VH1 Storytellers (1998)—take 2

They say time changes everything, but six months has not changed my view of this album. It is still in my top ten, and as I wrote in January, I don’t see it going anywhere. This is Willie at his best in his best setting: solo acoustic. At times I wanted a little Johnny Gimble fiddle, but that’s it. Maybe a little Mickey Raphael harmonica. Funny how the first three albums I reviewed have stood the test of time and are still in my top ten. I listened to this album two or three times while cooking dinner, and it just keeps getting better.

Teatro (1998)--take 2

For my recent trip to The High Hampton Inn, I made a new playlist of the 200 Willie Nelson songs (out of a possible 1600) that I marked as 5-stars in my ITUNES. I put it on shuffle and listened to my 5-star Willie Nelson mix. 200 songs distilled from 111 albums and selected from over 1600 songs. I also made a 4-star mix made up of all the songs I marked with 4 stars.

Today I begin working my way back through the 100 or so albums I have already reviewed. As I get my hands on the remaining albums I’m missing, I’ll review those, but till then, I’ll just re-listen to the ones I have already reviewed (in the same order). So I will start again in 1998 with Willie’s flamenco-inflected “Teatro.”

Willie opens with the instrumental “Ou Es-Tu, Mon Amour” (Where Are You, My Love?). He begins, like the play “Hamlet,” with a question. A wordless, instrumental question. A state of questioning, longing. Then he moves to the gnomic, paradoxical “I Never Cared For You.”

I know you won’t believe the things I tell you…

Your heart has been forewarned

All men will lie to you

Your mind cannot conceive

Now all depends on what I say to you

And on your doubting me

So I’ve prepared these statements far from true

Pay heed and disbelieve

I’m not even sure how to paraphrase these zen-like koans. I think he is saying, “I know you won’t believe me. You think all men will lie to you. But everything depends on what I have to say to you and on the fact that you will not believe me. So I have prepared false statements for you. Pay attention, but don’t believe them.” What can that possibly mean? Reminds me of the “All Cretans are liars” paradox. If a Cretan tells you this, what are you to make of it? Either way it’s true, either way it’s false. Willie’s songs are based on the desire for truth, but the recognition of lies, deception, and cheating when it comes to matters of the heart. Nothing is what it seems. Trust no one and nothing, even the advice to trust no one and nothing. Even that advice “ain’t necessarily so.” Willie here seems to be paraphrasing Hamlet’s famous “Get Thee to a Nunnery” scene in Act III, scene 1 of “Hamlet.” The question is, can we take Willie or Hamlet seriously? Are they crazy, foolish, mad (as they so often claim to be)? I reprint the entire scene at the end of this blog, but the key idea is that Hamlet says he loved Ophelia once, but then he says he never loved her. Just as Willie says, “I never cared for you.” Is he being ironic or serious? How can we tell? Should we (or Ophelia) believe either of them? And then the larger question raised by all of Willie’s music, is true love even possible in this fallen world, or should we follow Hamlet’s advice to “Get thee to a nunnery”?

