The Troublemaker (1976)

Recorded in 1973 at the same 5-day session as Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages, this gospel album did not get released until three years later, at which point it hit #1 on the country charts. I love that Willie just picked up an old hymn book and started recording these spontaneously between sets. Only Willie could take the most traditional possible music and record it in such a jazzy, funky, spontaneous way that he embraces both tradition and innovation simultaneously without contradiction. The same way he embraces the left and right, the hippies and rednecks.

He opens with “Uncloudy Day.” This from a guy who has lived his life under a cloud, a life full of storms and tempests. And yet one who has remained sunny and tranquil in the midst of it all. “Still is Still Moving” indeed. Sillness on the move. Stillness on the road. He has his standard four-piece road band: Paul English, Jimmy Day, Bee Spears, and Bobbie Nelson, but Mickey Raphael added his harmonica tracks in 1976. I’m not sure how common harmonicas are on gospel albums, but it works here. Doug Sahm’s solo fiddle weaves in and out of the vocals the way Johnny Gimble’s will in years to come. The young Larry Gatlin makes an appearance on back-up vocals.

Track 11 steals this disk for me. “Precious Memories,” of course. Why is it that this is the song Willie sings with most credibility? It seems he really means this one, as if he wrote it. First, at 7:37 it is by far the longest song on the album. Second, it deals with the preciousness of memories, a timeless (pun intended) theme of Willie’s music. Willie seems to value time above all else. He, like Proust, is obsessed with time and memory, time in the mind. The four previously unreleased tracks from the June 1974 Texas Opry concerts are worth the price of the album (these are tracks that don’t appear on the Complete Atlantic Sessions discs; I guess they weren’t completely complete; I guess they weren’t completely Atlantic, either, since he switched labels and these songs were released by Columbia). In any case, someone will need to issue the complete Texas Opry concert sets at some point.

Precious memories, “how they linger,” like local memories, loitering. “How they ever flood my soul.” Why do memories always flood? Willie’s vocals linger like memory itself. “Precious sacred scenes unfold” the way his voice unfolds, slowly, surprisingly, unpredictably, like fate itself.

Why are the bonus tracks often the best tracks on an album? Is it because they are less produced, less familiar, more raw, more authentic? Outlaw tracks?

Of course, the only Willie-penned song, “The Troublemaker,” sums up so much about Willie’s career. Who else could record a gospel album titled “The Troublemaker” and have it reach #1 on the country charts? Where do I begin to note the contradictions? Willie is already an outsider in Nashville because he doesn’t fit the Nashville sound. Then he records gospel, which isn’t supposed to sell. Then he titles it “The Troublemaker,” which seems inappropriate if not disrespectful or blasphemous. Maybe Willie succeeds by offending people on both sides of every issue so they cancel each other out with their own crossfire while he ducks and just keeps right on playing. And then, of course, the wonderful irony of the song. We have made Jesus into such a tame, domesticated, well-mannered guy, when clearly, if we read the gospels, he was more like Willie Nelson than most churchgoers in their Sunday best. He was a troublemaker, a hippie, a redneck, an outlaw, a criminal. He was always on the road. Had no home. Hung out with tax collectors and sinners. Had compassion for those less fortunate. Turned water into wine. Probably the biggest troublemaker in history. 2,000 years of trouble. Willie’s 77 seem just a drop in the bucket in comparison.