One Hell of a Ride (disc 1 of 4)

Great liner notes to this set as well. What’s even better, you get a picture of 92 of Willie’s albums. This isn’t all of them, but it gives you the best overview I’ve found to help you track down the obscure ones. In the liner notes, which also contain an interesting collection of pictures, Joe Nick Potoski describes Willie as “beyond prolific.” He is Whitman-esque in this way. He is beyond prolific, and yet he keeps recycling his own material, sort of like bio-diesel, which he is in to promoting these days. And like J.D. Salinger, who recently died, Willie may have a “couple thousand” unreleased tracks sitting around his Pedernales studio along with a couple hundred at his Luck studio. Can you imagine when that stuff starts being released how challenging my job will become?

The first two tracks make this collection worth the investment. “When I’ve Sung My Last Hillbilly Song” from 1954 may be Willie’s earliest recording. He starts out his career asking for forgiveness and asking to be remembered. Willie’s self-produced “No Place for Me” was recorded in Portland, OR in 1957, but his 1959 “Man with the Blues” establishes him as the bluest of the blue:

If you need some advice in being lonely

If you need a little help in feeling blue

If you need some advice on how to cry all night,

Come to me, I’m the man with the blues.

I’m the man with a hundred thousand heartaches,

And I’ve got most any color of the blues.

So if you need a little shove in fouling up in love

Come to me, I’m the man with the blues.

…I’m the man with a hundred thousand tear drops

And I’ve got a good selection old and new.

He’s got a hundred thousand tears and a hundred thousand heartaches at age 26, and he has every shade of the blues. He’s already fouled up in love more times by age 26 than most of us will do in a lifetime. He’s cried more and been lonelier in less time, in a more concentrated way, than most humans can withstand. A budding bodhisattva.

Many of the early tracks in this set can be found on the Complete Liberty Recordings, but these liner notes actually give more information about the musicians. Clearly Joe Allison does a better job of letting Willie do his thing than Chet Atkins does with RCA. But the B.J. Baker Group background singers are the bane of my existence. I notice that Glenn Campbell plays guitar on “Half a Man.” “One in a Row” is off the album “Make Way for Willie Nelson,” which I have not gotten my hands on yet. The background strings, etc. are hideous, but the lyric is powerful. “Why do I keep loving you after all the things you do?” If you tell me the truth once, that will make “one in a row.” We have such low standards for love. Where else is one in a row considered a hot streak? And yet, this is how cloudy our thinking is in love. I like Buddy Emmons’ steel on “The Party’s Over” from the album “The Party’s Over and Other Great Willie Nelson Songs.” Is this a compilation album? Can’t tell. I’m skipping songs I’ve already blogged about when covering the original albums.

Now “Good Times” may be one of my favorites of Willie’s early RCA albums. Can’t find it even used or on LP on Amazon. The song “Good Times” has just Willie’s voice and guitar and bass with no background vocals or strings. Chet Atkins and Grady Martin help out on guitar. I must get my hands on this LP. Willie is classifying his memories already in 1968, at age 35. He collects and sorts and organizes his memories like an art collector. In essence, he collects time and stores it and uses it for his purposes. “Here I sit with a drink and a memory.” What else do you need? “Little Things” may be my favorite new find in Willie’s canon. He has Grady, Chet, Jimmy Day, and no listing for the harmonica player, but he’s good. Much of the same can be said of the song “Sweet Memories.” Chet works in some cheesy strings at the end, but the vocals, guitar work, and lyrics make up for this. Shirley co-wrote “Little Things.” He’s classifying memories here again. This may the sparest studio vocal I’ve heard yet. It’s as close to a demo as any of his other tracks. This could be on Crazy: The Demo Sessions. “Any Old Arms Won’t Do” is from “My Own Peculiar Way,” an early RCA album I haven’t found yet. The violin, trumpet, and angelic choir are too much, but the lyric gets at Willie’s yearning for true love. No substitute will do. In fact, as we shall see, no heart will ever do, even you. Even Daisy. Our hearts are restless till they find rest in thee, as Augustine wrote. Another album I realize I need to get is “Both Sides Now,” from 1969, the year I was born. “Everybody’s Talkin’,” produced by Felton Jarvis, is smooth as a fine pale ale. I prefer Jarvis to Atkins. Hints of Yesterday’s Wine here. “I won’t let you leave my love behind.” The beauty of remembrance of things past is that you can control love. Your lover can leave you physically, but they can’t leave your mind if you don’t let them. You hold them captive in your memories. The way the Grecian urn holds the lovers frozen in time in Keats’ ode, doubly frozen in the urn and the poem. The cryogenics of love. Willie seems to want to freeze the good times, the perfect loves, and re-heat them when it’s convenient like a TV dinner. Unfortunately, real love is never convenient like that.

“Pins and Needles in My Heart” almost sounds like James Taylor with a little more country edge. Not quite Jim Croce, but almost. Very 1969. “Once More with Feeling” was co-written with Shel Silverstein. Reminds me of “One in a Row.” “Don’t let this feeling go away.” I want to bottle it up and save it forever. “I just can’t tell me what to do.” I just can’t let it go and I can’t hold onto it forever. It’s a Catch-22. You either want to forget it forever or hold onto it forever, but you end up with a half-baked mess that is the worst of both worlds. Partial memories that leave room for loneliness. The response, of course, is “I gotta get drunk.” “There’s more old drunks than there are old doctors,” so Willie starts self-prescribing, and we know how that turns out, but marijuana turns out to be better for medicinal purposes. Jimmy Day works magic on the steel. “Laying My Burdens Down” gets 5 stars. Reminds me of “I Can Get Off on You.” A fun, funky, upbeat tune. I have the LP on vinyl now but haven’t listened to it yet. Great bass riff backing up a vocal that starts out quiet and then cranks it up, and the background vocals are appropriate on a gospel tune. I’d love to hear this instead of “I Saw the Light” as an encore in concert. Willie could do what James Taylor does with a full gospel choir in concert. Next comes three from the album Willie Nelson and Family, which I don’t have yet. It’s produced by Felton Jarvis, so it’s less produced than Atkins, but the flute grates. “What Can You Do To Me Now.” I’m invincible. Untouchable in my own mind. These tracks cry out to be un-produced as well because Willie’s vocals are so strong. “Kneel at the Feet of Jesus,” from the 1970 Willie Nelson and Family album, has a funky gospel feel similar to “Laying My Burdens Down.” Here, again, the chorus is appropriate. I wish Willie would do more of these rousing, funky gospel tunes in his concerts these days. In “I’m a Memory,” from the same album, Willie becomes what he has always been singing about: a memory. He is memory itself. Ironically, when you are forgotten by someone, when they leave you, you actually become something, a new thing—a memory! And that’s not such a bad fate. Willie sings, “I’m a tear that falls out of sight.” He has become a tear. Then follows four excellent tracks from Yesterday’s Wine, but I have written about them already, and they are best heard in the larger context of the original concept album. The last tune from this disc, “The Words Don’t Fit the Picture,” is from the 1971 Felton Jarvis produced RCA album of the same name. The harmonica figures prominently, and the setting is closer to Yesterday’s Wine than his earlier work.