This time around I have a sense of every song Willie ever sang as I re-review these albums, so I have a better sense of the whole in the part. In “Everywhere I Go” Willie seems to be referring to taking a memory of his love around with him in his pocket, in his mind. It’s another version of “You Were Always on My Mind.” Even on the road, at every show, the memory of your love will be with him. Is this true love? It is permanent, but it is purely mental, platonic, ideal. Does it really exist? Is it “just a memory.” “Darkness on the Face of the Earth” is another “she left me” song, but an upbeat, two-step sad song. In “My Own Peculiar Way” Willie describes an unusual kind of love indeed. He insists, “Don’t doubt my love,” and yet he and Hamlet asserted earlier that she should trust none of us, we are arrant knaves all of us. Though Willie’s mind wanders to yesterdays, to past loves, she should remain certain of her love living on in his mind? What kind of assurance is this? Should she take comfort that she will live always in his mind, but if his mind wanders, then what? Is there even stability in the mind and memory? “These Lonely Nights” is another teardrop song, another promise song: “I would love you till no end.” In other words, “I’ll always love you,” except of course if I never love you, and in either case, don’t believe me. “I Just Can’t Let You Say Goodbye” may be the scariest song in Willie’s repertoire. He kills his love so she can’t hurt him anymore by leaving him and saying goodbye. It is the scariest solution to the “she left me” predicament. It is the closest Willie comes to Keats “Ode to a Grecian Urn.” Here love is truly frozen in death, made eternal, perfect. And yet we see here perfectly, literally, that to freeze love, to make it last, is to kill it. This version of “Home Motel” may be the best, and the only song I know of where Willie sings solo vocals with just a piano and nothing else. I can’t make sense of Daniel Lanois’ “The Maker,” but it seems to be about man’s longing for yet separation from God. “I’ve just destroyed the world” could be the soundtrack for Hamlet’s nunnery scene with Ophelia. “Fools in love…never learn till it’s too late.” Hamlet has destroyed his own world and any hope of finding love. “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces” may be one of my top ten favorite Willie songs. As haunting and heartbreaking as he gets. This is the funkiest version of “Three Days” I’ve encountered. “I’ve loved you all over the world” offers the paradox that Willie will follow his heart wherever it takes him (which implies unfettered freedom), and yet he vows to love his woman “until death do us part” and “all over the world.” His love is boundless in every sense of the word. It can’t stay put; it is always flowing willy-nilly over all banks and borders, across geography and time. It can’t be tied down in both the good and bad sense of the phrase. He ends with another instrumental song, a technique he’s used before. Open and close in wordlessness.

Hamlet, Act III, Scene i

And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!

The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remember'd.

OPHELIA

Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?

HAMLET

I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

OPHELIA

My lord, I have remembrances of yours,

That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I pray you, now receive them.

HAMLET

No, not I;

I never gave you aught.

OPHELIA

My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;

And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed

As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,

Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.

HAMLET

Ha, ha! are you honest?

OPHELIA

My lord?

HAMLET

Are you fair?

OPHELIA

What means your lordship?

HAMLET

That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should

admit no discourse to your beauty.

OPHELIA

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than

with honesty?

HAMLET

Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner

transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the

force of honesty can translate beauty into his

likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the

time gives it proof. I did love you once.

OPHELIA

Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.

HAMLET

You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot

so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of

it: I loved you not.

OPHELIA

I was the more deceived.

HAMLET

Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a

breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;

but yet I could accuse me of such things that it

were better my mother had not borne me: I am very

proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at

my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,

imagination to give them shape, or time to act them

in. What should such fellows as I do crawling

between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,

all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.

Where's your father?

OPHELIA

At home, my lord.

HAMLET

Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the

fool no where but in's own house. Farewell.

OPHELIA

O, help him, you sweet heavens!

HAMLET

If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for

thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as

snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a

nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs

marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough

what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go,

and quickly too. Farewell.

OPHELIA

O heavenly powers, restore him!

HAMLET

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God

has given you one face, and you make yourselves

another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and

nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness

your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath

made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages:

those that are married already, all but one, shall

live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a

nunnery, go.

Exit

OPHELIA

O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;

The expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck'd the honey of his music vows,

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,

Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;

That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth

Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,

To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Re-enter KING CLAUDIUS and POLONIUS

KING CLAUDIUS

Love! his affections do not that way tend;

Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little,

Was not like madness. There's something in his soul,

O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;

And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose

Will be some danger: which for to prevent,

I have in quick determination

Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England,

For the demand of our neglected tribute

Haply the seas and countries different

With variable objects shall expel

This something-settled matter in his heart,

Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus

From fashion of himself. What think you on't?

LORD POLONIUS

It shall do well: but yet do I believe

The origin and commencement of his grief

Sprung from neglected love. How now, Ophelia!

You need not tell us what Lord Hamlet said;

We heard it all. My lord, do as you please;

But, if you hold it fit, after the play

Let his queen mother all alone entreat him

To show his grief: let her be round with him;

And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear

Of all their conference. If she find him not,

To England send him, or confine him where

Your wisdom best shall think.

