Angel Eyes (1984)

This album, which I have only been able to find on LP, features Willie playing with guitar virtuoso Jackie King.  It opens with a version of “Angel Eyes.”  Willie also does this song on “Honeysuckle Rose” (a duet with Emmylou Harris) and on “American Classic” (2009).  Of the three, I think this is the best both because of Jackie’s guitar work and Willie’s stronger 1984 vocals.  The warmth of the vinyl also comes through on this recording.  Jackie’s no slouch on vocals either.  The rest of the band includes Bob Scott (drums), Don Hass (keyboards), and Jon Blondell (bass).  One of Willie’s most ruminative, meandering albums.  It’s darker than “Stardust.”  “Tumbling Tumbleweed” (track 2) seems like a quirky, odd choice to follow “Angel Eyes,” but like Thelonius Monk, Willie thrives on surprise.  We have the cowboy western notion of wanderlust embodied by the tumbling tumbleweed, the rolling stone gathering no moss, free and independent as it ranges over the dusty plains.  Hardscrabble and free and light.  Prickly and tough but turning like a whirling dervish, spinning like a sufi.  I never would have picked this for a jazz number, but the band plays it aggressively.  The time changes abruptly, jarringly at several points.  This may be one of the most unusual, bizarre recordings in Willie’s repertoire. “I Fall in Love Too Easily” (track 3) is a more standard jazz ballad.  Willie sings, “I fall in love too easy; I fall in love too fast.”  Another 5-star recording you won’t find anywhere else.  As good as anything on “Stardust,” but, again, a bit darker, a bit more haunting, a bit more hardcore jazz.  We almost sympathize with Willie when he sings, “I fall in love too terribly hard for love to ever last.  My heart should be well schooled because I’ve been fooled in the past.”  He loves people too much, that’s the problem.  I love you too much to stay true.  A victim of his own capacity for love.  “Thank You” (track 4) also appears only on this album.  “Thank you for all the dark nights that shine so brightly with your love…it was me you were always thinking of.”  I was always on your mind.  “And though you may be gone before you hear this song, tomorrow’s a new day, and I just have to say, even though you can’t be here, still I want to make this toast: here’s to the times, the rhythms and the rhymes, and thank you for loving me the most.” To all the girls I loved before.  Whether he wrote it or not, it has all the elements of a Willie song: time, mind, and tomorrow.  The guitar, piano, bass, and drums compliment Willie’s vocals perfectly.  Side two (which is meaningless on a CD, but it meant something on an LP), opens with the bouncy “My Window Faces the South.”  Willie recorded this with Jackie on “The Gypsy” (2001) and on his “Country Favorites” album (1966).  An interesting choice for a jazz album.  Who else can record the same song on an album called “Country Favorites” and on a jazz album?  Ray Charles.  That’s it.  The crying cowboy is “never frowning or down in the mouth” because his “window always faces the south.”  Hakuna Matata.  Don’t worry, be happy.  “Snow is falling but still I can see fields of cotton calling to me.”  Willie could sing these lines with a smoking fiddle or a brooding jazz guitar.  Willie plays “The Gypsy” (track 6) on his instrumental album, “Night and Day” (1999), and also on the album of the same name (“The Gypsy,” 2001).  He also played it with Jackie live on Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland.  This version sounds almost identical to the version on “The Gypsy.”  Even side-by-side I’m having trouble telling if it is the same recording.  Either way, both are good.  You can’t go wrong.  “There Will Never Be Another You” (track 7) is upbeat, but still has a dark undercurrent.  It’s another impossible promise song, another “I’ll love you forever” song.  “There’ll be many other nights like this, and I’ll be standing here with someone new.  There’ll be other songs to sing, another fall, another spring, but there will never be another you.  There’ll be other lips that I may kiss, but they won’t thrill me like yours used to do.  I may dream a million dreams, but how could they come true, for there will never ever be another you.”  What can this possibly mean?  That you will always be on his mind, even when he’s with someone else?  What kind of comfort or solace can this be?  And to whom?  He knows it’s crazy, knows time will slip away, even as he promises it won’t.  He both believes and disbelieves his own promise even as he sings it.  The album closes wordlessly with the instrumental “Samba for Charlie.”  Charlie Parker?  A country singer singing a jazz version of a samba?  “Spirit” and a few other Willie albums end without words, beyond words.  What a great album from start to finish.  Why is this out of print?  Why is this not on cd?  Was it never even released on cd?  Now that’s crazy.                  

The Electric Horseman (1979)

I’ve had this out-of-print LP for some time now, but no record player to play it on.  A friend just converted it into digital format, so now I can finally review it.  This soundtrack from the Robert Redford movie opens with Willie’s version of “Midnight Rider.”  I’ve reviewed this in a previous blog.  The same version shows up on the compilations “Walking the Line” (1987) and “One Hell of a Ride”; a different version shows up on “It Always Will Be” (2004).  I’m actually enjoying the little snaps and pops from the record needle.  Haven’t heard those since the early eighties.  I don’t have personnel, but it sounds like Mickey Raphael on harmonica.  The same version of “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” (track 2) can also be found on the compilations “One Hell of a Ride” and “The Essential Willie Nelson”; a different version can be found on “Wanted: The Outlaws.”  I can’t believe Willie hasn’t recorded more versions of this classic song.  Sounds like it could be on “Red Headed Stranger” (1975).  I have a half dozen versions of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” (track 3), but this one is the classic version (if not the best).  This version of “So You Think You’re a Cowboy” (track 4) can only be found here, so that makes this album worth buying. That and the fact that Willie’s voice is so strong in the 1970s.  True fans need to have any recordings of his from the 1970s. The only other version I can find is on “Honeysuckle Rose” (1980), but Emmylou Harris sings it without Willie.  The lyrics are especially Proustian:

So you think you're a cowboy but you're only a kid
With a mind to do everything wrong
And it starts to get smoother when the circle begins
But by the time that you get there it's gone

So you think you're a winner but you're losin’ again
The cards have already been dealt
And the hand that you're playin’ means nothing at all
And knowing is all that is left

So live life as you find it the best that you can
Tomorrow cannot right the wrong
Don't wait for tomorrow to bring you your dreams
‘Cause by the time that you get there they're gone

It’s got all the classic Willie-Proust concepts: mind, time, and tomorrow.  He’s got a “mind to do everything wrong.”  “Tomorrow cannot right the wrong” flies in the face of “the healing hands of time.”  Tomorrow both can and cannot heal today.  Live in the present; don’t wait for tomorrow, unless, of course, you want to hang out in the past with a memory or two.  Once again, Willie is out-foxing time by not playing by its rules.  He won’t wait for tomorrow; he won’t wait for time to run its course.  He hits the fast forward button, the TIVO, and has it all when he wants it, on his own terms.  Just like his phrases, his meter, his time.  No need to wait for the beat, the four bars.  Get there on your own terms, in your own sweet time.  This version of “Hands on the Wheel” (track 5) only appears here; the other version appears on “Red Headed Stranger” (1975).  The “Red Headed Stranger” version is the better of the two, but this rare track, even with the syrupy strings, makes this LP worth buying.  That and Mickey Raphael’s harmonica.  Willie produced the first side of this LP, but tracks 6-10 are disco tunes, which I won’t review here.  I wish Willie would sing on a few disco songs just to round out his exploration of genres.  He’s done everything else.            

Outlaw Country: Live from Austin, TX (1996)

This live album was recorded on September 22, 1996 for the “Austin City Limits” TV show.  I will focus on the tracks featuring Willie, though the cast includes Waylon, Kris, Billy Joe Shaver, and Kimmie Rhodes, along with Mickey Raphael, Jerry Bridges, Gabe Rhodes, and Eddy Shaver.  You hear Trigger here and there on tracks even when Willie isn’t singing.  You also hear Willie commenting occasionally between tracks.  The singers are sitting in chairs on a stage.  The sound is like that you’ll find in the Bluebird Café in Nashville.  1996 is the year Willie recorded “Spirit,” possibly my favorite Willie album, so this is an important album for me because it provides another example of Willie’s voice during this pivotal year in his career.  Willie kicks off “Just One Love” (track 3) with Kimmie Rhodes.  It blows the studio recordings of this album right out of your cd player (our out of your ITUNES playlist).  Willie recorded a studio version in 1995 with Kimmie, but it can’t compare with this one.  You can only find versions of “We Don’t Run” (track 5) in a few other places (“Songbird,” “Spirit,” and a 1996 KGSN Radio Austin Broadcast).  Although Willie says in the intro that he used to do this song with The Highwaymen, I don’t see any versions on the three Highwaymen albums.  Mickey’s harmonica bolsters several songs in this set.  This is the only other place besides “Spirit” you will hear my favorite Willie Nelson song, “Too Sick to Pray” (track 10).  Not surprisingly, Willie opens this most serious of songs by cracking jokes about “Whiskey River” and “I Gotta Get Drunk.”  He calls it a “loophole song.”  Interestingly, “Spirit” is one of the few Willie albums that doesn’t feature Mickey Raphael on harmonica, so it is a treat to hear him play on this song in this setting.  They close the set with Willie’s classic anthem “On the Road” (track 14).  A solid version, but not my favorite, though Trigger features prominently.         

