Jenna Bush picked "You Are So Beautiful," the ballad made famous by Joe Cocker, for the father-daughter dance with President Bush at her wedding reception Saturday night in Texas, the band leader said.
Tyrone Smith of Nashville and his 10-piece party band, The Tyrone Smith Revue, were hired to play at the reception in Crawford.
The band was asked to do "Lovin' in My Baby's Eyes" by Taj Mahal for the newlyweds' first dance. Smith spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday about the music plans, on the condition that the reporter honor a request by the Bush family not to release the information before the wedding.
Smith, who also played at one of the 2005 Bush inaugural balls at the Washington Convention Center, normally coaxes his audience members onstage to dance. He planned to make the president a target Saturday night.
"If he's around and the party's going, I'll get him up," Smith said. "I can't imagine him ducking out."
Smith planned to play "Celebration" by Kool & the Gang as the newlyweds arrived at the reception about 7 p.m. CDT in a tent on the 1,600-acre family ranch in Crawford. He said the band would play briefly, then break while the attendees have dinner, then resume and play until around 1 a.m.
"It'll be a 'get down' party," Smith promised.
The band planned to do its usual show, which normally includes covers of "Proud Mary," "Play That Funky Music," "Sweet Home Alabama," "Crazy in Love," "Hey Ya!," "Brick House," "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and others.
"If anyone's in sight, I'll get them up onstage," Smith said.
A favorite at frat parties
Smith and his band have played at fraternity parties, nightclubs and weddings across the South for more than 20 years. He plays an average of two weddings a month.
Jenna Bush saw him play in Texas a few years ago and invited him to perform at the White House Christmas party in 2003, when he led those attending in a conga line through the State Floor. The president had already gone to bed.
Smith, also known as Super T, said he later received a voice mail from a White House secretary who told him it was "the party of the millennium."
Jenna Bush and her fiance, Henry Hager, got engaged in August after dating for several years. Hager has been a White House aide and worked on Bush's re-election campaign in 2004. His father is a former lieutenant governor of Virginia.
Smith, whose style onstage is a cross between James Brown and Michael Jackson, grew up in Memphis with Maurice White, who later co-founded Earth, Wind & Fire.
"It's very exciting to play for the (Bush) family a third time. I'm overwhelmed," Smith said.