As John Morthland notes in The Best Of Country Music, his invaluable though sadly out-of-print country music primer, Red Headed Stranger “was one of those too-good-to-be-true pop situations in which the artist and audience reshape each other.” Fair enough; the album’s surprising success redefined Willie Nelson’s career, while its bare-bones production roused country music from its Billy Sherrill-induced slumber. But after a quarter-century, the record’s towering reputation threatens to overshadow Nelson’s vast, varied body of quality work. Exhibit A: The recent CD debut of Me & Paul, an understated gem, went virtually unnoticed, lost in the deafening hype surrounding the Red Headed Stranger reissue.
Originally released in 1985, Me & Paul boasts a rough concept of its own — it’s a tribute to Nelson’s longtime drummer and drinking buddy Paul English. Of course, the putative concept is merely a thinly veiled excuse to forage through Nelson’s expansive war chest of copyrights. Reworking a set of modest semi-classics, the singer and his empathetic road unit craft a sound at once spontaneous and timeless. Rounded out by three Billy Joe Shaver sure shots, the album has the loose, unforced feel of a storied Nelson live show.
Me & Paul opens to the sprightly, chugging beat of Shaver’s “I Been To Georgia On A Fast Train”, a laughing rollick that affords the band ample room to stretch out (they even sneak an “I’ve Been Working On The Railroad” line into the instrumental break). This spirited atmosphere of camaraderie and good humor enlivens the entire outing. Long-familiar songs ring with fresh intensity and enthusiasm; lifted from Phases And Stages’ breakup cycle, “Pretend I Never Happened” becomes a boastful rounder’s farewell, while the bruised feelings of the title track are subsumed in the back-porch warmth of remembrance. Perhaps best of all, the seemingly slight “I’m A Memory” proves an economical two-minute tour de force. Building from a whisper, Nelson displays a carefully honed, understated vocal virtuosity perfectly complemented by the resonant chime of his fabled acoustic.
Whether driven by artistic stagnation, financial desperation and/or label politics, the collection of re-recorded classics has a longstanding tradition in country music — usually signaling decline. That said, the recastings on Me & Paul are among the few that disprove the rule. Always a gifted songwriter, Nelson’s often overlooked strengths as performer have only deepened and ripened over time. The stark, youthful longing of the original “I Let My Mind Wander” sounds stiff and mannered next to the more assured reading here. Riding a similar arrangement, Nelson’s vocals are richer, more expressive, more musical, tapping a bittersweet resignation informed by age and experience. It’s a magical transformation that Me & Paul works again and again, promising a potentially unlimited succession of classics.
In truth, Me & Paul was released during one of Nelson’s leanest periods. Despite a handful of notable collaborations (Ray Price, Webb Pierce, Hank Snow, the Highwaymen) and the winning (if sub-Stardust) standards of Somewhere Over The Rainbow, the ’80s witnessed the singer’s slow, steady descent into a mediocrity marred by overproduction, half-assed compromise and fuzzy concept.
It was only after the much-publicized IRS fracas that Nelson refocused his energies and began to build upon the neglected promise of Me & Paul. Amid a late-’90s creative rebirth, the singer has unleashed a string of classics — the old-timey Just One Love, the unadorned mastery of Spirit, the Lanois-(over-)produced Teatro, the jazz-inflected Night And Day — all part of a rich, unfurling legacy that owes more to the natural groove of Me & Paul than to the groundbreaking mythopoeia of Red Headed Stranger.