Assorted Singles (not available on any Willie albums or compilations)

A few hours on ITUNES the other night yielded a few singles from various compilation and tribute albums.  I haven’t found these songs on any of Willie’s own compilation albums yet, so it is much more economical to buy these singles on ITUNES than to buy the entire albums (especially when most of the albums only have one Willie song).  Willie will need to compile and issue these songs together at some point.

“Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth” appears to have been released only as a single in 2005.  Not sure who the male and female vocalists (or the sax player) are who accompany Willie.  One website had this to say of this song:

Willie wrote this song on Christmas, 2003, and will perform it for the first time at the Kucinich for President fundraising concert in Austin, Texas, on Jan. 3, 2004.

There's so many things going on in the world

Babies dying

Mothers crying

How much oil is one human life worth

And what ever happened to peace on earth

We believe everything that they tell us

They're gonna' kill us

So we gotta' kill them first

But I remember a commandment

Thou shall not kill

How much is that soldier's life worth

And whatever happened to peace on earth

(Bridge)

And the bewildered herd is still believing

Everything we've been told from our birth

Hell they won't lie to me

Not on my own damn TV

But how much is a liar's word worth

And whatever happened to peace on earth

So I guess it's just

Do unto others before they do it to you

Let's just kill em' all and let God sort em' out

Is this what God wants us to do

Now you probably won't hear this on your radio

Probably not on your local TV

But if there's a time, and if you're ever so inclined

You can always hear it from me

How much is one picker's word worth

And whatever happened to peace on earth

But don't confuse caring for weakness

You can't put that label on me

The truth is my weapon of mass protection

And I believe truth sets you free

“Please Come Home for Christmas” is on an acoustic country album (a friend gave it to me a few years ago, but I am just now realizing that it isn’t on any other Willie Christmas albums.  A live version of “What Was it You Wanted” (1993) can be found on “Bob Dylan: The 30^th Anniversary Concert Celebration.”  Not sure if it is Dylan or Mickey Raphael on harmonica.  Willie also sings this on “Across the Borderline” (1993).  Another version of Willie’s famous “Funny/Crazy” medley can be found on Neil Young’s “The Bridge School Collection, Vol. 1” (2006) along with a version of “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”  I have over a dozen versions of this medley, but this may make my top five.  Just Willie, Trigger, and Mickey’s harmonica.  As good as Willie gets.  Surprisingly, I only have four other versions of “Mammas.”  Mickey’s harmonica shines on this version, but it can’t compete with the classic (if staged) live version with Waylon from 1978.  Somehow a reggae version of “A New Way to Cry” (2005) did not make it onto the “Countryman” album.  The only other example of this song comes from “The Ghost” (part 3).  I can’t believe this song would only be on “The Ghost,” though, so it must have another name on one of my Bear Family compilations .  Need to do some research on this.  A lovely version of “Philadelphia Lawyer” can be found on “Folkways: A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly” (1988).  Sounds like Johnny Gimble on fiddle and Mickey on harmonica.  This is the only place you’ll find Willie singing this song.        Apparently this version of “Marie” on “Poet: A Tribute to Townes Van Zandt” (2001)  was nominated for a Grammy.  Not sure how I haven’t run across it sooner.  How has this not been repackaged on a Willie compilation?  Sounds like Johnny Cash’s late albums produced by Mark Rubin.  Willie needs to record a whole album of songs like this.  Spare with just a guitar and Willie’s voice.  Willie’s version of John Lennon’s “Imagine” can be found on “Instant Karma: The Complete Recordings: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur” (2009).  Willie doesn’t attempt Lennon’s famous falsetto “Yoo-hoo!”  Mickey’s harmonica and Trigger outshine Willie’s vocals on this one.  Willie would agree with Lennon’s view of religion.  He’s a dreamer.  He’s all about karma and reincarnation.  Can’t believe Willie doesn’t sing “Lady Be Good” anywhere but on “Celebrating with Friends,” a tribute album to Johnny Gimble (2010).  He should record more with Gimble.  I’d like to know who’s on piano for this song.  A version of Willie singing “Still Water Runs Deepest” can be found on Asleep at the Wheel’s “Tribute to the Music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys” (1993).  Willie also sings this on “Pancho and Lefty” (1983) and “Last of the Breed” (2007).  A version of Willie singing “Couple More Years” with Jerry Lee Lewis appears on Jerry’s duet album “Last Man Standing” (2006).  The only other place Willie sings this is on “Waylon and Willie” (1978).  Jerry sounds great on this recording, or awful, which is the same thing in country music.  His voice sounds more ragged and gravely than Willie’s, if that’s possible.  It’s slow and full of suffering and steel and harmonica and Trigger with flamenco flecks of pain and piano sprinkled throughout.

Miscellaneous Live Radio Broadcasts

Here are some live radio broadcasts that appear on limited release compilations.  The first recording comes from KBCO and features Emmylou Harris on harmony vocals for Willie’s own “Everywhere I Go.”  It sounds like the version Willie recorded for the “Teatro” album.  Next we have “Don’t Call Me,” a duet with Heather Myles from the “In the Wind” album.  It’s a rousing number with accordion that harkens back to Willie’s old Czech Polka band days.  Sounds like something Dwight Yoakam would do.  Rockabilly, I guess.  A version of “What a Difference a Day Makes” (written by Maria Grever and Stanley Adams) comes live from the Imus Ranch Record.  These lyrics fit perfectly into Willie’s Proustian oeuvre:

  

What a difference a day made

Twenty-four little hours

Brought the sun and the flowers

Where there used to be rain

My yesterday was blue, dear

Today I'm part of you, dear

My lonely nights are through, dear

Since you said you were mine

What a difference a day makes

There's a rainbow before me

Skies above can't be stormy

Since that moment of bliss, that thrilling kiss

It's heaven when you find romance on your menu

What a difference a day made

And the difference is you

What a difference time makes.  The healing hands of time.  What a difference Willie’s phrasing makes.  What a difference meter makes.  I haven’t found these last two songs on any other Willie albums.  What a difference memory makes.  What a difference our minds make, our attitudes about time.  Here Willie shapes the weather and the skies with his mind.  Time is on his side.  “Ou Es Tu, Mon/I Never Cared for You” comes from 107.1 KGSR Radio Austin Broadcasts vol. 7. (1999), again right around the time of “Teatro.”  “Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way” comes from KGSR as well, volume 9 (2001).  Sounds very similar to the version on the 2001 album “Rainbow Connection” (the only other place I can find this song).  Both versions are exactly 1:57, but this version seems to have a more prominent harmonica, especially at the end.  “It Always Will Be” comes from KGSR vol. 13 (2005).  This is the only version I can find besides the title track from the album of the same name (2004).  “We Don’t Run” comes from KGSR vol. 4 (1996), around the time of “Spirit.”  It has a graceful fiddle solo that could be Johnny Gimble.  “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” comes from vol. 10 (2002).  Trigger and Mickey Raphael’s harmonica help make this spare recording one of the best of the half dozen versions I have of this song.  I wonder how many more of these rare tracks are floating around out there in the ether?   

