Willie Nelson
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It wasn’t always that way. He grew up hard in a little Texas town that, today, doesn’t even exist. He was born there, in Abbott, Texas on April 30, l933 to Ira and Myrle Nelson but was raised by his paternal grandparents. His father was an itinerant mechanic who was gone more than he was at home and his mother left one day to find work and never returned. Grandpa had a guitar he’d bought from the Sears Roebuck catalog and he bought young Willie his first, a Stella, when he was six years old. Grandpa also taught Willie and sister, Bobbie Lee music from lessons he’d got through mail order. They must have been good students because, at the age of ten, he made his first musical appearances playing dances with John Raycjeck’s Bohemian Polka Band with Bobbie on piano. But his influences were much broader. He was an avid radio listener and was a big fan of the Grand Ole Opry, New Orleans jazz, the Texas swing of Bob Wills, black blues, the big bands and the vocal stylings of one Frank Sinatra. Throughout high school, he continued playing with guys like Bud Fletcher and Floyd Tillman in the honky tonks and road houses and opening for the likes of Bob Wills and other Texas luminaries. By the time he graduated high school, he had his own local radio show and was going door to door selling bibles and vacuum cleaners. The juxtaposition of those two items brings a host of weird images to mind (of course, I would be the first to admit, I’ve got a weird mind). He didn’t have the Mel Tillis approach of asking his prospective bible customers, “Do you w-want to b-b-buy one or w-w-w-would you l-l-l-like me to rrrrrrread it to you?” But, with Willies charm and charisma, I’m sure he did alright.
When he got out of high school, he donned the Air Force blue for a while before coming back to Texas to work as a radio DJ and perform in the clubs at night. For a while, he DJ’d in Portland, Oregon, where he personally financed and recorded his first song, “No Place For Me,” which he sold at his performances and personal appearances. His first commercial recordings were for D Records and Pappy Daily, who is credited with the discovery of George Jones. But a pattern began to form which would haunt his career for years. His recordings sat on the shelf, not achieving much success, but other people covered his songs and did well with them. The most notable of that time was a song called, The Family Bible, which he had sold for a mere $100 and was covered by Claude Gray. Gray’s version of the song made it into the top 10 country chart and gave Willie the courage to make the move to Nashville. There’s an old story that Willie sold the song, Night Life outright to Ray Price for $50. That’s not exactly true. The song was sold to a group of three businessmen in Austin. The true amount is unknown today but we do know that it was enough to pay for a ten year old Buick convertible and allow Willie to make his Nashville move. There are a lot of “Willie stories.” That seems to be the case with a lot of legendary characters -- Billy, the Kid, Wyatt Earp, Cochise, Jim Bowie and Willie Hugh Nelson.
Arriving in Nashville, he landed a job with Ray Price’s publishing company and continued to crank out songs. At some point along the way, he also played bass in Price’s band. He had early and huge successes with Crazy, which became a Patsy Cline classic and Hello, Walls which was recorded by Faron Young and stayed at #1 on the charts for nine weeks. Willie says that, when he wrote Hello, Walls, he was just sitting, staring at the walls, trying to come up with ideas. Feeling a bit frustrated, he said, “Hello, Walls,” and the muse was magically awakened. A few minutes later, the song was finished. The labels didn’t think much of such a deep and depressing song though and he shopped it all over town with little success until, one night while he was playing at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, Faron came in and heard the song. He told Willie he liked it and would like to record it. Willie, being short of money, as he often was in those days, offered to sell it to Faron, lock, stock and barrel but Faron refused to take the rights away from Willie. He promised to record the song and loaned Willie $400 to see him through. The story goes that later, Willie tried to pay the $400 back but Faron refused to take it.
