Always On My Mind (1982)

My 13-year-old son said, “He’s creepy,” as I pondered the CD cover of this 1982 album. The turquoise bandana and the grey down parka don’t seem to befit a country outlaw. Willie looks more like he’s getting ready to hit the slopes at Vail. The covers of “Do Right Woman” and “A Whiter Shade of Pale” don’t quite work for me, but the title cut is worth the price of the whole album. The versions of “Permanently Lonely” and “Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning” are as good as anything Willie ever recorded. I want to compare these to his versions of “Permanently Lonely” and “Opportunity to Cry” from his Crazy: The Demo Sessions album from the 60s. We played Dominos last night (a version called Chickenfoot), and my wife was not impressed to learn that Willie once lost 300k on a game of dominos, and he wasn’t even that mad that the guy who beat him cheated. Hakuna Matata. The beatific smile. As the kids say, “My b.” Short for “My bad.” You were always on my mind, but…As if that makes it okay. And yet the song persists. It works.

Willie becomes time itself on “I’m a Memory” (previously unreleased). Close your eyes, I’m a memory. Proust would love this. Waylon’s vocals on “A Whiter Shale of Pale” become even more poignant when you know how much he envied Willie’s success and how his life (like Tom Buchanan’s in The Great Gatsby) must have “savored of anticlimax” at the end. When Willie kicks off this song, I always think it is someone else. He strives for notes he doesn’t usually hit (I’m not sure he quite hits them here either). “The Party’s Over” is a bit too dance-like for my taste, but this seems to be a theme in Willie’s work. He frustrates your expectations. You have sad lyrics, you expect a sad tempo; Willie dances along. Is he joking, mocking? Is he toying with us? You’re never quite sure. “Bridge Over Troubled Water” should not be messed with. How can you out-do Art Garfunkel? Why would you try? This song just did not need to be re-done. Willie’s version is okay, but I’d rather hear Paul and Art do it. And I don’t want to hear Paul doing “Always on My Mind” either, much less “Permanently Lonely.” Not sure what he means when he sings that “The Man Who Owes Everyone…seems to like it that way.” I’ve listened to this album a half dozen times today, and I’m glad I own it. Not a top ten for me, but an important one to return to from time to time. Chips Moman produces, and some of this is recorded at Pedernales. Just as Ray Charles shocked the world by recording a country album, Willie shocked country music out of its Urban Cowboy stupor, ironically, by recording a bunch of pop standards. Go figure.