ITUNES Originals (2005)

I spent a few hours last night trolling through the ITUNES singles catalog looking for Willie Nelson songs that I don’t currently own.  I found about ten, going through seven pages of songs with 200 songs per page.  Most of these were songs Willie contributed to tribute albums for other artists.  I’ll review those in a future blog.  I also found this gem, which contains 21 tracks, some of which contain commentary by Willie.  It opens with an interesting version of “Whiskey River.”  Willie claims in track 3 that “you are what you think.”  He believes this, and it fits with his Proustian philosophy of time and mind, which also fits with modern neuroscience.  That we create time and memories with our mind and with our art.  We don’t just passively record time.  Track 4 contains a meandering, jazzy version of “Always on My Mind.”  I wish I knew who the musicians were on these recordings.  Sounds like Willie on Trigger and Mickey on harmonica.  Willie dedicates this version of “Pancho and Lefty” (track 5) to Hag and Townes Van Zandt.  Willie’s vocals are much more prominent in this version because the setting is much sparer.  Just guitar, bass, drums, harmonica, and a few folks in the background filling in during the chorus.  You can hear Trigger more clearly and distinctly than on most other recordings.  Jody Payne sings toward the end of this track, and his voice seems to be on its last legs (to mix anatomical metaphors).  I can never have too many versions of Willie’s classic “Funny/Crazy/Nite Life” medley, and this one ranks up there with the best of them (track 7).  At this point, I have 2,055 Willie Nelson tracks, which accounts for 4.4 days of music and 11.62 gigabytes.  Some of these tracks are duplicates which appear on compilations and original albums, but even these have different mixes, so I have almost a full working week’s worth of Willie, or over 100 hours of non-stop, no-repeat Willie.  Mickey’s Harmonica picks up on “Crazy.”  I wonder if sister Bobbie is on piano.  Any serious fan has to buy this collection to hear Willie re-doing so many of his classic songs in 2005.  His voice has faded in some ways, but gained character in others.  And the guitar work has become more jazz-like, more Jerry Garcia-like, more spacey and trippy.  I’d love to know how Willie recorded these tracks.  I’m guessing he just walked into the studio with his road band and did them all in one take and had lunch and did another show that night.  In track 8 Willie talks about “following your instincts.”  Instincts of the mind, instincts of time.  Swing is the instinctive feel, the emotion of time.  Art is setting time to emotion, or setting emotions in time.  “Beer for My Horses” (track 9) may be the most interesting track thus far on this album because it differs so much from the original hit single with Toby Keith.  “On the Road Again” (track 11) actually stays pretty true to the original hit version.  Willie tells the story of playing chess with Ray Charles in the dark with all the pieces the same color, and Ray beat him three times in a row.  This version of “Georgia on My Mind” (track 13) gave me the chills.  It has a little funk to it.  May be the best recording on the album so far.  Mickey’s harmonica sounds like it did on “Stardust.”  I only have two other versions of Willie singing “Texas,” so it was a real treat to find another version here (track 15).  Trigger steals the show on this track.  Texas is the only place for Willie, where his “spirit can be free.”  In the video for “Mendocino County Line” (track 17), Willie rode his horse down the main street in Austin.  Lee Ann Womack joins Willie for this recording, which upon closer examination appears to be the same one that hit the radio, which wouldn’t be an ITUNES original.  I’ll have to research that.  In track 18 Willie says, “All we have is right now.”  He tries to live in the present moment (despite all his songs about memories and the past).  A serviceable version of “Still is Still Moving to Me” (track 19).  Mickey’s harmonica works overtime on this one.  “Superman” (track 21) only appears in one other place (on Willie’s “Lost Highway” compilation).  Willie calls out to “little sister” to play a piano solo, followed by Mickey on Harmonica and Jody on guitar.  A fun song that Willie should sing more often.  “Tryin’ to do more than you can, but you ain’t superman.”  Willie ends with “How’d that sound, Freddy?”  Must be Freddy Fletcher (or Powers?) producing. 

Honky Tonk Heroes (1999)

Here’s another hard-to-find album that doesn’t appear on many discographies.  This is also another album where an artist was recording an album at Willie’s Pedernales studio, and Willie wanders in and takes over.  Eric Paul and Eddie Shaver began producing this album of Billy Joe Shaver songs in 1989, but it didn’t get released until 1999.  In the meantime, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings wandered into the studio at various times to add tracks to the album.  The album opens with Shaver’s “Honky Tonk Heroes (Like Me).”  Willie and Waylon (I think; the liner notes do not indicate who sings vocals on each track) share vocal duties.  Waylon sings this song on “Wanted: the Outlaws,” so that makes me think it’s him and not Billy Joe.  The band includes Eddy Shaver (guitar), David Crockett (drums), David Cochran (bass), and Bucky Meadows (piano).  “Willie the Wandering Gypsy and Me” (track 2) appears to have Kristofferson on vocals.  It contains this great line: “moving’s the closest thing to bein’ free.” And this: “Willie, you’re wild as a Texas blue norther, ready rolled from the same makin’s as me, and I reckon we’ll ramble ‘till hell freezes over.”  This must be Shaver’s autobiographical song about life on the road with Willie.  He adds, “there never will be a single soul livin’ can put brand or handle on Willie the wandering gypsy or me.”  Willie does seem to defy brands, labels, and handles.  “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal” (track 3) also appears on Willie’s compilation album “Joy,” which I have reviewed in a previous blog.  “Ain’t No God in Mexico” (track 4) features Willie and Waylon.  I can’t find this song on any other Willie album.  Reminds me of Cormac McCarthy’s border trilogy: “that border-crossin’ feelin’ makes a fool out of a man.”  The line “If my feet could fit a railroad track, I guess I’da been a train” fits Willie and his life story.  “You Asked Me To” (track 5) opens with Billy Joe singing.  Willie and Waylon join him as the song progresses.  Willie’s vocals and guitar shine on this track.  Waylon co-wrote this song with Billy Joe.  Kristofferson joins the trio on vocals for “Oklahoma Wind” (track 6).  They sing of “dead tomorrows planted yesterday.”  “I Couldn’t Be Me Without You” (track 7) is all Willie and, not surprisingly, the best track on this album.  Worth the price of the cd.  I haven’t found Willie singing this on any other album.  Billy Joe sings lead on “Tramp On Your Street” (track 8).  Willie sings a faint back-up.  I feel like I’ve heard Willie sing this before, but I can’t find it at present on any other Willie album.  Willie certainly agrees with Billy Joe’s lyrics: “I don’t count on tomorrow.  I just live for today.”  “Easy Come Easy Go (aka: Ride Me Down Easy)” (track 9) opens with Willie singing this great line: “The highway she’s hotter than 9 kinds of hell.”  Willie takes the lead vocals on this track, which makes it one of the two best tracks on the album.  The album closes with all four honky tonk heroes singing on “We Are the Cowboys” (track 10).  The song tries to be serious, but the lyrics don’t make much sense.  Even these legendary country vocalists can’t save these jumbled lines.  An inconsistent album, but worth owning for tracks 7 and 9.           

Walking the Line (1987)

Not sure exactly what this is.  A compilation of sorts.  Not sure why Willie has never done much with George Jones, but here is the only example I can find of them singing together.  I don’t have the personnel, but the fiddle sounds like Johnny Gimble on “I Gotta Get Drunk” (track 1), and the harmonica could very well be Mickey Raphael.  If this first track is any indication, George and Willie should sing together more often.  George sings, “Willie, I could name you a few.”  “No Show Jones” (track 2) pairs Merle and George.  Another keeper.  A history of Honky Tonk greats.  “Pancho and Lefty” (track 3) appears to be the classic version from the Willie-Hag duet album of the same name.  “Yesterday’s Wine” (track 4) pairs Hag and the Possum singing one of Willie’s classic tunes.  This track alone makes the disc worth owning.  “Half a Man” (track 5) also seems to be from “Pancho and Lefty.”  “Big Butter and Egg Man” (track 6) features Hag with a jaunty piano and fiddle.  “Heaven or Hell” (track 7) appears to be a live recording from the “Honeysuckle Rose” album (1980).  It sounds like Mickey Raphael on harmonica.  This driving version of “Midnight Rider” (track 8) appears to be from “The Electric Horseman” soundtrack (recorded Fall 1979, according to the liner notes in “One Hell of  Ride”).  “Are the Good Times Really Over” (track 9) is all Hag.  “A Drunk Can’t Be a Man” (track 10) is all George.  So this isn’t much of a Willie album, but it’s worth owning for tracks 1,2, and 4, which may be hard to find anywhere else.

