It’s Been Rough and Rocky Travelin’: The Earliest Willie Nelson 1954-1963

It’s Been Rough and Rocky Travelin’: The Earliest Willie Nelson 1954-1963

The late 1954/early 1955 version of “When I’ve Sang My Last Hillbilly Song” appears here and on the “One Hell of a Ride” compilation. I prefer the 2007 version that also appears on “One Hell of a Ride,” but it makes me want to hear Willie do a new version of “Lumberjack.” This 1954 version of “No Place for Me” also appears on “The Classic and Unreleased Collection” and “One Hell of a Ride,” but only the Bear Family has tracked down the three alternate takes. Alternate take #1 was recorded in Portland, Oregon in 1957, and it features Willie’s vocals much more prominently. The slower pace of this version makes it my favorite of the four. Sounds like Hank Williams. The primary version of “Lumberjack” also appears on the “Classic and Unreleased Collection,” but the Bear Family has found two alternate takes from the 1957 sessions, and alternate take #1 is by far the best of the three. 1959’s single “Man with the Blues” also appears on “Nite Life” and “One Hell of a Ride,” but my favorite version may be on 2010’s “Country Music.” “The Storm Has Just Begun” (1959) suffers from some syrupy back-up singers, but it continues Willie’s Hank Williams style. I think this same version appears on “The Ghost (part 3),” but the mix on this compilation is far superior. The shorter 1955 version is the best version, but this is another song Willie needs to record again. “What a Way to Live” (1960) is a little more Sinatra than Hank. This version also appears on “The Ghost (part 3)” and “Nite Life,” but the version on “Me and the Drummer” (1998) is my favorite. The mix on the Bear Family version is the best of the 1960 versions. This is the only place I have ever seen “Misery Mansion” (1960). It fits into Willie’s collection of house songs. He could fill an album with songs about houses, mansions, and motels. He is obsessed with home, though (perhaps because) he is so rarely there. The 1960 version of “Nite Life” appears on half a dozen compilations, but this is the only one that has an alternate take. Most times it appears as “Night Life,” but here it is “Nite Life.” “Rainy Day Blues” also appears everywhere, but only here with both takes, the first of which is the better, though the slower, jazzier alternate take grows on you. The “Attention Songwriters” ad promo gives a nice sense of Willie’s voice and accent in 1960.

It's Been Rough and Rocky Travelin': The Earliest Willie Nelson 1954-1963

Sadly, it’s been a month since I’ve blogged, but I have a very good reason to resume today. I just received my birthday present to myself: the amazing Bear Family Records 3-cd compilation of Willie’s earliest recordings. It wasn’t cheap ($135 new on Amazon), but it was worth it. I have only listened to the first few songs on disc one, but the LP-sized booklet with liner notes contains the most detailed info I have seen about Willie’s earliest recordings. It appears to contain pictures of every vinyl single and LP he recorded between 1954-1963. I have heard some of these recordings before (on The Complete Ghost, The Complete Liberty Recordings, and various other compilations), but this may have some alternate takes (for example for songs like “Lumberjack”) that aren’t available elsewhere. Without even listening to the rest of the cds in this set I can tell that my Christmas present to myself will be Bear Family Records’ 8-cd set “Nashville Was the Roughest.” If the pictures and liner notes are anything like this box set, it will be well worth the steep price tag (I think it is closer to $175 on Amazon). I’ll have more info soon as I listen to these discs and read the liner notes.

Just One Love (1995)--take 2

“Just” is another word like “always.” It’s funny how time slips away and how just one love turns into two and three and four before you know it. “Just one” sounds so limited and antithetical to the freedom of the road. I’m noticing this time around that this album has a darker tinge to it. Notice the key words from the song titles: night, cold, forgotten, sin, walls, smoke, cold, retreat. Willie sings the two Floyd Tillman songs solo (tracks 2 and 3). “Better Left Forgotten” is the most Proustian song on the album. “Why, oh, why, won’t my mind let go…your memory will never set me free.” Our memories hold us hostage, captive. The tension between the captive and the fugitive haunts Willie and Proust. The tension between the forgotten and the forgetter. “It’s a Sin” is another version of “Better Left Forgotten”: “It’s a sin to keep this memory of you when silence proves that you’ve forgotten me.” “Four Walls” is another version of “Hello Walls.” Another house song, another pathetic fallacy, another personification song. It’s also another “she’s gone” song. Willie’s been left again. Willie’s always being left and always leaving, too. He leaves even as he’s being left. It’s the quantum physics of love, the expanding particles in the universe, speeding toward and away at the same time with equal force. I’d like to hear Willie sing “I Just Drove By” by himself. Proust took many of these same drives, these same walks down memory lane. Drive-by memories. “I wonder if love is the way it was back then.” It never is. This version of “Bonaparte’s Retreat” comes 20 years after the original on Red Headed Stranger. This makes me want to hear Willie re-do that entire album, maybe live in concert.