KING CLAUDIUS

It shall be so:

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

Touch at a Distance

On a RadioLab podcast on music, a psychology professor defines sound as “touch at a distance.” It strikes me that this could be a good way to define Willie Nelson’s music. Willie has an album titled “The Sound in Your Mind,” and it turns out that all sound is created by electric signals transmitted from your ear to your brain, so sound literally exists only in your mind. Sounds also literally touch bones in your ear that vibrate, and thus you can touch people through music in a physical, biochemical, electrical way. Jonah Lehrer discusses much of this in his book “Proust was a Neuroscientist.” He is also interviewed extensively on the RadioLab podcast. Willie’s music is dovetailing nicely with many of my other interests, such as William James (quoted in the epigraph of Lehrer’s book and the subject of an entire book by Jacques Barzun, which I just purchased). Willie sings about the intersection of time, mind, and sound. This trinity seems to be the source of all our woes when it comes to love. I also plan to consult Robert Sternberg’s “The Psychology of Love” as I delve deeper into Willie’s own psychology of love as expressed in his 50-year career and 100+ albums.

A Sad Day

Well, it’s a sad day. I now own 93 Willie Nelson albums of original material, and if you add the compilations, I own 111. But today I seem to have hit the wall. I can’t get my hands on anything new. There are a few albums still out there that I know of, but I just can’t get my hands on them:

“Walking the Line” (1977)—album with George Jones and Merle Haggard

“The Electric Horesman” (1979) (movie soundtrack)--$99 used on Amazon (a bit pricey)

“Music From ‘Songwriter’” (1984)—movie soundtrack—I can find the movie but not the soundtrack

“Pancho, Lefty, and Rudolph” (1995)—Christmas album with Merle Haggard; not sure if this is just a compilation or original versions

“Willie Nelson and Eddie Rabbit” (2000)—I think this is a compilation

“Georgia on My mind” (2001)— I think this is a compilation

“Good Hearted Woman” (2001)— I think this is a compilation

“Gravedigger” (2007)—not sure what this is

I would also like to get the Bear Family compilations:

“Nashville was the Roughest” (1998)

“It’s Been Rough and Rocky Travelin’” (2003)

But they may just compile stuff I already have, and they are pricey ($100+ used on Amazon).

And there are about a dozen live shows available on USB keys in wristbands available on-line, but they are $30 a pop, so I’m not ready to buy all of those just yet.

I have not reviewed and do not own the individual albums for “And Then I Wrote” and “Here’s Willie Nelson,” but I think all of this material appears on “The Complete Liberty Recordings,” which I own and have reviewed.

Tomorrow I may need to start re-listening to the cds I have already reviewed and/or start reviewing the best versions of certain songs (ie., ranking the best versions of “Whiskey River”). I may also start revising, cleaning up, and polishing my previous blogs in light of further listening (and with the almost-entire oeuvre under my belt). I thought I’d make it longer, but it is still pretty impressive to go six months with listening to a new album (or disc of a multi-disc album) almost every day. That’s a lot of Willie Nelson. According to my ITUNES (and I think I’ve loaded all of my albums onto my computer), I have 1,664 Willie Nelson songs, which makes for 3.7 days of music and takes up 9.7 gigs of memory, so it won’t quite fit on my 8 gig nano IPOD. That said, several of these songs are duplicates because they appear on original albums and on compilations.

Laying My Burdens Down (1970)