All of Me (Live…In Concert) (2002)

This appears to be a collection of songs from a 2001 concert (or concerts) in Amsterdam.  I’m not sure this is correct, though, because I can’t believe Willie just did a concert of classic ballads and standards.  He has his road band/family with him along with Jackie King on lead guitar, but Willie usually sticks to a pretty standard set list, opening with “Whiskey River,” etc.  Whatever the case may be, these are some of Willie’s best versions of these songs.  The late 1990s and early 2000s produced many of my favorite Willie performances.  Willie also did several things with Jackie King during this time period, all of which are phenomenal—live on Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland and “The Gypsy” album.  This album is another hidden gem that needs to be better known.  It opens with lovely versions of “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” “Blue Skies,” and “Georgia on My Mind.”  Mickey Raphael’s harmonica solo on “Georgia on My Mind” (track 3) earns the applause he gets from the crowd.  This version of “Me and Paul” (track 4) takes a different path than many of Willie’s others.  It’s nice to hear Willie talking between songs and introducing the band.  He sings, “I thought Branson was the roughest” in this version.  The crowd really gets in to “City of New Orleans,” which is interesting for a concert in Amsterdam.  Jackie King’s jazzy guitar runs add a little Jerry Garcia, Grateful Dead feel to some of these songs.  Willie picks up the pace for a speedy version of “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” (track 6) with solos by sister Bobbie (Piano) and Jackie King.  Not my very favorite version of “Funny How Time Slips Away” (track 7), but I have eleven or twelve versions, and this ranks up there with the best of them.  The same could be said for this version of “Always On My Mind” (track 8).  I have half a dozen versions of this song, and this performance holds its own with the others.  “All of Me” (track 9) stands out as a more driving version than the one on “Stardust,” mostly fueled by Jackie King’s guitar solo, which garners applause from the crowd.  Willie recorded “I Never Cared for You” in 1998 for the “Teatro” album, so it is neat to hear him sing it live in 2001.  It opens with extensive piano and guitar work.  Without question, this album makes my untenable top ten.  Just needs better liner notes to explain more fully the details of the dates and locations of the recordings.  Willie opens track 11 by shouting, “What about some Ernest Tubb?”  This version of “Walkin’ the Floor Over You” is the only example I have of Willie singing this.  This song is worth the price of the used CD.  Of course he would close the album with a version of “Stardust” (track 12).  I actually only had three versions of this song (on the original “Stardust” album; the 2003 Willie Nelson and Friends concert for “Stars and Guitars” (with Aaron Neville on lead vocals); and the “Two Men with the Blues” album with Wynton Marsalis), so it is a real treat to find another version.  Willie should sing this song more often.        

The Offenders Re-Union: Can’t Get the Hell Out of Texas (1995)

Here’s another Bear Family re-issue gem.  One of Willie’s earliest and briefest road band configurations, The Offenders (later called “The Radio Men”), consisted of Jimmy Day (steel), Johnny Bush (vocals/drums), David Zettner (bass), and Willie (guitar/vocals).  This group, along with Floyd Domino (piano) and Johnny Gimble (fiddle), also appears on the 1995 recording “Me and the Drummer” (also released as “Tales Out of Luck”).  I reviewed that album on a previous blog, and I think it is far superior to this album, but I’m not sure why.  Same group, same year.  Maybe it’s the mix of songs.  Perhaps it is because “Me and the Drummer” consists of all Willie-penned originals, and “Can’t Get the Hell Out of Texas” has a number of songs written and sung by other folks.

In any case, this one opens with the title song (written by John Hadley), which contains this classic line: “In Texas we raise hell just like it was a crop…  It started with the Alamo, and it ain’t ever gonna stop….You can’t get the hell out of Texas, ‘cause it’s the hell-raisin’ center of the earth.”  Johnny Bush takes the lead vocal duties.  I think the story behind this album is that Jimmy Day was trying to record his own album at Pedernales, and Willie wandered in and saw that all the former Offender band members were there, so he decided to do an Offender’s Reunion record.  This purely instrumental version of Conway Twitty’s “Linda on My Mind” showcases Jimmy Day’s weeping steel.  Willie takes the lead vocals for his own “I’m So Ashamed” (track 3), which is as good as anything he has recorded and worth the price of this CD.  Upon closer examination, this appears to be the same version of the song that appears on “Me and the Drummer.”  Hmmm.  Willie has only recorded this song a few times: an un-released outtake on “The Complete Atlantic Recordings” and a duet version with Ray Price on “Run That By Me One More Time.”  It’s one of Willie’s best songs, and he should play it more often.  “Daybreak” (track 4), an upbeat Jimmy Day tune, features Day’s steel, Willie’s Trigger, and Gimble’s fiddle.  Johnny Bush sings Conway Twitty’s “Walk Me to the Door” (track 5).  “Sleepwalk” (track 6) features some of Day’s most eloquent work on steel.  The steel seems to be meowing the lead vocals.  Johnny Bush sings Willie’s “Are You Sure This is Where You Want to Be” (track 7).  Jimmy Day’s steel sings Willie’s “She’s Not For You” (track 8), a song made for the steel guitar.  Willie’s guitar work stands out more prominently on this track as well.  Jimmy Day appears to be singing his own “I Know I Love You” (track 9), though Johnny Bush is credited with vocals in the liner notes.  The melancholy “There She Goes” (track 10) and the up-tempo Hank Williams’ tune “Hey Good Lookin’” (track 11) are purely instrumental numbers featuring guitar, steel, and piano.  The only other track with Willie on vocals, “Rainy Day Blues” (track 12), appears to be the same version that appears on “Me and the Drummer.”  In short, the best two tracks on this album are the ones with Willie on vocals, and those can be found on “Me and the Drummer,” so most listeners will want to skip this album and just pick up a copy of “Me and the Drummer.”                

Nacogdoches Waltz (1993)

I stumbled upon this album accidentally while looking for something else.  Looking for Willie Nelson albums is like panning for gold.  You never know when you’ll find some new album that hasn’t appeared on any previous discography you’ve seen.  You have to follow footnotes and sidenotes and rabbit trails and such.  This all-instrumental album with Paul Buskirk (mandola), Willie (guitar), Paul Schmidt (piano), Dean Reynolds (upright bass), and Mike Lefbevre (drums) opens with the gentle title cut, “Nacogdoches Waltz.”  Willie’s vocals often overshadow his guitar playing, so I enjoy hearing him play on an instrumental album where I can focus on his guitar work, which shines on Duke Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” (track 2).  “Little Rock Get-A-Way” (track 3) jumps, especially the piano.  “Intermezzo” (track 4) features some of the most delicate mandola and guitar work on the album.  ITUNES calls this album pop, but “Dardanella” (track 5) defies categorization.  Flamenco-inflected mandola jazz?  “Under Paris Skies” (track 6) could be part of the soundtrack for the Cormac McCarthy novel I’m reading now (set in Mexico), “The Crossing.”  Willie Nelson doing Bach?  Never imagined I’d hear that, although I guess he did Bach’s “Minuet in G” as a bonus track on “Red Headed Stranger.”  The rousing, driving, puckish “Joy (Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring)” (track 7) gets five stars.  “Nola” (track 8) has a pleasingly deceptive slightness and simplicity, as does “I Will Wait for You” (track 9).  Mandola virtuosity abounds even amidst these ditties.  A jazzy version of the traditional Christmas song “Greensleeves” (track 10), which manages somehow to sound fresh, rounds out the collection.  Country western baroque jazz?  Whatever it is, it’s worth owning.            

Nashville was the Roughest (disc 8)

This disc includes Willie’s July 9th, 1966 concert at Panther Hall in Fort Worth, Texas.  While this concert can also be found on the “Live Country Music Concert” album (which I have already reviewed in a previous blog), the Bear Family has included three songs that did not make the original live album.  Just another reason why serious fans need to own this box set.  According to the liner notes there were some minor overdubs made to enhance the recording, but it remains one of Willie’s best albums.  I first reviewed this album in May 2010, and it stands up to repeated listenings.  The liner notes list the musicians as Wade Ray (bass), Jerry “Chip Young” Stembridge (rhythm guitar), Johnny Bush (drums), and Willie (vocal/leader/electric guitar), and an overdubbed steel guitar.  It’s strange to see Willie in a picture from the concert playing an electric guitar and not his nylon-stringed acoustic companion and soulmate, Trigger.  Willie sings “How Long is Forever” (track 9) the same way he does on his studio album, holding the pause after “how long is forever” unbearably long before he relieves the audience’s anxiety with “this time.”  There is no better example of Willie flirting with time and the audience’s expectations.  These recordings of Leon Payne’s “I Love You Because” (track 13), Willie’s “I’m Still Not Over You” (track 14), and Hank Williams’ “There’ll Be No Teardrops Tonight” (track 15) did not make the original album, but I have no idea why.  They are as good as or better than any of the other tracks, but maybe they are too slow and understated.  Not sure where else you can hear Willie play live with such a quiet back-up band.  At times it’s almost like a Grateful Dead concert during the space/drums portion of their concerts.  It’s a wonderfully jazzy, trippy, experimental version of Hank Williams, if that is even possible.      

