Fast forward thirty years from Stardust (1978) to Two Men with the Blues (2008), and it becomes apparent that Willie’s voice is not what it once was. Vocal-wise, these versions of “Stardust,” “Georgia on My Mind,” and “Nightlife” pale in comparison to numerous earlier versions. But Willie continues to impress with his audacity and openness to playing Hank Williams’ “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It” live with Wynton Marsalis. Mickey Raphael goes toe to toe with Wynton on this one: horn versus harmonica. It’s hard for me to take Willie seriously singing the blues. Buddha doesn’t do the blues. Buddha escapes suffering and transcends it. Blues singers embrace it, wallow in it, glory in it, revel in it. Buddhism and the blues. That sounds like a book that needs to be written. It reminds me of the Gupta era literature and how there isn’t a Hindu tradition of tragedy. With reincarnation nothing can be tragic because nothing is irrevocable.
All of this reminds me of Lord Byron’s poem “They Say That Hope is Happiness”:
They say that Hope is happiness;
But genuine Love must prize the past,
And Memory wakes the thoughts that bless:
They rose the first - they set the last;
And all that Memory loves the most
Was once our only Hope to be,
And all that Hope adored and lost
Hath melted into Memory.
Alas it is delusion all:
The future cheats us from afar,
Nor can we be what we recall,
Nor dare we think on what we are.
So much of Willie’s music is melting into memory. The melancholy notion “Nor can we be what we recall.” But perhaps these lines capture Willie’s music best:
They say that Hope is happiness;
But genuine Love must prize the past
Genuine, ideal love can only be in the past, like Gatsby’s Daisy. Vocals aside, this album will bear many future listenings because of the instrumental work of the harmonica, trumpet, piano, and guitar.
Heidegger, in his 1924 lecture “The Concept of Time,” said that “time has no body but is merely a medium in which events take place” (paraphrased by David Denby in The New Yorker 2/1/2010, page 83). A Romanian director plays with time the way Willie does.
I’m on my third or fourth listen today, and I’m still enjoying it. I think it gets better with each listen.
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