What a Wonderful World (1988)--take 2

I’m afraid I need to stand by my January blog on this one. “Spanish Eyes” with Julio Iglesias is no “To All the Girls I Loved Before,” but the lyrics have richer associations for me this time around. “Please don’t cry. This is just adios and not goodbye. Soon I’ll return…Say you and your Spanish eyes will wait for me.” So many of Willie’s themes are present here: eyes, tears, waiting, goodbye. This song harkens back to “Silver Wings” and “If I Could Only Fly.” I appreciate hearing Julio sing in Spanish. It lets you understand better what Willie owes to the flamenco and mariachi traditions. Romanticism infuses this album. You have exotic Spanish eyes, moons, enchanted evenings, south of the border, buttermilk sky, Moulin Rouge, and twilight. All of these suggest the exotic, the romantic, the other. In “Moon River” Willie sings of “drifters off to see the world.” He sings of “heartbreak” and his “Huckleberry friend,” evoking Mark Twain and the Mississippi: Jim and Huck, lighting out for the territory, chasing “the same rainbows.” A slave and a freeman chasing the same rainbows? How can that be? How can they be missing the same things, longing for the same things? Mickey’s harmonica accentuates the longing of the river that both Jim and Huck share. In “Some Enchanted Evening” Willie imagines a stranger appearing, a ghost of a memory returning, haunting, laughing. “Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.” When she calls you “Fly to her side and make her your own,” and “Once you have found her, never let her go.” Never hit the road and leave her behind, never fly away. Hmmm. Willie thinks to himself: “What a Wonderful World.” Wonderful in his mind. As Hamlet says: “Thinking makes it so.” “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)” is where Willie fell in love with stars above. His “thoughts stray south of the border.” “She smiled as she whispered manana, never dreaming that we were parting, and I lied as I whispered manana, for our tomorrow never came.” So in the night we smile and lie about tomorrow, about morning. Why is that? Manana could be the title of many of Willie’s works. Three days that give us trouble: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In “Ole Buttermilk Sky” Willie is “happy as a Christmas tree” going to the one he loves. He is looking to the moon again. Mooning, mellow and bright. In “The Song from Moulin Rouge” Willie is worrying and wondering again: “Whenever we kiss, I worry and wonder: your lips may be here, but where is your heart? It’s always like this.” Willie’s always worrying or carefree. How is it that he can be both worried and worry free, a “worried man” without a care in the world? In “To Each His Own” Willie insists “my own is you.” In other words, another person can be more you than yourself. Paradoxically, “To Each His Own” doesn’t mean we are all different, it means we are inseparable, we are one. Our uniqueness, our difference is what binds us. “Twilight Time” hits the themes of darkness and of time. In “Deepening shadows” and “deep in the dark” “your kiss will fill me.” Willie prays for the dark. It is in the dark that he can call forth memories and dreams. What is the Red Headed Stranger doing singing “Ac-cent-tchu-ate The Positive”? It’s all about our attitude. In the darkness we can be light, we can stay positive. “Thinking makes it so.” In the end the crying cowboy has always been a man of the mind, cerebral, ruminative. His mind either worries him to death or helps him stay positive. Like Hamlet he alternates between both extremes of human reason.

