I don’t know if I have any pull with the powers that be in Bowlegs, Oklahoma, but if I do, I hope they’ll read this and consider taking action on recognizing someone who is essentially that town’s ambassador.

There’s a rather famous musician who claims Bowlegs as his hometown, and I believe he’s deserving of some sort of recognition. Maybe he could have a street named after him or his name emblazoned across a structure somewhere in town. Maybe he could be given the keys to the city or something like that. I don’t know how to go about getting such things done, but please allow me to present my case.

If you’ve ever been to an Alan Jackson concert (or watched one on video), you’ve heard Alan say these words: “On bass guitar, from Bowlegs, Oklahoma, Roger Wills!”

In 2010, I was at one of Alan’s concerts in Houston and heard his introduction of Roger, so I immediately began investigating the Bowlegs thing. I know a lot of musicians from Seminole County and the surrounding area, many of whom have made it to the “big time,” but I had never heard of Roger.

The day after the concert, I found Mr. Wills on social media and sent him a message, in which I told him how proud I was to be from the same neck of the woods as he is.

“I’m not really from Bowlegs. I’m actually from Kiowa (a small town near McAlester), but Bowlegs sounds cool when Alan says that’s where I’m from,” Wills told me in a text message.

Even though my bubble was burst slightly by Roger’s confession about his true roots, I soon found out that he does have connections to Seminole.

One of our mutual friends is Matt Martin, who hails from Seminole. Matt’s father, Maurice, was fire chief for many years and if memory serves me correctly, he was also civil defense director.

Matt is a fantastic drummer, having honed his skills in the Seminole High School band and with various local musicians, including Robert Neese and C.E. Redwine. Matt and Roger got their first big break in the music biz together in the late 80s when Reba McEntire hired them to be in her band.

Matt is not the only Seminole connection to the bass man from southeast Oklahoma. A couple of days ago, I found out that our newly hired city editor, Bob Melton, is good friends with Roger (in real life, not just virtually like yours truly). In fact, Bob is godfather to Roger’s daughter, Stacy.

So, Roger Wills may not be a true-blue native of Bowlegs, but he may as well be. In my opinion, Alan Jackson’s loud and proud proclamations that the man on the Fender electric bass is from a town in Oklahoma with a rather interesting name makes Roger the ambassador of Bowlegs, Oklahoma, USA.

Let’s see if we can make that ambassadorship official. Who knows? Maybe we could coerce Roger’s boss to come to Bowlegs and put on a show. That’s probably a long shot, but anything could happen.

Roger doesn’t know that I’m making this appeal, and hopefully he won’t be angry with me for doing so. He posted the other day that he was going to keep claiming Bowlegs as his hometown until he gets a street named after him in Kiowa. I say let’s beat Kiowa to the punch. After all, it was Roger who warned Mr. Jackson about a broken leg on the jukebox in a truck stop in Virginia. The rest, as they say, is history.