Seashores of Old Mexico (1987)

I didn’t expect to like this one as much as I did. Produced by Willie and Hag and recorded at Pedernales, it has a very different feel than any of the other 25 albums I have reviewed. The horns (sax and trumpet) give it the fittingly Mexican mariachi band flavor. At times the album veers into easy listening, but Willie somehow manages to bring authenticity and credibility to easy listening. Hag’s vocals are probably peaking in 1987. Johnny Gimble’s fiddle adds legitimacy to several of these tracks.

“When Times Were Good” is easily my favorite track on this album. At 6:40 it is by far the longest song on the album. The lyrics, by D.L. Jones, fit Willie’s philosophy to a tee. “There’s a place I can go in my memory, back to a life I chose to leave behind. And sometimes I still need to remember when times were good and you were mine.” Time, memory, mind, love. The fiddle, like that violin motif in Proust, weaves in and out of these memories. As with “Precious Memories” on The Troublemaker, it seems like Willie is best on his longest, slowest, and trippiest tracks, or maybe that’s just my taste. This album almost felt like the Grateful Dead at times.

“Jimmy the Broom” tells a great story. Of course the one Beatles song Willie would cover would be “Yesterday.” “Love Makes a Fool of Us All” could have been an alternate title to Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. As could In Search of Lost Love. Or Time Makes a Fool of Us All. Time and Mind and Love seem to be merging in Willie’s songs. This album grows on me with each listen. I don’t know what to make of the easy listening, jazz, Mariachi, country, pop blend. The genres, the lyrics, the tempos. It’s as if you shook them up in a jar and played whatever came out. But it’s unlike anything else I have heard. I can’t imagine what the market or the audience is for this. I’m sure this album is lost in the dustbin of time. Who will dust it off and resuscitate it? How many of Willie’s 300+ albums are lost gems like this one? “Love was such an easy game to play. Oh, I believe in yesterday.” Willie’s belief in yesterday makes these songs work, even if no one ever listens to them again. Willie’s voice seems like a plane barely gaining enough speed to get off the ground in “If I Could Only Fly.” You keep wondering if he’ll actually catch up to the beat or if he will “break meter” and crash the plane. Why is flirting with the meter so seductive? Why were Thelonius Monk, Billie Holiday, and Willie such consummate flirts? Consider me smitten, wooed, and wowed.