Seashores of Old Mexico (1987)—take 2

Merle’s title track, like the album and Willie’s career and style in general, has “no destination in mind.” There’s that obsession with mind again. What would it mean to have the destination in your mind? “The border meant freedom, a new life, and romance, and that’s why we thought we should go. Start our lives over on the seashores of old Mexico.” Like Proust going to Venice. The temptation, the allure, the seduction of starting fresh and new and clean. “Things will blow over on the seashores of old Mexico” the way they blow over on the road, the way they blow past you. Merle’s “Without You On My Side” reminds me of several of Willie’s songs where he says he needs a woman by his side to keep the memories and the past at bay. It seems that things don’t just blow over on the seashores of old Mexico or on the road. “The bad dreams wouldn’t leave me, and it would all start to grieve me” without a woman on my side. “When Times Were Good” remains my favorite song on the album and one of my very favorite Willie recordings. This song and the final pages of the sixth volume of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” both deal with resurrecting impressions from the past and trying to give them permanence. Willie, Hag, and Proust conclude that art is the only way to do that, and they resolve to “write one for the memory.” Merle’s “Jimmy the Broom” describes a man who “came to the city to forget a woman…[but] not even the havoc of the nightlife of Reno could keep her memory away, so he turned to the bottle, and somehow it deafened her call, but Jimmy the Broom never lived to be free of it all.” Another man fighting away memories, trying to keep them at bay, drowning them out with booze. But nothing completely frees a man of these memories. We’re either in search of lost time or trying to escape from it, trying to lose it. Either way we lose. Willie sings “Yesterday” on Live Country Music Concert (1966), and I discuss the lyrics in that blog from May. Twenty years later he sings it again. In 1966 he wasn’t half the man he used to be, so in 1987 he must be one fourth of the man he used to be. The notion that “Yesterday came suddenly” is a striking one. Normally we think of our kids growing up too fast and time flying by. You blink and they’re grown. And yet here, the past comes back suddenly, like those precious memories that return to Proust unbidden of the Madeleine soaked in tea. So the future rushes up to meet us, but the past rushes to us from the other side as well. And we get caught in the undertow, in the conflicting gravitational forces of time (centripetal and centrifugal). If we could only fly, if we only knew “which way to turn and go.” We “feel so good” and then we “feel so bad.” We could “bid this place goodbye.” Not sure how flying would help us avoid loneliness. “Tell me things get better somewhere up the way. Just dismal thinking on a dismal day. Sad songs for us to bear.” If we could only fly, we could flit back and forth between the road and home, we could commute between the foreign and the familiar. We could have the best of both worlds. And if we could fly fast enough, faster than the speed of light, we could outrun time and loneliness. Merle’s “Shotgun and a Pistol” just tells a good story. In “Love Makes a Fool of Us All” “The one that he’s tied to is the one that he’s lied to.” Love makes liars, cheaters, beggars of us all. It’s funny that way. It makes us say things like always and forever. It drives people like Willie and Hag and Proust to distraction. And all we can say is “just look at us now.” Look at what love’s done to us. “Why Do I Have to Choose” is the only Willie-penned song on the album. Willie wants to have it both ways, to have the road and his home, too. Why should he have to choose between the two conflicting desires? Why can’t he have both? “The love is not the same, but either love is true.” Willie wants to be true to everyone. Merle’s “Silver Wings” tries to end the album on an upbeat note (figuratively and literally). “Don’t leave me, I cry. Don’t take that airplane ride.” It’s a “she’s gone” song, but an upbeat one. Ironically, he sang earlier “If I Could Only Fly,” and here he laments that his woman can fly on silver wings, but she’s flying in the wrong direction. So flight can cut both ways. Overall this is a terribly melancholy and sad album, but it’s tender, soothing. It’s hard to know exactly how to take it. “You locked me out of your mind.” Willie doesn’t like people to lock him out of their mind because he keeps his mind open, and people are always on his mind. Like Proust he remains always open to impressions from the past that might yield new sensations.

