Drive, the son of a Baptist minister. As a youngster he sang in church and school, rolled and threw The Birmingham News into Jasper yards and worked part-time at Woolworth’s. He bought his first guitar at Postal Jewelers in 1962.

“I was making about $6 a week and put a $39 guitar on layaway,” he said. “I learned to play from Kerry Handley, who used to play some between working at Handley’s Shoe Shop.”

Before graduating from Walker County High in 1966, Benson played in a rock band called The Weejuns. After serving in Vietnam, attending Memphis State University and meeting Deavours, he played with bluegrass groups in Mobile, Birmingham and Jasper.

Today he lives on an idyllic 33-acre spread on Smith Dam Road with Tammy, his wife of 27 years, and teenage daughter Shelby, a talented performer in her own right who sometimes sings with the band. The Bensons own a commercial wallpaper business and raise quarter horses.

Harmony to die for

Clear Blue Sky, formerly called Out of the Bleu, has been playing bluegrass together for three years. In the band are Benson on guitar, Jerry Wells of Jasper, mandolin; Chuck Tucker of Smith Lake, bass; Gathel Runnels of Birmingham, fiddle; and Josh Hickey of Union Chapel, banjo and dobro. All of them sing, with Benson and Wells on most of the lead vocals.

Hickey will be making his first appearance with the band at Cafe Bill’s at 7 this Thursday night.

“Josh playing banjo and dobro gives us a new dimension,” said Tucker, “because it lets Gathel play fiddle all the time. The job at Bill’s is actually going to be a debut for this band.”

While Clear Blue Sky is instrumentally solid in the distinctively acoustic genre of bluegrass, there’s no mistaking that close harmony is what sets the group apart.

“I’ve played with some good bands but never with one that had vocalists like this one,” said Tucker.

Benson’s son Dustin will handle guitar duties at Cafe Bill’s while his dad recovers from rotator cuff surgery. The younger is a professional bluegrass musician with the Larry Stephenson Band and lives in the Nashville area.

‘It gets powerful’

Benson had an offer for a country music record deal in the ‘90s but turned it down. “I wasn’t sure I could make enough to support my family, so I chose not to do it,” he said. “Bluegrass is my first love.”

Nowadays, the group isn’t concerned with just playing music for money.

“We want to do some festivals, maybe play once or twice a month, but don’t want to go long distance,” said Benson. “We all have jobs. We want to be as good as we can be, to work and perform.”

The splendid harmony of Benson, Wells and the rest of Clear Blue Sky’s singers on songs such as “Blue Ridge” or the gospel acapella “Are You Afraid to Die” has the stuff to bring the house down, even leave audiences misty eyed.

“It gets powerful sometimes,” said Benson. “We can feel it when it’s right. ... It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Music is a wonderful thing.”