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.