City of New Orleans (1984)

Another Chips Moman produced collection of pop standards from the 1980s. Willie doesn’t have any of his road band with him on this one except for Mickey Raphael on harp. The title track is obviously the big single. I think this is only the second album I’ve listened to thus far to have horns (sax and trumpet). This is the first album where I feel that the strings are appropriate. Instead of adding cheesy strings to try to soup up a song that doesn’t need souping up, this album feels like songs that naturally require strings and that Willie is simply blending his voice into the pop genre.

“Just out of reach of my two empty arms” makes my hall-of-fame for country music turns of phrase.

“Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” gets at the time theme I keep hearing in Willie’s music. “They said this town will waste your time. I guess they’re right, it’s wasting mine.” Wasted time, lost time, killing time. There’s always something wrong with time. Whether Willie’s breaking meter or fighting with his memory, he’s obsessed with manipulating time.

“Why Are You Picking On Me” is the only Willie Nelson tune on this album. I have to say I actually admire Willie for his chutzpa in covering Michael Jackson’s “She’s Out of My Life.” He simply has no fear when it comes to covers or duets. So many of them fall flat, but he is always open to the one that just might be a homerun, like “Always on My Mind.” What other country artist could have pulled that off? I can’t believe Willie never finagled a duet with Michael Jackson in his prime. It would have been better than “Ebony and Ivory” or “The Girl is Mine.”

Without a doubt, “Cry” is the best song on this album. “If your heartaches seem to hang around too long, and your blues keep gettin’ bluer with each song.” Mickey Raphael’s harmonica kills me on this song. “So let your hair down and go on and cry.” Here we have the theme of crying over lost time. Willie is still taking every possible “Opportunity to Cry.” Here again we have heartaches and memories hanging around, loitering, lingering like locals at the cracker barrel. Memories are tangible, animate, personified. In fact, they are realer than real people, more poignant. Like Gastby’s perfect image of Daisy which she can never live up to. Why does absence make the heart grow fonder? “In a way I’ll be better off when you’re gone. In another way it turns me inside out.” Maybe we like the control we have over memories. As if our life were imported into IDVD and our mind is the film editing software that we can splice and rearrange any way we see fit. In “Until It’s Time For You to Go,” Willie sings, “Don’t ask forever of me.” And yet he’s always asking for forever and laughing when it slips away.