I own this 1970 Felton Jarvis produced RCA album on LP, but since I don’t have a record player, I’ll be reviewing the songs via the ITUNES album I downloaded for $9.99. I’ve reviewed the title track on my blog for the compilation “One Hell of a Ride,” but it bears repeating that this gospel tune has a funky bass that makes me wish Willie did this song live in concert these days as an encore. Dee Moeller’s “How Long Have You Been There” fits into Willie’s host of haunted memory songs. He burns bridges, but memories of lost loves pursue him, haunt him, and won’t let him go. Willie makes a wise choice with Glenn Campbell’s “Senses.” “I feel lonely every day…now I can taste the tears that I cried…it’s over but I don’t have the sense to let you go…It doesn’t make much sense for me to cry for you, and if I had any sense at all I’d realize we’re through. But my senses are reacting much too slow.” This song and Willie’s career might do well to steal a title from Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility. Here Willie is crying as usual. He’s the crying cowboy, a sensitive soul. And yet, he has no sense. Too sensitive for his own good, and not enough sense. It’s another “she’s gone” song. The battle between heart and mind, between feeling and thought, is one that Willie depicts in song after song. He’s the Jane Austen of Country Music, the Lizzy Bennett (with a little Wickham sprinkled in for good measure, or bad measure, as the case may be). Felton Jarvis let me down by letting the strings and back-up singer invade this song, but the lyrics and the vocals make up for the grating background. Willie’s own “I Don’t Feel Anything” returns to the funky bass beat of “Laying My Burdens Down.” It’s an interesting choice to follow “Senses.” In that song he felt too much, here he feels nothing. Willie’s always feeling too much or not enough, and always at the wrong times. A not uncommon human predicament. “I don’t feel love or hate or anything that I felt before. Why was I so afraid of seeing you again? How I must have loved you once upon a time…You look the same as always, time’s been good to you, but I must confess that time has done a few things for me, too.” Here again time is on Willie’s side. He uses time to his advantage. “Love’s not time’s fool,” and neither is Willie. I actually kind of like the canned horns in the background. I wish Willie did more with horns. Harlan Howard’s “I’ve Seen That Look On Me (A Thousand Times)” is another example of Willie’s double-vision, his ability to see “both sides now.” Like Proust’s binoculars. The gist of the song is that Willie’s been cheating on his woman for a long time, and now she’s finally started cheating on him. It takes one to know one, and Willie knows that knowing look. He can sympathize. He can see himself in someone else. “What makes us do the things we do? Heaven only knows. We think we have a secret, but it always shows. And I taught you how to cheat, and you’re doing fine….But I still love you, and so I pretend, and hope I never see that look again. But if I do, I know the fault is mine.” She lies to him, and he lies back by acting like he doesn’t notice. Fight lies with lies. I think what attracts so many people to Willie’s music is his willingness to admit “the fault is mine.” He knows people lie and cheat and hide, but he doesn’t get bent out of shape because he knows he does it, too. I’m not sure what Willie’s “Where Do You Stand?” is about. This sounds like the same version that’s on the 2009 compilation “Naked Willie,” but I’m not positive. “Hey what’s your plan?” The strings and horns and back-up vocals are almost too much to bear. “It’s time for commitments, it’s time for a showing of hands.” Willie is one to talk about commitments. “Surely there’s someone with courage to say where he stands.” How can you stand firmly when you’re always on the road? Eddie Rager’s “Minstrel Man” is very much in the JT, Carole King, 1970s vein of songwriting. “Happiness Lives Next Door” seems to be the same version as the one on “Naked Willie” but different from the one on “The Ghost” and “Face of a Fighter.” “When We Live Again” is the third song that shows up again on “Naked Willie.” Clearly Mickey Raphael thought this was an album in dire need of denuding. This song features one of Willie’s more telling lines: “Let’s re-live again the time that we know now.” Even in the present moment he is looking ahead to how this moment will look as a memory. He can’t wait to re-live a moment. In fact, he seems to hurry through life on the road so he can get to re-living his life. “Let’s not lose the days, the progress love has made.” “Following Me Around” harkens back to “How Long Have You Been There?” A memory is following Willie around. This song fittingly appears on “The Ghost” (and I have reviewed the lyrics on my blog for that compilation) and this same version appears on “Naked Willie,” sans strings and back-up vocals. So almost half of this album is rescued and restored by Mickey Raphael. He needs to go through and do the same with a great deal more of Willie’s over-produced early work. In short, the over-production of these songs knocks this album out of the untenable top ten, but you can hear many of them in a more palatable setting on “Naked Willie.”

The Party’s Over (1967)

