Last of the Breed (2007)

A lot of music for your money on this album. Two discs, 22 songs, three classic country singers—Merle, Willie, and Ray. I’m a bit shocked that someone other than Mickey Raphael is on harmonica. On “Back to Earth” Willie’s voice is as good as it ever was, and so is his gut-string guitar. I thought this album would be more of a Texas Swing thing, like Willie and the Wheel, but there are actually quite a few classic Willie country songs. Actually, upon closer examination, “Back to Earth” is the only Willie-penned song, but others sound like standards he has done on other albums. The vocals for Willie, Ray, and Merle are all quite strong. Hearing their voices together is instructive about how Willie’s phrasing evolved out of Price’s. This album has several gospel tunes—“Why Me” and “Sweet Jesus”—and a Leon Payne tune that Hank Williams made famous—“Lost Highway,” with standard honky tonk fiddle, steel, and harmonica.

“I Love You A Thousand Ways,” by Lefty Frizzell, is the precursor to Willie’s “Always on My Mind.” I’ll be true in the future; I’ll do better. I’ve been messing around, but I swear you were always on my mind. Yeah, right, and if you believe that, I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona. In Jesse Ashlock’s “Please Don’t Leave Me Any More Darlin’,” he writes, “Love me as you have before.” This lets Willie strike that Proustian pose of idealizing the perfect love from the past, trying to return to it, turning back the hands of time. And then, in Floyd Tillman’s “I Gotta Have My Baby Back,” he’s trying to get that perfect love back again. Odette, Daisy, Beatrice, Laura. Perfect love. Past love. I had to LOL at Cindy Walker’s “Goin’ Away Party” when I realized that the speaker is throwin’ a goin’ away party for “a dream I’m telling goodbye.” It has the same understated humor as “Funny How Time Slips Away.” Willie was clearly influenced by Cindy Walker’s sense of humor. “Nobody’s comin’ but a heartache,

and some tears will drop in now most anytime. Don't worry it won't be a loud party. Dreams don't make noise when they die. And so since it’s a goin' away party go away and let me cry.” Memories are so real they are personified. They come and go, they haunt, they drop in. In this song he tells the memories to leave him alone and let him cry. Always crying. The cryingest Buddhist in the world. Crying Buddha could be the title of this blog. Or Buddha with the Blues. Or Blue Buddha. Or Buddha Blues. Like the Moody Blues. But beatific. Beatific blues. Blue smiles.

At this point, I almost don’t need to comment on “Sweet Memories.” The sweetness, the bittersweetness, of memory is the subject of almost every Willie Nelson song. “She slipped into the silence of my dreams last night, wandering from room to room, turning on each light.” Memories just wander in, hang out, like old friends.

Harlan Howard’s “Pick Me Up On Your Way Down” has that same subtle self-deprecating humor as Cindy Walker. The irony is that Willie is usually the one leaving people, the one moving on. And yet here he sings of waiting at home for his lover to return after a fling. Can we believe that Willie was ever really sitting at home by the phone like the dutiful stand by your man wife? I think not. Still a good song, though.

So how do I connect “Still Water Runs Deepest” to “Still is Still Moving to Me”? Which is sweeter to Willie, Jesus or memories? Willie and Hag sing “Still Water” on Pancho and Lefty (1982). See my commentary on that blog. The irony, of course, is that Willie and Hag are complaining that still water is “So peaceful and dependable,” but they “can’t say the same about you.” Ha! Who could say the same about them? Peaceful and dependable? Outlaws? On the road?

Floyd Tillman’s “I Love You So Much It Hurts” says it all. Love hurts, but it hurts so good. And “there’s nothing I can do.” Subject to fate, to Cupid’s hot, piercing arrows. A slave to love, to passion. Love’s fool. Would they have it any other way?

Gene Autry puts a different twist on turning “back the pages of time” in “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine.” He wants to “recall all the heartaches” that he has caused his daddy to bear, and he wants to erase all the lines he has caused on his daddy’s face and return his gray hair to gold. The play on “recall” is significant here. Recall as in remember, or recall, as in take back, which would be, in a sense, to forget, to erase. And yet memories often seem to have that paradoxical feel. You want them to come but you don’t. You want to erase them, but you don’t. You want to keep them around at a safe distance so you can recall them on your own terms, but you never can. They have a mind of their own, or, rather, a will, because they inhabit your mind.

I tackle the paradox of Floyd Tillman’s “I’ll Keep on Loving You” in my blog on Moonlight Becomes You. Cindy Walker’s “Night Watch” is a touching song about God keeping the night watch for you and for me. Songs like this stand out in Willie’s repertoire. What do we make of this gospel/hony tonk connection? At times they seem at odds, at others they seem to be one and the same.