“He's Already Immortal; We're Just Celebrating Him”: Amy Lee Nelson Talks New Documentary About World’s First Roadie, Ben Dorcy

As the legend goes, “Big Ben came in puffin' back in 1963 / He knew Denver Pyle and Willie, Big John, The Duke, and me.” At least, that’s the way Waylon Jennings told it in his unreleased ‘Ode to Ben Dorcy’, a rambling country opus that sounds more like a fable than fact.

Ben Dorcy, however, was real, and just as the tune goes, “He never played the guitar, he never played the flute / Had a heart as big as Texas and a country soul to boot.” For aforementioned legends, like actor John Wayne and artists such as Willie Nelson and Jennings himself, Dorcy was the man, their go-to on the road and in their daily lives.

The song expands on the mighty figure, describing, “He could set 'em up, he could tune 'em up / Break down and drive the car / He did everything we couldn't do, we were busy being stars.” It’s a job description that’s familiar to us today, but it was a profession that Dorcy – known far and wide as “Lovey” – single-handedly pioneered. When he first set out to assist the stars in the 1950s, the term “roadie” was unheard of.

Now, a documentary is set to tell his story and forever immortalize the man credited with being the first-ever roadie.

Directed by cousins Amy Lee Nelson and Trevor Doyle Nelson, and executive produced by Willie Nelson, Willie Nelson Presents: King of the Roadies is a project 16 years in the making, with Amy and Trevor tracing Dorcy's history and putting to film his almost unbelievable life story.

“We didn't really know what we wanted to say,” Amy explains in conversation with Holler. “We were all in the story as it was happening, and it took us a while to figure out what the story was because we were so close to it… We just kind of followed his natural arc.”

The film captures the seeming hundreds of lives Dorcy lived, exploring his Texas upbringing, his time in the Navy and as an ice skater, and eventually how he came to work behind-the-scenes for country music elites, like Nelson, Jennings, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Patsy Cline and beyond, in what would become a seven-decade-long career. Along the way, footage of him still working into his 90s paints a fascinating portrait of not just an old roadie but an old friend to all.

The tale unfolded with the help of a small team and a lot of love for such a remarkable – albeit often unseen – figure in music history, who, until his death at the age of 92, worked to make touring musicians’ lives better.

“Originally, we wanted the ending to be like ‘Wherever you are in the world, there's a 90-year-old roadie running circles around you somewhere, and he might be in your town’,” Amy shares of the film’s evolution. “Then, he ended up passing away, and then we had to digest that and figure out how it was gonna end.”

Along with being a celebration of Dorcy’s life and achievements, the film ended up extending that same appreciation to all roadies. Towards the end, viewers hear from folks across the profession today, some who learned from Lovey, some who simply knew of him and all who still lead by his example.

With the arrival of King of the Roadies comes the 1st annual National Roadie Day on May 19 (what would have been Dorcy’s 100th birthday), recognizing the hidden figures of the music industry and thanking them for the work they do to make live music possible.

“He's already immortal,” Amy says of the endeavor to honor the man who started it all, “but we're trying to focus on celebrating him forever and amplifying his already legendary status.”

Perhaps Jennings said it best when he sang: “Big Ben's a living legend and he will outlive us all."

In addition to discussing the making of King of the Roadies, Amy Lee Nelson touched on spending time with the legendary Ben Dorcy and what she learned from the longtime road warrior along the way:

“He would be at events like my sister's wedding; he would be at family events because he was family, but like it was never really one-on-one time until we started digging into his life.

As we started digging and just asking people in the band and crew, someone would be like, ‘Oh, did you know that he used to work with John Wayne?’ ‘Oh, I heard he was an ice skater.’ ‘I heard he danced with Ann-Margaret.’ All these things started coming up… He would confirm it, but he didn't go around bragging about his life. He was so focused on taking care of everybody else that he never really talked about himself until this moment.

I had no idea what young Ben was like and I started looking at all these old photos and hearing all these stories. I wish I could have met him back then just to see what he was like.”

“I feel like Ben is up there or down here making stuff happen. I feel like a lot of things have magically come together in recent years. I was the editor for a little while… When I was editing it and trying to move things around and make things happen, these weird glitches would happen, but they would make the film better somehow. And I was like, ‘I think I'm getting some help from above right now.’

There's just a lot of cool stuff coming together.”

“He would always guard Trigger, my dad's guitar.

There was one time where we were hanging out at dad's place, at the studio, and Ben went to the bathroom, and dad's like, watch this. He grabs Trigger and hides it around the corner, out the door and outside. Then, he comes back and kind of giggles and sits and waits for Ben to come back. Ben came out of the bathroom, looked around and didn't see Trigger. He immediately went outside, grabbed [the guitar] and brought him back to where he was without even saying anything.

He didn't miss it. He didn't skip a beat. He was so focused.”

“You don't notice [roadies] unless something goes wrong, so when they're really good at their job, they just slide into invisibility… It's one of those things to make us more aware of all the people that are making our lives better and we don't realize it.

May 19 would be [Dorcy’s] 100th birthday. Instead of throwing a party that would last one night, we decided to officially register it as National Roadie Day, so he'll be remembered and celebrated every year, and all people behind the scenes who don't get the spotlight can be celebrated.”

Willie Nelson Presents: King of the Roadies will premiere at the Dallas International Film Festival on Sunday, April 27, at the historic Texas Theater.