Today I’m going back to before I was born. I have already commented on the lyrics for “Suffer in Silence” in the blog entry for “The Ghost” (Part 1). On some albums it is listed as “Suffering in Silence.” I find this with several of Willie’s songs. The titles vary slightly over time or from album to album or compilation to compilation. This version is drenched in strings. “Hold Me Tighter” takes a new approach to an old Willie theme. “I thought if you’d just hold me tight maybe I’d forget her. But I don’t suppose, as yet, you’ve held me tight enough. Please hold me tighter. I still remember. Put your arms around me. Hold me close and hold me tight and long… and I can’t love again until her memory’s gone.” What other country singer can get away with using phrases like “as yet”? I would not be shocked to hear Willie use “moreover” or “heretofore.” Here he wants his new love to squeeze the memory of his old love out of him. In his other songs Willie has tried to out run memories, drink them away, sleep them away, hide from them, but here he tries to squeeze them out. Proust would have a field day with this. Or a madeleine. I’ve reviewed “Go Away” on previous blogs. The strings drown out the otherwise solid vocals. The version of “The Ghost” on the compilation of the same name is so much better than this one. It is a textbook example of how the same song is so much better as a demo recording than as a fully-produced Nashville Sound recording. “To Make a Long Story Short” is pregnant with meaning. Isn’t that what songwriters do? Make long stories short? Condense entire love affairs into 2 ½ minutes? “To make a long story short, she’s gone.” All of Willie’s music, and all of country music in general, and the blues, could be summed up in these two words: she’s gone. The irony here is that Willie has spent 80 years singing and writing about why she left. He hasn’t made the story short at all. He’s made the story into a career, into hundreds of songs. He’s made the story last, literally, forever. So, as an artist, he both condenses and contracts and thereby heightens stories, but he also lengthens and preserves and extends them. And, inexplicably, does both at the same time. In the same way Proust makes a long story short in “In Search of Lost Time,” or is it a short story writ long? Maybe writers make long stories short and short stories long. “I won’t try to give the reasons why I miss her so.” Yeah, right. I’ve heard that one before. And then, of course, “A Moment isn’t Very Long.” It’s forever. It goes by so fast, but then it lasts so long. It almost seems as if the faster it goes by the longer it lasts? Like the skid marks of time, the residue. I have reviewed most of these songs previously, but it is interesting to see how they fit together on one album. “The Party’s Over” gets at the notion that “all good things must end.” And yet all of Willie’s songs deal with how we face this fact. Time and life is fleeting, it passes quickly, it ends, and yet tomorrow comes. How do we find closure within eternity? How do we deal with unique experiences in the midst of the “same old thing again.” “The Party’s Over” is also another “she’s gone” song. It’s interesting to compare the 1962 Liberty version of “There Goes a Man” with this 1967 version. Both have strings, but this more recent version does without the canned back-up vocals. I have commented on the lyrics in an earlier blog, but this time around I note Willie’s statement about fate: “Fate has frowned on him, then turned around and smiled on me.” Willie does believe in some sort of fate or destiny. This is confirmed again in the next song: “Once Alone.” “Life’s too short to spend it feelin’ blue. And it’s not too late. Our dreams could still come true. But before our chance for happiness is gone. Don’t you think we should try it once alone?” When the going gets tough in marriage, the Willie way is to hit the road and look for sunnier pastures. Why feel blue if you don’t have to? Then Willie builds on his no-fault approach to relationships: “It’s not your fault, and neither is it mine. It seems that we’re just victims of the times.” Star-crossed lovers, victims of fate and time. “It’s not that I don’t love you, ‘cause I do. But love alone can’t make a dream come true.” Not sure what to make of his. If love alone can’t make a dream come true, what can? He seems to be saying that love alone is not enough to sustain love. Which implies that he actually wants something more than love (adventure maybe?). Or maybe it’s the Gatsby/Daisy paradox that real love cannot support the weight of ideal, imagined, platonic love. “I suppose that we’ll survive the parting tears. We’ve survived so many others through the years.” And back to tears again. Tears and time. That might be the title of my book. Time and Tears. This version of “No Tomorrow in Sight” sounds very similar to the one on “The Ghost,” but it’s hard to tell. I have commented elsewhere about the lyrics, but what strikes me this time around is that this is another “Leave-me-quietly-in-the-night” song. This seems to be a theme. No fault, no blame, just leave and move on. “Our love was too weak to pull our dreams through, but too strong to let us forget.” Ah, the twin tides of love. As with the previous song, love is not enough to pull us through, but strong enough to haunt our memory. It can’t last forever in reality, but it can last forever in our minds. It can’t conquer time, and yet it can. “I’ll Stay Around” also appears on “The Ghost,” which seems to be the case with many of these songs. “I’ll hang around till it’s over and hope that it never ends and maybe in time you’ll change your mind and decide to love me again. I’ll just simply refuse to leave you. Call me stubborn, but I’ll never give in.” Ah, Willie playing the faithful housewife again. Sitting at home waiting longingly for her spouse to return. He’ll just wait patiently forever. This from the man who wrote “On the Road Again.” It’s one of the most delightful paradoxes in all of music. Willie, like Walt Whitman, is both of these people. The wife waiting at home and the husband who never comes home. And he plays both parts convincingly. It’s another “always” song, another “forever” song. It flies in the face of his many “Funny how time slips away” songs. Willie is both the person who sincerely pledges his love will last forever, and the person who knowingly smiles when it doesn’t. He’s just casually “hanging around till it’s over” and hoping it will never end. Even though “the party’s over,” the lights are out, Willie is hanging around in the dark ever hopeful, ever optimistic. A modern day Pangloss preaching that all is for the best. This is one of Willie’s most tender vocal performances. If only we could edit out the strings. “The End of Understanding” is another song that also appears on “The Ghost” and “The Road Goes on Forever.” I review the lyrics on the blogs for those albums, but suffice it to say that Willie will never reach the “end of understanding.” He stays on the intellectual and emotional road to nowhere. Understanding is as elusive as the light at the end of Daisy’s dock. And “understanding” here means both forgiveness and knowledge. Willie is always reaching the end of his own rope, and he is always forcing others to reach the end of theirs. Living at the end of all ropes seems to be his motto, and maybe even living at both ends of both ropes, if that’s possible. In any case, a perfect song to end an album with. I need to look more closely at how he sequences songs on albums. Always very thoughtful.

