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From: Buddy McPeters
Date: October 17, 2003
You know Boog, I think George Clooney has about the right look to play Bob! Put those great looking fancy clothes that Bob wore on him and that hat, give him a fiddle, a bow and a cigar and I believe Mr. Clooney could pull it off. Clooney is really animated, which as we all know, so was Bob. Bob was a real card as they used to say, a real comedian. I don't think anyone playing it too straight like Yoakum could come across as "The Great Bob Wills". One thing about Merle Haggard, if you watched him closely on those Wills tribute things he moved and animated just like Bob. He had Bob's attitude going too. Of course the greatest Bob Wills impersonator ever was Keith Coleman. He did it 'live' on the Playboys Austin City Limits appearance in 1976, just before all three of the great fiddlers who played on this show died. (Sleepy Johnson died on stage at Turkey, TX in April, Jesse Ashlock died a couple of months later, and Keith died in January 1977) Even Betty Wills commented and said nobody ever did that like Keith. He was fond of imitating Bob even back when he joined the Playboys in 1949. He had it down to a science and an art. One time he was doing this on stage at The Trianon in Oklahoma City before a dance when they were just setting up equipment before the crowd arrived and ostensibly before Bob arrived. There Keith was donning a big cowboy hat, with his fiddle, bow and a cigar and he began hollering, "Ahhhhha, San Antone!" and Bob walked in on him. Everybody in the room could see the look on Bob's face, which was nothing short of total surprise. Keith stopped dead in his tracks and nobody in the room uttered a sound. You could have heard a pin drop. Bob just smiled and said, "Take it away, my boy. Take it away!" Bob never mentioned it to Keith and nobody else talked about it either. Word has it that Bob never caught Keith impersonating him again. Of course Keith didn't quit doing it- He just got more careful about it. Or maybe Bob was more careful not to walk in on him.