Nashville was the Roughest (disc 7)

Nashville was the Roughest (disc 7)

This disc includes the entire albums of “Texas in My Soul” and “Yesterday’s Wine” followed by a few versions of songs that would later appear on “Phases and Stages” for Atlantic.  I have commented on these albums in previous blogs, so I will focus on the material that is only available here.  These recordings with just Willie, Paul English (drums), and Bee Spears (bass) are as raw as anything in Willie’s catalog except for the Pamper demos.  This version of “Pretend I Never Happened” (track 23) may be better than the one that ended up on “Phases and Stages.”  “Sister’s Coming Home” (track 24) and “Down at the Corner Beer Joint” (track 25) aren’t as strong, but still well worth owning.  “I’m Falling in Love Again” (track 26) is as good as Willie gets.  The disc ends with two novelty songs: “Chet’s Tune” (on which Willie only sings a phrase) and “Poor Old Ugly Gladys Jones.”  

Nashville was the Roughest (disc 6)

The full orchestra returns with a vengeance for the session on November 24th, 1970, but Harlan Howard’s “Yours Love” (track 1) works for me for some reason.  I’d like to hear Willie do this in 2011.  It could be a great concert closer. Willie’s own rousing gospel number “Kneel at the Feet of Jesus” (track 2) stands out among these late 1960s, early 1970s recordings.  Kienzle calls Willie’s rendition of Merle Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” (track 3) “grossly overblown.”  This line redeems the song for me: “What a fool I was to think I could get by with only these few teardrops that I’ve cried.  I should have known the worst was yet to come and that crying time for me had just begun.”  That’s pure Willie.  Kienzle calls Willie’s take on Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” (track 4) an “excessively orchestrated mess.”  On both recordings, Willie just seems to be trying too hard to sing in an operatic style that doesn’t play to his vocal strengths.      

A month later his house in Ridgetop burned to the ground, and it isn’t till the spring of 1971 that he realizes he has another LP due for RCA (his 12th).  Willie records material for three LPs at these May 1971 sessions: “Yesterday’s Wine,” “The Words Don’t Fit the Picture,” and “The Willie Way.”  The Bear Family presents the songs from “Yesterday’s Wine” in the order in which they appear on the album (not the order in which they were recorded) on disc 7, but the rest of the recordings from these sessions are presented in chronological order on disc 6.  Charlie McCoy’s harmonica makes an appearance on these recordings.  I’ve reviewed most of these songs previously on my blogs for these three albums, but suffice it to say these are some of Willie’s best recordings to date.  This version of “Wake Me When It’s Over” (track 7) is one of my favorite Willie recordings.  Only Willie can be so funky and so slow at the same time.  Most people have to go fast to be funky, but Willie can find the funk in the slowest of songs.  Willie seems to have found the perfect backing band for these recordings.  It’s a string of five-star recordings, including a stellar new version of “Rainy Day Blues” (Track 9).  Willie is clearly coming into his own here, but RCA ironically chooses this time to sever ties with Willie just before he breaks out with Phases and Stages, Shotgun Willie, and Red-Headed Stranger.   “Stay Away From Lonely Places” (track 13) is one of the best tracks on this disc.  This original version of “Good Hearted Woman” (track 14) isn’t as good as the famous (though staged) duet with Waylon, but it is interesting to hear it in its pre-famous form.  The harmonica stands out on this recording and seems to symbolize the important seachange in Willie’s music at this time.  Kienzle calls “My Kind of Girl” (track 16) “rather flat,” but “I’d Rather You Didn’t Love Me” (track 17) has some significant fizz.  “One Step Beyond” (track 19) reminds me of “Wake Me When It’s Over.”  Slow and soothingly funky (if that’s possible, gentle funk).  The unissued “I Want a Girl” (track 20) contains the surprising line “I want a girl whose heart has been broken.”  These versions of “Country Willie” (track 21)  and “You Left Me a Long, Long Time Ago” (track 22) are solid but unremarkable.  “London” (track 23) is a very unusual song in Willie’s repertoire.  “Rest your lungs, tomorrow’s on it’s way.” Track 24 is a more adventurous version of “A Moment Isn’t Very Long.”  The last four songs on this disc come from an April 27th, 1972 session with just Willie, Dan Spears (Bass) and Paul English (drums).  These are almost as raw as the Pamper demos, but with a bit of a funky rhythm with the drums and bass: “Who’ll Buy My Memories” (track 25),
“No Love Around” (track 26), “Come on Home” (track 27), and  “Mountain Dew” (track 28).  These last four tracks are worth the price of the entire box set.  Not sure you can find them anywhere else.  I wish Willie recorded more with just Paul and Bee.  

Nashville was the Roughest (disc 5)

This disc continues with the November 1969 sessions that led to Willie’s “Both Sides Now” LP.  Willie does a competent interpretation of Ray Price’s “Crazy Arms” (track 1), but it doesn’t have Willie’s unique vocal stamp upon it.  “I Gotta Get Drunk” (track 2) sounds like Hank Williams.  The song becomes more interesting when you read Willie’s autobiography and find out that Willie stole the line from one of his friends.  The November 13^th session has a tight band: just Willie (guitar), Day (steel), Zettner (bass), and Billy English (drums).  “Wabash Cannonball” (track 3) showcases more of Willie’s burgeoning guitar virtuosity.  Eddie Dean’s “One Has My Name (The Other Has My Heart)” (track 4) features Day’s weeping steel and a look at Willie’s perpetually divided and wandering heart.  Willie asks, “What good is love to a heart who can’t be free?”  In other words, is love freedom, or the very opposite of freedom?  Put another way, what is the relationship between love and freedom?  This question drives all of Willie’s music.  Hank Cochran’s “Who Do I Know in Dallas” (track 5) seems to be describing Willie’s life.  “I can’t spend the night without someone.  The lonelies would drive me insane.  So who do I know in Dallas, that will make me be happy I came?”  The irony of the freedom-loving outlaw who needs a woman in every city to help him combat loneliness.  He flees loneliness, but it follows him around.  Joni Mitchell may be the only singer-songwriter as quirky as Willie, so it is fitting that Willie covers her song “Both Sides Now” and names an album after it.  Her album “Blue” from 1970 is one of my all-time favorites.  “Both Sides Now” (track 6) gets at the duality inherent in all of Willie’s music.  “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now…I really don’t know clouds at all.”  The man who sings of love for fifty years (and through four wives) admits at the outset of his career, “I really don’t know love at all.”  The blind leading the blind.  In “It Could Be Said That Way” (track 7), Willie asks, “What’s the point in making leaving any harder than a leaving ought to be?”  Which raises the question, how hard should leaving be?  In Shirley Nelson’s “Once More with Feeling” (track 8), Willie begs, “Hold me close.  Don’t let this feeling go away.”  This small band from these November 1969 sessions may be one of the best settings for Willie’s music.

We then jump ahead to three sessions in June 1970 to record the “Laying My Burdens Down” LP.  It’s another small band but a different slate of musicians (except for Grady Martin).  Willie sings that her memory is “Following Me Around” (track 9) so he will “never be alone.”  Her memory “has finally found a home.”  More of the theme of memory having a mind of its own.  A host of horns mars “Following Me Around” and a host of strings mars “Minstrel Man” (track 10).  Willie sings, “Nobody wants to hear your songs of love.”  Not sure why “Where Do You Stand” (track 11) has crowd noise at the beginning.  The chorus and strings are a bit much.  I have discussed the irony of “It’s time for commitments” coming from an outlaw and a perpetually rolling stone.  A rolling stone misses the moss.  “Missing the Moss” could be the title of Willie’s life.  In “When We Live Again” (track 11), Willie seems to be espousing reincarnation: “Let’s not lose the days…let’s plan to love when we live again.”  We don’t have to lose time.  We can always get it back in another life.  I’m a sucker for the funky “If You Could See What’s Going Through My Mind” (track 13), another of Willie’s mind songs.  Everything would be okay if only people could read my mind, could know how good all my intentions were.  “Happiness Lives Next Door” (track 14) didn’t make the final cut for the album, but I actually think it is one of the better recordings from these sessions (minus the ooh-ah chorus).  “I’ve Seen That Look on Me (A Thousand Times Before)” (track 15) shows Willie’s ability to see things from both sides, his negative capability.  His capacity for sympathy and empathy is part of his attraction.  Track 16 is a funkier version of “I Don’t Feel Anything.”  I actually think Willie could have success with a funky, R & B backing.  “Laying My Burdens Down” (track 17) is one of my favorite Willie songs, and one I wish he would perform live in concert.  I’m convinced it could be a crowd pleaser.  The gospel chorus actually works on this one.  Can’t think of a thing to say about “How Long Have You Been There” (track 18), but “Senses” (track 19) turns a nice phrase: “It’s over, but I don’t have the sense to let you go.”  Then we jump to three November 1970 sessions to record the “Willie Nelson and Family” LP.   Rich Kienzle shreds this album in the liner notes.  He calls it “one of his worst RCA albums” and “grossly overproduced” (page 40).  Kienzle also calls James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain” a “wussy pop-folk ballad” (40).  The irony of the lyrics of “What Can You Do to Me Now?” (track 21) and the syrupy setting makes me wonder if the whole thing isn’t just a joke.  In other words, how much worse can you produce me?  How much worse can you butcher my songs with your Nashville Sound?  Cindy Walker’s “The Loser’s Song” doesn’t fit Willie’s style; sounds more like a Johnny Cash song.  Willie could make “Fire and Rain” (track 23) interesting, but he just sings it like JT, which makes you wonder, why bother?  “I Can Cry Again” (track 24) shows that Willie can still cry with the best of them.  Willie tries to soar with an operatic voice in these recordings, but his voice works better with quiet understatement.  For some reason, “I’m a Memory” (track 25) works for me, even with the excessive production.  “That’s Why I Love Her So” (track 26) leaves me cold, but the naked version of “If You Could Only See What’s Going Through My Mind” (track 27) is one of the best 3-4 tracks on this disc.  The naked version of “The Loser’s Song” (track 28) is also much stronger than the more fully produced version.  The Bear Family packs most of three albums on this one disc, so you do get your money’s worth with close to three albums per disc on eight discs, so almost 24 album’s worth of music in one box set, complete with all of the alternate takes and naked versions (minus the overdubs).                