The Words Don’t Fit the Picture (1972)

When “the words don’t fit the picture” there’s “no need to force the love scenes anymore.” So many of Willie’s songs are about empty words, empty promises. “A game we play.” A role. And we say words that aren’t our own. Just lines that people say in movies; lines that we don’t mean, though we wish we did. “And if we’ve been acting all along, and we both act right and we both act wrong, where does it say that we should cry?” No-fault romance. No need to cry. We’re both right. We’re both wrong. Everybody wins. Everybody loses. No use crying. A fairly spare recording with a prominent harmonica. Willie still sounds like he’s trying to be someone else, but he does seem to be singing all over the beat. This version of “Good Hearted Woman” does not compare well to the more famous (and rightly so) live versions. This is the first time I’ve heard “Stay Away from Lonely Places…till you learn to live alone.” It has a mournful harmonica and steel guitar. I was pleasantly surprised by the spare setting. A little Trigger work in the middle. “Stay Away From Lonely places for a while.” That “for a while” is key. The diction reminds me of “funny” in “Funny how time slips away.” I’ll be sad, but only for a while. No BFD. Everything in Willie’s universe is just for a while. Time itself is just for a while. Ain’t no thang. Fleeting and evanescent like Japanese poetry. Cry for a while, but smile for eternity. This version of “Country Willie” is actually slowed down, and the vocals feature prominently. It may have the worst back-up singing yet. Even my four-year-old said he didn’t like this song when the background singers kicked in. “London” surprised me. What is the crying cowboy doing singing (or, rather, talking) about London? This one is a real curiosity. Unlike anything else he has done. More of a Johnny Cash talking song. Willie hums along: “London, you’ve screamed the largest portion of the day…Rest your lungs, tomorrow’s on it’s way.” This version of “One Step Beyond” is funkier and bouncier than the others I’ve heard. It may be one of my favorites. Nice guitar work on several of these songs. The doo-wop singers are back with a vengeance on “My Kind of Girl.” This is the first time I’ve heard this song. “Will You Remember?” may be the best song on the album. I’ve reviewed this version previously in my blog about the compilation “Sweet Memories,” where it also appears. I have numerous versions of “Rainy Day Blues,” but I like the way the vocals stand out in this one. This album started out rough with all the strings, but it’s growing on me towards the end. Some definite keepers here. And the harmonica shines on this track and others. Is it Mickey? “If You Really Loved Me” “you wouldn’t treat me this way. And you’d be kind enough to leave some night while I’m away. And I might cry when you go, but I won’t die when you go.” Cryin’ but not dyin’. Willie bends, but he doesn’t break. Emotional ju-jitsu. Or is it judo? The one where you give ground and use the opponent’s momentum against them. Willie seems to miss a few notes on this one, but I like the way he’s stretching. Willie seems to be saying that true love is leaving someone in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. Is that like a mercy killing? True love isn’t loving someone forever, it’s knowing when to go, and going quietly in the night, no questions asked. No-fault love. Not exactly unconditional love, as it is traditionally conceived, but I guess this is Willie’s version of agape. I wanted to end on a positive notes, but he (or Chet, more likely) trots out the doo-wop singers for the last 10 seconds. Why?