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.’”