Nashville was the Roughest (disc 4)

Disc four continues the August 9th, 1967 singles’ session.  In “Someday You’ll Call My Name” (track 1) Willie sings of “someday,” looking to the future when the lover who has spurned him will find herself alone.  For Willie, it seems, every day is someday.  His window always faces south.  “Wild Memories” (track 2) describes memory as a place where Willie journeys, where he can “ride wild memories through miles of time, leap over broken dreams.”  The Wild West of memory.  Riding our own mind, trying to break it in like a wild horse before it breaks us.

For some reason this disc jumps over the August 10th and 11th sessions where Willie recorded the tracks for his “Texas in My Soul” LP and moves on to the December 12th, 1967 session where Willie recorded the tracks for his 1968 “Good Times” LP.  This session features Willie’s sparest setting yet, with just Atkins, Martin, Day, and Huskey.  This may be the best version of Willie’s “December Day” (track 3).  And this line struck me today: “as my memories race back to love’s eager beginning, reluctant to play with the thoughts of the ending, the ending that won’t go away.”  Willie’s mind playing with time, trying to manipulate the ending.  He does the same thing with “Pages” (track 4), tearing out chapters and memories and “past[ing] in some new ones far better and true.”  “I screamed at your memory and nobody heard.  But your memory’s determined…it desperately clings to the floor of my mind and fights for its place in the pages of time.”  Again, memory is like the wild west, where you have bar fights and shoot outs.  You have to give Chet Atkins credit for trying something as spare as “Little Things” (track 5).  Willie at his sparest, sincerest, tenderest.  Atkins filled out the “Good Times” album with earlier cuts from 1965 and 1966.  Then we jump to a March 27th, 1968 session with Atkins, Martin, and Huskey.  Willie starts with “Good Times” (track 6).  We have “wild memories” and “good times.”  The power is in the classification.  Willie classifies these as “good times.”  His mind decides how to take and interpret time, but he can’t change the fact that “She’s Still Gone” (track 7).  In “Sweet Memories” (track 8), Willie shows that memories can be both wild and sweet, and maybe he’s suggesting that the wilder they are, the harder to tame, the sweeter they are.  And vice versa.  We then jump to a July 8, 1968 singles’ session with strings.  “Johnny One Time” (track 9) is a less funny version of “Funny How Time Slips Away.”  Then a very dark and haunting version of “Jimmy’s Road” (track 10).  The antithesis of “Bring Me Sunshine” (track 11).  You almost wonder how the same singer could record these two songs in the same session.  Only an emotional chameleon could be capable of such sudden swings.  Next we have the November 5th, 1968 session that led to 1969’s “My Own Peculiar Way” LP, complete with strings, trumpets, and everything else the Nashville Sound could conjure.  In “I Just Don’t Understand” (track 13), Willie laments his lover’s outlook: “Life is short and sweet; break all the hearts you can…it’s all a game to you.” But he responds wryly: “Do you mind too much if I don’t understand.” His mind wanders in “I Let My Mind Wander” (track 12), but then he laments that “My memories outlived my better judgement” in “I Just Dropped By” (track 14).  Willie sings, “these things were on my mind.”  An up-tempo version of “The Local Memory” (track 15) seems inappropriately cheery.  “Natural to Be Gone” (track 16) sounds like a Beatles or a Jim Croce song.  Another tip of the hat to the hippie folk anthems of the era.  The philosophy seems to be that of reincarnation.  Leaving, suffering, pain are all natural.  In “Love Has a Mind of Its Own” (track 17), Willie sings, “I’d love to forget every time that you’ve kissed me.  I’d love to forget that you’re gone.”  But Willie’s mind wanders and he can’t control it.  In fact, if love has a mind of its own, then it isn’t Willie’s mind; it’s love’s mind.  “I’ll Walk Alone” (track 18) may be my favorite on this disc so far.  A gently rocking number where Willie swings despite the strings.  Don Baird’s “It Will Come to Pass” (track 19) deals with the turning earth, the seasons, and the passage of time.  An alternate take of “My Own Peculiar Way” (track 20) (I think they used an earlier version on the album).  Not sure I’ve ever heard Willie’s “The Message” (track 21) before.  His mind keeps moving “faster than [his] pen can write.”  Willie’s mind is the fastest thing about him.  Fast living and fast thinking (but slow singing).  Maybe he overcompensates by singing in such a measured, controlled manner.  Merle Travis’s “That’s All” sounds like Willie’s attempt to imitate Sly and the Family Stone.  “Any Old Arms Won’t Do” (track 23) is one of the better tracks from this session.  Next we have far superior versions of “Johnny One Time” and “Jimmy’s Road” (minus the overubs).  The naked “Bring Me Sunshine” (track 26) also outshines the souped-up version (which ironically became Willie’s biggest hit for RCA).  This is one of the songs that Mickey Raphael stripped for the album “Naked,” but I’m wondering how different his stripped version is from this version minus the overdubs.  Willie doesn’t return to the studio till the following November to record his “Both Sides Now” LP.  Willie has just his road band for “Bloody Mary Morning,” “Pins and needles (In My Heart),” and “Everybody’s Talkin’.”  “Bloody Mary” (or “Merry,” as it originally appeared) features some smart guitar work at the end, early signs of Willie’s virtuosity.  I’m actually a sucker for “Pins and Needles” and “Everybody’s Talkin.’”                      

Nashville was the Roughest (disc 3)

For some reason disc three jumps ahead to a November 28, 1966 studio session with Felton Jarvis in the production booth.  Not sure why the Bear Family skipped past the July 9th live recording at Panther Hall in Fort Worth (which shows up on a later disc).