The Troublemaker (1976)—take 2

In “Uncloudy Day” Willie sings of “A home far away…where no storm cloud arrives.” In one way or another, Willie is always singing about home. How great it is, how far away it is, how unattainable, how much he longs for it even (and especially) when he runs away from it. Interestingly, Willie seems to have arrived, in 2010, at that “uncloudy” state of unfettered happiness. And yet, one has to wonder how this squares with Willie’s early angsty honky tonk outlaw songs. The title of this album is “Troublemaker,” and yet every song is about the antithesis of trouble, the redemption of trouble. We begin with an “uncloudy day,” and then look to heaven in “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder,” looking forward, with hope, to the future bliss. This is not looking for bliss and ultimate contentment in the present (which Willie claims to subscribe to at other times—see Outlaw bio) or to the past (where he has often found solace in local memories that linger). From “yonder” to “Whispering Hope” to a “Fountain” of hope to an “unbroken” circle. Uncloudy days and unbroken circles for troublemakers and outlaws. Then a “garden”, a place “Where the soul never dies,” the “sweet bye and bye,” a place to “gather” (as opposed to scattering like outlaws, who by definition head out and do not gather and come together; if they did that, they would be in-laws), “precious memories,” and lastly “amazing grace.” Of course, none of these songs are written by Willie, so he may be constitutionally unable to sustain such unfettered optimism and bliss in an album of his own songs. He has to sing other people’s songs when he seeks this kind of contentment. I wonder what this tells us. “Whispering Hope” impressed me more this time around. “Wait till the darkness is over.” It has a more melancholy optimism. A more honest, realistic hope grounded in genuine struggle and suffering and pain. “Hope is an anchor,” but it is an anchor in a stormy sea. Hope does not calm the seas and clear the skies. It calms your mind and spirit amidst the still very real storms. I wonder if “Redeeming love” really has been Willie’s “theme.” To what degree has he sung “thy power to save”? I really don’t know. I think he has and he hasn’t. “Do you love the hymns they taught you, or are songs of earth your choice?” Now that’s a question to put to Willie’s whole career. “Songs of Earth.” He seems to sing of both with equal vigor. His voice and his lyrics, his life and his manner, are nothing if not earthy. But what of his spiritual side? Can he be both earthy and ethereal? Maybe earthereal? The spare solo title track maintains its status as the best song on this album. “In the Garden” has that more plaintive feel of “Whispering Hope.” It isn’t a shouting hope, but a muted, mournful hope. A hope emerging out of brokenness, not out of triumphant confidence. A hope that springs out of need and dependence. A hope responding to grace. The hope of the truly prodigal son, of the truly repentant. Mickey’s harmonica comes into its own on this nostalgic track. It’s hard to imagine the crying cowboy in a place where there are no “sad farewells” or “tear-dimmed eyes.” No opportunities to cry, no place for time to slip away to. Does this mean nothing is funny or wry in the sky, in the place “where the soul never dies”? “Sweet Bye & Bye” slows it down again. “We shall sing on that beautiful shore the melodious songs of the blessed, and our spirits shall sorrow no more, not a sigh for the blessings of rest.” So does this mean still is indeed still moving? It sounds like still won’t be still moving, and we won’t miss all that moving. We won’t miss the road when we reach the shore. When we “gather at the river,” the shore, the uncloudy day, the unbroken circle, the fountain, the roll call up yonder, we won’t miss all our moving. Willie seems to be asking: How will we feel when our “pilgrimages cease”? “Precious Memories” lingers as one of my two favorite songs on this album. At 7:37, this song lingers literally. “Old home scenes of [his] childhood” race across the “The lonely years,” outrunning even the wheels of the bus on the road. “In the stillness of the midnight, precious sacred scenes unfold” that no amount of running away can prevent. The origami of the mind, once folded, the creases can never be completely removed. “Old times singing…glad times bringing.” This stillness of the midnight, this flooding of memories, the preciousness and sacredness of time and mind and memory, is all very Proustian. Notice how midnight, darkness, is the time of perfect stillness. How could we get such stillness in the light? Don’t we need the darkness in some way? What happens if we completely block it out? If we close our eyes to the darkness? The final four live recordings from 1974 at the Texas Opry House are as good as anything Willie has done. Great fiddle and harmonica. Jazzy and trippy like all the other songs from this concert. 1974 may be one of Willie’s best vintages for musicians, for his voice, for everything about him musically. I love the way these gospel tunes meander like his melancholy medley of Funny/Crazy/Nite Life. There’s just a touch more hope and optimism to these gospel tunes, and great energy in the crowd.

San Antonio Rose (1980)—take 2

7/24/2010

There’s only one Willie-penned song on this duet album with Willie’s mentor Ray Price. In Ray Price’s own “I’ll Be There (If You Ever Want Me)” the two outlaws pledge undying love and loyalty, unconditional love. In so many of their songs they’re either boasting of their ability to love this way, or lamenting their inability to do so. I’d like to see Willie sing Harlan Howard’s “I Fall to Pieces” more often. A slow and sparse 2010 version could be even more powerful than this solid 1980 rendition. “Time only adds to the flame.” So many of Willie’s songs are about pieces, which is what time is and does. It breaks life up into pieces, sections, increments. It divides, parcels mortality. Willie’s “lonely all the time” in “Crazy Arms.” It’s another song about the mind being willing but the body being weak. The arms want what they want. “They reach to hold somebody new,” but the “troubled mind” won’t go along. The disconnect between mind and body provides much fodder for Willie’s songwriting. In “Release Me” Willie declares, “I don’t love you anymore.” He begs his lover to release him so he can “love again.” He wants out of his unconditional, “always” commitment from the previous songs. He wants a loophole to allow him to pursue warm lips to replace the ones that have turned cold. “Release Me” is time begging to slip away. It’s funny how Willie asks to be released when he lamented his lover asking for the same thing in so many other songs. You’d think he would get tired of hurting lovers by asking to be released from his commitments, but it sounds like humans in general never get tired of hurting each other. Even, and perhaps especially, when they know how it feels, when it’s been done to them before. Gimble’s fiddle and Raphael’s harmonica put some extra hurt into this song. I’d like to hear Willie do this song more often, though George Jones does it best. “This Cold War with You” basically states “fish or cut bait.” We’re either in or out, but let’s quit debating and hemming and hawing. But that’s what real love is: a constant negotiation. Willie wants a definitive love, a platonic, ideal love. True or false, “do right” or “we’re through,” there’s no in-between. Funny how the only Willie-penned song on the album, “Funny How Time Slips Away,” is still my favorite. It stands out like Willie’s voice, like Mickey’s harmonica, like Gimble’s fiddle. This version is growing on me, moving up the ranks of the numerous