Willie on Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland (2002)

12/21/2010

Willie on Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland (2002)

I have to find a way to get a copy of this show. Not sure why Willie hasn’t released this as a CD or a download. Right now you can stream it here:

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/24/131571288/willie-nelson-on-piano-jazz

I just heard the show for the first time a few weeks ago, but it was originally recorded in 2002. Willie plays with Marian and Jackie King. Somehow I missed Willie’s recording with Jackie King called “The Gypsy.” I just ordered it today, so I’ll be reviewing it soon. Jackie says during the interview that this album is recorded on his label, Indigo Moon. Apparently this show was in conjunction with the release of this album.

Willie opens with “Heart of a Clown.” Then he plays “The Gypsy.” I have been playing this show over and over and over. It ranks right up there with Stardust in my mind. Marian is the perfect partner for Willie. He should do an album with her. She seems to be a match for his quirky phrasing. Willie tells a great anecdote about singing Bob Wills’ classic tune “San Antonio Rose” with Bob Wills, but when Willie sang it, Bob couldn’t jump in with his usual “ah-ha” because Willie would still be singing. When Willie takes someone else’s song, he makes it his own, so much so that the author himself cannot sing it with him. Then Willie does a song from Milk Cow Blues, which he says is his first true blues album. Willie says he heard “Milk Cow Blues” from Bob Wills and the Texas Cowboys. Willie says he didn’t even know it was blues. Willie was pre-genres. He played gospel and blues and country and jazz and pop before he knew what they were, which is why he seems to defy categories to this day. The first song Willie ever learned was “Amazing Grace” and “Just as I Am.” Fiddle player Johnny Gimble told Willie there are only two songs: “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the blues. Willie plays “Rainy Day Blues” next. Willie’s vocals are as good as they get. 2002 is a vintage year for Willie’s vocals. So many of my favorite Willie albums come from about 1998-2002. Willie live in a radio studio with just a piano and a guitar is about as perfect a setting for his vocals as you can find. Willie and Marian talk about Django Reinhardt. Johnny Gimble gave Willie a Django record when Willie was 20 years old. Willie realized at that time that Bob Wills and Willie’s dad had been influenced by Django. Marian, of course, knew Django. She played with him in Paris during the liberation after World War II. So they go into “Nuages,” a Django tune. Jackie’s solo on “Nuages” is brilliant, and Willie and Marian work in around him with piano and acoustic guitar. From this they go into “All of Me.” Jackie and Marian have lovely solos on this song. Willie chuckles during Jackie’s and then tells Marian to “play it.” And she does. Willie follows them with a solo of his own on Trigger while the others comp. The line “You took the part that once was my heart so why not take all of me” reminds me of the lyrics for “Half a Man.” I could add this to my ideas for Willie albums based on recurring themes. One is houses, mansions, homes. Another is body parts. Both are examples of incarnation, how the physical, the carnal, the tangible strives to capture, to literally “embody,” the ineffable, the spiritual, the transcendent. Art is always a grasping for this impossible task. Always a beautiful failure. “I can’t stop smiling,” Mariane says after this song, and I find myself smiling, too. Marian asks Willie, “Who were your many influences on guitar?” He replies, “Chet Atkins, Grady Martin, Hank Garland, Johnny Smith.” Next they play “Stardust.” A bass player, Gary Mezzerape, is also accompanying Jackie, Willie, and Marian, so we have a quartet in the studio for this recording. “My consolation is in the stardust of a song.” Willie’s music is a consolation, like Alan Gurganus’ short story “Reassurance,” about Walt Whitman’s work as a nurse during the civil war. “The memory of love’s refrain.” It’s Proust all over again. Our memory is a refrain. Marian says after this song that, “Nobody should try to do that.” Nobody should try to play and sing like Willie. Don’t try this at home, kids. Jackie apparently wrote the chords for “The Great Divide,” and Willie put words to it. They sing this, spare as a Cormac McCarthy landscape. I’m reading the novels of McCarthy now, starting with the border trilogy, and it seems that the bleak landscape resonates with Willie’s music. A boy traveling alone with a wolf across the border to Mexico. Willie’s music, too, crosses the borders of culture and genre. I’ve probably listened to this show a dozen times now, and I think it may rank as one of Willie’s untenable top ten performances. “The Great Divide” album came out in 2002 as well. As many times as I have heard this song, it’s crazy, but this version of “Crazy” just gave me the chills. Marian says on the webpage that Willie was so into this session that he invited Marian to be his special guest at Irving Plaza that night, and they played several duets. Only Willie could invite some 80-year-old lady on stage and maintain his macho cowboy image. Who else could sing the testosterone-infused “Beer for My Horses” with Toby Keith and then play a tender jazz ballad with Marian McPartland? And who else could see no contradiction? Willie is the ultimate in negative capability. Willie and Marian seem to laugh together more than any other guests I have heard on her show. They seem to be soul mates. It is also interesting how Willie seems to be serving as the hub for all of my interests: Proust, Cormac McCarthy, Marian McPartland, Walt Whitman, and neuroscience. They end with the Proustian “They’ll Never Be Another You.” There will never be another Daisy or Odette who can live up to the memory the likes of Willie, Fitzgerald, and Proust can conjure with their art and their imaginations. This may be my favorite from the entire set. I can’t believe Willie just walks into the studio and throws off a performance like this during the day and then goes on to play a show that night. Such causal, offhand brilliance. Like nature itself.