These November 1966 recordings ended up on Willie’s 1967 “Make Way for Willie Nelson” album, which I have not been able to find on CD yet, so this will be my virgin listen.  I did just got a used LP in the mail yesterday, but I don’t own a record player, so the Bear Family has saved the day once again.  The small band and spare backing (Jimmy Day on steel; Johnny Bush on drums) makes for one of Willie’s best early albums.  Surprisingly, it contains no Willie originals.  He did record his “Something to Think About,” but it didn’t make the final cut for the album.  “Have I Stayed Away Too Long” (Frank Loesser), “Some Other World” (Floyd Tillman), “If It’s Wrong to Love You,” “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” “You made Me Live, Love, and Die” (Floyd Tillman), and “Born to Lose” round out the November 28th session of standard lonesome honky tonk numbers.  Jimmy Day’s steel on Tillman’s “You made Me Live, Love, and Die” may be the saddest thing he’s done (I mean that in a good way).  These tracks help me appreciate Willie’s debt to Floyd Tillman and Hank Williams.  Willie sings these songs competently, but you can tell he is singing someone else’s songs in someone else’s style.  Willie hasn’t found his own style yet, and you can’t blame it on the Nashville Sound because these recordings are raw, and Jimmy Day’s steel is as good as it gets.  On November 29th, Chet Atkins takes the helm with an equally spare backing.  They start with “What Now My Love” and move into “Lovin’ Lies,” with these great lines:  “Lovin’ lies that I believed, and now how I grieve.  You didn’t mean it from the start, and you told me lovin’ lies and broke my heart.”  Leon Payne’s “Teach Me to Forget” is another “she’s gone” song.  Another song about forgetting.  Willie begs her to “stay and teach me to forget.”  This, of course, is exactly what she can’t do.  But it is the lesson we all long for.  Maybe it is the lesson of Willie’s music, of reincarnation.  In “Tender Years” (track 10) Willie sings, “So, if I can’t be your first love, then I’ll wait and be your last.  I’ll be somewhere in the future to help you forget the past.”  Willie as time traveler, moving forward and back in time trying to outsmart love.  Love and art seem to require time, meter, structure, commitment, and yet Willie, like the Wiley Coyote, flirts with the structures of time to have his love and escape it, too.  To lose his love and keep it, too.  Next Willie sings of Hank’s loveless “Mansion on the Hill” (track 11).  Willie needs to do a whole album of these house songs.  Not surprisingly, the best cut from this session is the one that didn’t make the album, Willie’s own “Something to Think About” (track 12).  Willie thinking about love; it’s always on his mind.  “The dawn of your lonely years, when youth and beauty are gone, and you can no longer have any sweetheart that you choose.  Here’s something to think about, I’ll still be thinking of you.”  Two cuts from earlier recordings (June 8th, 1966) made the “Make Way for Willie” album as well: “One in a Row” and “Make a Way for a Better Man.”  All in all, this is one of Willie’s strongest, most consistent albums from the 1960s.

Next we jump to February 22nd, 1967.  Grady joins the group on guitar, but so do the back-up singers.  Red Lane’s “Blackjack County Chain” (track 13) doesn’t sound like a Willie Nelson song, but it got released as a single.  In Willie’s own “Don’t Say Love or Nothing” (track 14), he sings,  “Don’t say love or nothing for awhile.  Yesterday is still too fresh now on my mind, perhaps my heart will learn to show its face in time.”  Yesterday haunts all of Willie’s songs.  “You Ought to Hear Me Cry” (track 15) is another of Willie’s crying songs.  “If I talk loud and laugh loud, you ain’t heard it all.  You ought to hear me cry.”  “I go home to a home where love’s almost gone…Then I sit down in a corner and I turn on the tears.”  The cryin’ cowboy.  Another neat album could be all of Willie’s best crying songs.  Maybe Buddha records could release it with Willie grinning on the cover.  Don Draper in the TV series Mad Men said these exact words in season 2: “I Don’t Feel Anything” (track 16).  Willie continues, “You look the same as always.  Time’s been good to you.  But I must confess, time has done a few things for me, too.”  Willie and time.  Time and tears.  The theme is everywhere in his music.  The healing hands of time.  Not sure why this cut wasn’t released, but the liner notes say that this session was “designed strictly to record singles” (page 27).

On June 13th and 14th, 1967 Willie records the songs for the all-Willie LP “The Party’s Over and Other Great Willie Nelson Songs.” “Please Hold Me Tighter” (track 17) contains one of my favorite Willie lines: “Please hold me tighter; I still remember, and I can’t love again until her memory’s gone.”  The strings seem more tasteful on this recording.  Not sure why.  The credits list a cello, a viola, and a host of violins.  “I’ll Stay Around” (track 18) may be my favorite recording on this entire disc.  As tender as Willie gets.  “I’ll just hang around till it’s over and hope that it never ends.”  Willie is either haunted by a local memory, or he is the one haunting someone else.  He’s like Gatsby outside Daisy’s house.  This reminds me of the lines cited earlier: “I’ll be somewhere in the future to help you forget the past.”  You can’t repeat the past?  Why of course you can, Old Sport.  “A Moment Isn’t Very Long” (track 19) contains these apt lines: “Yesterday as I talked to a friend in town, I forgot to remember that you’d gone…Last night, as I danced with a stranger, and she held her cheek close to my own, for a moment I almost forgot you, but a moment isn’t very long…Every now and then I get a chance to smile, but those every now and thens just last a little while.”  Time always moves too fast or too slow for Willie.  So he haunts it like “The Ghost” (track 20).  “The ghost of our old love goes away.”  Love and time have this ghost-like quality in Willie’s music.  Moving back and forth through walls and houses and wives and years.  Restless and never fully there, always elusive, fleeting, distant.  In “No Tomorrow in Sight” (track 21), Willie sings, “I hope we can salvage a few memories to carry us through the long night…the clock striking midnight, yesterday’s gone, and there’s no tomorrow in sight.”  Tomorrow and yesterday are like ghosts; you can’t see them or hold them.  They won’t hold still, yet Willie is always hunting them, lying in wait, searching the usual haunts.  This version of “There Goes a Man” (track 22) makes me think Willie should do an album with Yo-Yo Ma.  Just Willie, Trigger, and Yo-Yo Ma’s cello.  In “Go Away” (track 23), Willie sings,  “You only make things worse by hangin’ around,” yet earlier Willie himself was hanging around: “I’ll just hang around till it’s over and hope that it never ends.”  So hanging around and not hanging are equally ineffective.  A watched pot never boils, and love’s skittish when it’s stalked.  It scares easily.  Our hearts are easily spooked.  In “Once Alone” (track 24), Willie sings, “Before our chance for happiness is gone, don’t you think we should try it once alone?...It’s not your fault, and neither is it mine.  It seems we’re just victims of the times.”  No-fault love and divorce.  We are poor players on a stage, puppets, victims of chance and fate and time.  If we are victims, what crime is time guilty of?  Of existing?  Time is a crime?  A crying shame?  The crime of time.  Time: a crime.  Time is the scene of the crime.  A very deterministic, fatalistic, Hindu notion.  “The End of Understanding” (track 25), “To Make a Long Story Short (She’s Gone)” (track 26), and “Suffer in Silence” (track 27) round out the June 14th session, notable for the tasteful strings and the Willie originals.  We then jump to an August 9th session geared toward singles.  Rich Kienzle calls this recording of “Truth Number One” (track 28) “ridiculous.”  It does sound more like a 1960s hippie folk anthem.  When Willie sings, “The answer my friend,” I was half expecting to hear “is blowing in the wind.”    “When I Don’t Have You” (track 29) was not released, but it contains interesting lines like this: “with loneliness ablaze in my brain.”  “Loneliness Ablaze” could be the title of Willie’s early years.  The beautiful blaze of loneliness.  It’s a rough, quirky, odd song, but interesting.  Gives off heat.  The embers of love.  Smoldering.  Willie’s songs are like small fires we huddle around to face the night.  They provide a small but real bit of comfort and reassurance.    

Nashville was the Roughest (disc 2)

The strings are back on August 2nd, 1965 for “Did I Ever Love You,” but this disc provides both the Nashville Sound versions (overdubbed on August 17th) and the naked, non-overdubbed versions. In “And So Will You My Love,” Willie sings, “Nothing lasts forever except forever and you, my love.”  The liner notes don’t make clear where these first four recordings ended up album-wise, but tracks 5-16 (in a slightly different order) are from December 15th and 16th sessions and end up on “Country Favorites: Willie Nelson Style”.  “Fraulein” (track 5) is pleasantly devoid of strings and back-up singers.  Wade Ray’s fiddle and the rest of the Texas Troubadours provide a much better backing for Willie than Chet Atkins’ earlier settings.  I’ve reviewed the tracks from this album in a previous blog--“I Love You Because,” “I’d Trade All of My Tomorrows,” “Making Believe,” “Home in San Antone,” “Don’t You Ever Get Tired (of Hurting Me),” “Columbus Stockade Blues,” “Seasons of My Hearts,” “Heartaches By the Number,” “Go on Home,” “My Window Faces South,” and “San Antonio Rose”—but I appreciate more fully today, after a year of listening to Willie non-stop, the tight band behind Willie on this LP.  Wade Ray’s fiddle blisters through “Home in San Antone.”  Willie does his best George Jones imitation on track ten: “Don’t You Ever Get Tired (of Hurting Me).”  Buddy Charleton’s steel weeps with Willie on this classic tear jerker.  This version of “Columbus Stockade Blues” doesn’t seem as strong as the three Liberty versions with Shirley Collie.  The spare “Seasons of My Heart” (track 12) may be my favorite thus far on this disc.  Just Willie, steel, piano, snare, and bass.  “Go On Home”  (track 14) is another bleak, moody heartbreaker.  In March 1966, Willie returned to the studio with Felton Jarvis at the helm.  The Nashville Sound is back with a vengeance on “I’m Still Not Over You.”  The only other place I can find Willie recording this song is on his duet album with Ray Price, “Run That By Me One More Time,” and the version on that album is much stronger.  “Today I made a point to go somewhere I knew you’d be.  I had to know if you still had the same effect on me.  And the moment I saw you there I knew, no matter what I do, I’m still not over you.”   This reminds me of one of my favorite country lines (from a late 1980’s Randy Travis album): “Is it still over?  Are we still through?  My phone still ain’t ringin’, so I assume it still ain’t you.”  Willie continues, “I can’t explain why seeing you affects my sanity, but when I see you I become a strange and different me.”  Not sure why Willie re-recorded “San Antonio Rose” and “Columbus Stockade Blues” in March 1966.  Sounds like the Beach Boys with a rock and roll beat and trumpets.  Willie returns to the studio in June 1966, and this disc gives us both the over-dubbed and the naked versions of these singles, two of which became Willie’s biggest RCA singles to date: “One in a Row” (reaching #18) and “The Party’s Over” (peaking at #24).  “A Wonderful Yesterday” (track 21) contains some of my favorite Willie lines: “Today’s gonna make a wonderful yesterday…today we have made a thousand and one memories that we can recall when today is a sweet used-to-be.”  This disc ends with eight naked versions of songs (tracks 25-32) that are far superior to the sweetened versions that appear earlier on the disc.  The semi-naked, partially-clothed versions of “The Party’s Over” and “One in a Row” lack the strings but still have the background singers, so they aren’t actually as different as I had hoped they would be.  Nevertheless, these first two discs have proven that that this collection is worth the steep price.                        

