Willie Nelson / Willie Nelson & Family / Willie Nelson & Ray Price
Pablo Picasso spent a day in 1956 painting for the cameras of Henri-Georgess Clouzet, his twenty canvases destroyed — by agreement — as filming of the 78-minute documentary The Mystery Of Picasso ended. Each brush stroke speaks of unbearable confidence and supreme skill, a single line suggesting one object, the next line — and the next — utterly transforming it, stunning work over-thought and painted out, the artist finally shirtless and drinking from a convenient wine bottle.
Just about then, Willie Nelson was selling, from behind his microphone at KVAN-AM in Vancouver, Washington, his first self-released single, “When I’ve Sang My Last Hillbilly Song”/”The Storm Has Just Begun”. The latter became a regional hit for Billy Walker in 1959, the same year Willie, back in Houston, sold the publishing rights to “Family Bible” for $50, and “Night Life” for $150.
Once the fame really hit, Picasso, it was said, used to pay for expensive meals simply by signing a bad check (knowing it would never be cashed), or doodling an autograph on a napkin, for he knew his signature was always worth more than the meal. Willie has always said he needed the money ($317.35 and $952.06 in today’s dollars, according to a handy Federal Reserve website) more than he needed the songs, and seems never to have worried that his gifts were exhaustible.
No, surely he worried. Nelson scraped by for years, even with the publishing proceeds of “Hello Walls” and “Crazy”, and everything else. He didn’t become anything like a major star until 1975’s Red Headed Stranger and “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” (an oft-recorded Fred Rose song), his first country #1 and his first entry, at #21, on the pop charts. And, having watched other performers succeed for twenty years, Willie knew exactly how to capitalize.
Pablo Picasso was arguably the most important artist of the twentieth century, and Willie Nelson isn’t precisely his songwriting equal. But both men were extraordinarily prolific, endlessly inventive, and subtly successful marketers of their own genius. It is, however, these gestures of supreme confidence — painting before a camera (some of the images are on glass, so Picasso was in effect improvising backwards), selling great songs for a pittance, writing the unfortunate hit “On The Road Again” in a film producer’s office — and a hard willingness to do whatever it takes that mark Picasso and Nelson as very serious artists. (Nelson, at least, seems to have grown into the kinder man.)
The occasion of Nelson’s 70th birthday (April 30) serves as pretext for a splattering of reissues. Given that Willie has relentlessly repackaged and re-recorded his best work, this is roughly as daunting as seeking to view every piece of art Picasso signed. Given that Nelson’s catalogue — or at least his best material — has been kept reasonably well in print, it’s a bit less of an occasion than might be, say, a great summation of Floyd Tillman’s career.
Tillman, as Rich Kienzle writes in the bound liner notes to Bear Family’s three-disc set, was one of the jumping-off points for Nelson’s vocal style. Rough And Rocky Travelin’, combined with the early Pamper demos (some of which finally appeared on Sugar Hill this spring as Crazy: Demo Sessions) yields a comprehensive portrait of the artist as a young man.
As the session notes and Kienzle’s essay both suggest, however, these early recordings offer an incomplete sense of Nelson’s developing style. For the most part, the musicians playing with him could not figure out how to play with a singer who so adroitly (or, say, idiosyncratically) moved around the beat.
Willie’s voice is there, all right, younger and minus the smoke, but it’s hard to hear him in these settings, whether recorded in Houston, Nashville or Los Angeles. Sometimes he behaves and stays on the beat, but that doesn’t work. Other times his vocals almost exist apart from the supporting players, and that certainly doesn’t work.
Take “Crazy”, surely one of his best songs. Recorded in Los Angeles on September 12, 1961 (Patsy Cline’s version topped out at #2 on the country charts two months later), with guitarist Billy Strange leading the session, Willie sounds utterly confined by his supporting cast. There ain’t no swing to that song, and it doesn’t mean a thing. Contrast that to the apparently undated Pamper demo (from which Cline learned the song that summer), which effortlessly swings like a wayward summer breeze.
So whose emergence are we really hearing: that of the artist Willie Nelson, or of a sympathetic cast of musicians capable of playing his music? Perhaps both. The artist’s swagger — the certainty that he could sing or write or perform at least as well tomorrow — may have robbed him of the desperate need to succeed today that drives most.
Beyond the usual collection of oddities and outtakes, that’s what the Bear Family box is principally good for. (His duets with second wife Shirley Collie also have a curious Handsome Family quality.) It’s not essential, but it is essential to understanding his formative years. Perhaps most revealing, however, are the photographs lavishly reprinted with the liner notes. As comfortable as Willie seems in his skin today, he seems dreadfully ill at ease in every single frame.
And then, boom! Twenty years later he was the biggest star in country music, and an international celebrity. What happened in between is not, apparently, of sufficient interest to merit reissue at present. Even so, what exactly happened in the ’70s is still a bit puzzling.
To these ears, “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground” — the hit version of which came from 1980’s Honeysuckle Rose soundtrack — is the last great Willie Nelson song. He’s made good, bad, and (a few) ugly records since then, he’s lent his vocals to countless duets, and he’s released albums at a daunting pace.
But if the Outlaw movement was really about artistic freedom, Nelson doesn’t seem to have done much with it — with the notable exception of Stardust. (It’s true that the Outlaw movement was a smart marketing campaign, but it’s equally true that its success bought its leaders a lot of creative freedom.)
Of the current batch of newly available old records, those nodding to Nelson’s past are easily the most rewarding. San Antonio Rose (1980), like this year’s Run That By Me One More Time a collaboration with his former boss, Ray Price, is a fine collection of classic country, lovingly played. Despite Price’s penchant for natty stage attire and regular grooming, the two singers have much in common, and Price is one of Willie’s few duet partners who can truly swing with him. The two bonus tracks, “Just Call Me Lonesome” and “My Life’s Been A Pleasure”, are just more of a good thing.
To Lefty From Willie is a marvelous reminder of the days when stars cut two or three albums a year, and would sometimes take time to pay tribute to one of their forbears (see: Ernest Tubb’s salutes to Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams, Merle Haggard’s nod to Bob Wills, the Louvins’ homage to the Delmore Brothers, etc.). These are usually solid records, if only because they feature a gifted singer working through a familiar, first-rate catalogue — and doing so with largely the same backing band throughout.
To Lefty was recorded in 1975, presumably before Red Headed Stranger began to climb the charts in late July. Frizzell died July 19, 1975, and Nelson shelved the album until June of 1977, apparently so as not to appear to capitalize. Regardless, it’s terrific, with Nelson’s vocals set against a spare honky-tonk band: drums, guitar, bass, harmonica; no frills, a lot of space for that voice.
The two discs of 1978’s Willie And Family Live capture Nelson at the zenith of his musical fame (film and superstardom would follow, but that’s different). Honeysuckle Rose is the live soundtrack to a forgettable movie. They don’t reveal much, but they’re fun, if you like that sort of thing. Or, like most live albums, if you were there.
Regardless, we are left with the same conundrum. That awkward, uncomfortable artist revealed in those early pictures wrote stunning songs; the zen master he became remains a great stylist and a commercial juggernaut, even at 70. One only wishes he would pick up the brush one more time and dazzle us with those elegant lines.