Nashville was the Roughest (disc 1)

My Christmas present to myself was the Bear Family’s mammoth eight-cd Willie box set “Nashville was the Roughest,” which chronicles Willie’s eight years and 44 sessions with RCA (1964-1972) along with his two sessions (and seven songs) with Monument in 1964.  The question remains, will the Bear Family tackle Willie’s Atlantic Years (1973-1974) or his Columbia years (1975-1993)?  I guess the Complete Atlantic Recordings box set covers 1973-1974, but I’d love to see the Bear Family tackle the Columbia years.  I think the four-cd box set “One Hell of a Ride” attempts to cover the Columbia years, but it only scratches the surface.

It’s amazing that after a year of listening to Willie Nelson daily, I am still finding new stuff.  Some of the tracks on the first disc of “Nashville was the Roughest” I have never heard before.  I have all of these early RCA records, but this disc contains unreleased versions, many of which lack the syrupy overdubbed choruses and strings.  The first seven tracks come from Willie’s brief stint with Monument.  Add “King of a Lonely Castle” to the long list of Willie’s house songs.  And they are always lonely houses, mansions, castles, homes.  To make a long story short, and to sum up all of Willie’s life and music, and all of these blogs: “she’s gone.”  She being a lover (representing peace, contentment, fulfillment), and she being time.  Time and contentment are always eluding us.  The only way for this predicament to resolve itself would be for time to stop, which is what art tries to do: stop time and give us that God-like perspective.  Songs do that because we can play them again and again.  They are always there to satisfy when life cannot.  Art doesn’t change the way life and people do.  So “she” is always literal and figurative.  In this first track, the queen of Willie’s castle is gone.  The background is hilariously over-the-top, but Willie’s vocals remain interesting, straining at the edges of meter Sinatra-like even in 1964.  The trumpets in “(There’ll Be) Someone Waiting for You” are too much, but Willie slows down phrases and bends notes and measures in pleasing ways.  All seven songs recorded for Monument are Willie originals, and this one is another she-left-me-but-I’ll-wait-patiently-in-case-she-ever-returns songs.  Willie as the ever-faithful one, longing, pining, hoping his love will come to her senses and realize what she’s left behind.  “To Make a Long Story Short” (track three) features a harmonica for the first time in Willie’s career, and this sound will come to define his music.  “I Never Cared for You” and the next three songs come from the second Monument session (July 26, 1964) which includes a much smaller band: just guitar, drums, bass, and sax.  “You Left Me a Long, Long Time Ago” (track 5) is as spare as his early Pamper demo recordings.  People leave us even when they are with us.  They aren’t with us when they’re with us.  This is why it is so hard to be satisfied.  People can never truly be with us enough to satisfy all of our longings.  Yet the desire for such complete oneness remains and is the driving impetus for most art.  The desire drives us to try to create in art what we can’t find in life.  “I Feel That Old Feeling” (track 6) has the same spare, raw demo quality.  That old feeling, “the voice of discontentment,” the wanderlust, haunts Willie like an old memory.  Willie can feel this old feeling comin’ on like a cold.  This second version of “King of a Lonely Castle” (track 7) removes all of the strings and back-up vocals but leaves the absurd bugle.  Nevertheless, it is one of the best examples of Willie’s pure vocals from this era.  These previously un-released Monument tracks alone are worth the price of the box set.  With track 8 we switch to RCA and Chet Atkins (November 12, 1964).  Not the best version of Willie’s “Pretty Paper.”  The ooh-ah chorus distracts.  Ditto for “What a Merry Christmas this Could Be,” though Willie still manages to flirt dangerously with the meter, and Pete Drake’s steel adds some legit heartache.  “Healing Hands of Time” (track 10) and “Talk to Me” (track 11) suffer the same fate at the hands of the ooh-ah chorus.  You won’t hear Willie singing the German “Whiskey Walzer” (track 12) anywhere else (December 3, 1964).  On “Little Darling” (track 13) Willie overdubs German vocals to the backing of “Pretty Paper” from track 8.  The heartache seems to translate well into German.  I wonder what the Germans thought.  I guess the Bear Family liked it.  This version of “Permanently Lonely” (January 12, 1965) can’t compare to the Pamper demo version, but Willie’s vocals, Pete Drake’s steel, and Pig Robbins’ piano remain interesting.  The January 12, 1965 version of “Healing Hands of Time” (track 15) may be worse that the one on track 10 with even more of the Anita Kerr Singers and a “full-blown string section.”   Somehow “Ashamed” works better for me.  While the strings and chorus still annoy, they seem more fitting.  Can’t explain why.  These cuts appeared on Willie’s 1968 album “Good Times.”  Willie seems more comfortable.  In “She’s Not For You” (track 17), Willie sings about a woman who promises to be true.  He warns a friend to avoid her because “sometimes she lies,” and time slips away, and forever doesn’t last as long as you think it will.  He ends with this great line I’ve somehow missed on previous listenings: “Just leave her here, I’m used to feeling blue.”  Jumping ahead to April 7, 1965, Willie has a much sparer back-up group of electric guitar, steel, bass, and drums.  This version of “Are You Sure” is as good as Willie gets.  A treasure.  The cheesy snaps on this version of “Night Life” (track 19) seem out of place, but this is Willie the way he was meant to be recorded: naked.  One annoying feature of the Bear Family discography is that they don’t indicate which album(s) each track eventually appeared on.  I appreciate that they list the recordings by studio session and in chronological order, but you have to go back through the lengthy liner notes to track down which albums the songs appeared on.  I guess when I have all of the albums loaded in ITUNES I’ll be able to tell fairly quickly.  These versions of “Mr. Record Man” (track 20) and “Healing Hands of Time” (track 21) from the pared down April 7th session surpass anything else Willie did at this time.  Even the liner notes don’t make clear which album these spare tracks ended up on.  This raw version of “Funny How Time Slips Away” (track 22) comes from the April 8th session as does “My Own Peculiar Way” (track 23), “One Day at a Time” (24), “It Should Be Easier Now” (25), and “Darkness On the Face of the Earth” (26).  “Buddy” (27), “Hello Walls” (28), “So Much to Do” (29), and “Within Your Crowd” come from the April 9th session and round out “the album,” according to the Bear Family, but they don’t say which one.  So often the sappy Nashville Sound gets blamed for ruining Willie’s songs, but even these perfectly spare recordings didn’t sell in 1965, so it seems fair to say that listeners just weren’t ready for Willie in any setting in 1965.  “Darkness on the Face of the Earth” has a dance-like beat that seems inappropriate for the dark content, but it foreshadows Willie’s flamenco versions on “Teatro.”  In the liner notes Rich Kienzle dismisses Pete Drake’s talking steel on “Hello Walls.”  One disc down, seven to go.  A great way to spend my last week of vacation.  A disc of Willie a day keeps the heartache at bay.