There are a lot of “Willie stories” and I guess everyone whose had much contact with the man has at least one. During the time that Willie was becoming well known as a songwriter, he was also recording and trying, with little success, to make it as an artist as well. He recorded for Liberty, Monument and RCA, but Nashville and country radio just didn’t quite know what to make of this strange sounding Texan and his unusual, almost jazz-like phrasing. But he plugged away at it and went out and did shows for people who, largely had no clue who he was but recognized his songs. On one such tour, I was told by my good friend, the late Karl Victor, drummer, songwriter and vocal impressionist extraordinaire, that Willie did a show at the famed Fountainbleu Hotel on Miami Beach. That’s when Willie had short hair and wore suits and Miami Beach was really in its heyday as an entertainment mecca. Willie traveled light and used pickup bands for his appearances and Karl had been hired to play drums. They weren’t given much space to work in and the musicians had to line up sort of Opry style, in front of the stage curtain. Karl didn’t even have room for a drum kit. All he had was a snare and a hi hat and had to stand up to play. There were tables right up to the edge of the stage and at the table in front of Karl, there was a very obnoxious drunk who was heckling and making a real nuisance of himself. At one point, Karl had enough of him and stepped around the drum stand and gave the guy a kick, which sent him flying. He (the drunk) was removed by security and thus ended the heckling. When the song was over, Willie walked over to Karl and said, “You know, you’re one crazy sonofabitch, but I like ya.” Thus illustrates Willie’s straightforward idea of right and wrong, justice and karma. That drunk experienced what I like to call instant karma.
Willie said, “It bothered me nobody else thought I could sing back then, I guess I was into a lot of negative thinking. I got in a lot of fights, divorced, all that stuff. My head was just pointed the wrong way. Then I started to do a lot of reading. I got into Kahil Gibran (“The Prophet”), got really into Edgar Cayce and his son, Hugh Cayce -- books that had real positive attitude. I changed, you know. I kinda developed this real positive attitude toward my own life, got into my own life.”
He continued to write songs and play the Nashville game for ten years until, just before Christmas in 1970, his house caught fire and burned down. The “Willie story” that goes with that one is that the only things he managed to save were a pound of grass and his famous Martin classic guitar. Sounds plausible to me. Whatever, he took it as a sign that maybe he ought to just quit the Nashville rat race and go on back to Texas.
He continued writing songs but found that the song market was even less fertile in Texas so he went out and started playing them himself. Here, he found that he actually had fans in places like Floore’s Country Store outside of San Antonio as well as, on the other side of the coin, the Armadillo World Headquarters rock palace in Austin. He signed with Atlantic Records and put out two albums, Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages. Both were critically well received and sold better than anything he’d ever done. His real breakthrough though, came in 1975 when he moved to Columbia and recorded Red Headed Stranger, which included the blockbuster song, Blue Eyes Cryin’ In The Rain. RCA picked up on Willie’s rise to fame and, the following year, released a compilation of previously recorded Nelson along with songs by Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser. Incidentally, Waylon got top billing. Willie was second on the list. This, of course was called, Wanted: The Outlaws It became country’s first million selling album and started the “outlaw revolution” in country music.
Willie’s fame skyrocketed -- along with Waylon Jennings, with whom he did several joint efforts, among them the classic, Good Hearted Woman. You still can’t spend an evening at any honky tonk worth its salt and not hear a rendition of Good Hearted Woman. I hope you never can.
Willie’s charismatic character comes across on screen, both big and small, just as well as it does on stage and he’s had a formidable movie and TV career as well. Some of his movie efforts have been roles in “Thief,” “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Barbarosa,” “Songwriter,” “Stagecoach” and “Electric Horseman” to name a few. He’s also appeared on the Don Johnson TV series, Nash Bridges and had a recurring role on Jane Seymour’s Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman. How does he pick his roles? He says, “. . . if it’s not something I really want to do, I won’t do it. But if it’s got a horse in it or a guitar then I’m a sucker for it.”
He’s still out there on the road (On The Road Again) with his band, The Family, doing what he loves, singing songs and pleasing crowds. He can put a huge throng of people in the palm of his hand the way Hank Williams did. Some say it’s almost like a religious experience. Emmylou Harris once said, “He has this presence that radiates out of him, an aura. You can feel it even when he’s not in the room. If you want to understand what I’m talking about, go to one of his concerts. People act like they’re in church, as if he fills a spiritual void for them.”
An illustration of Willie’s spiritual, philosophic way of looking at life, I think, is one more “Willie story.” After getting in trouble with the IRS to the tune of some $16 million (which he has long since paid back in full, by the way), the government seized his Texas ranch, including his personal golf course. When it was put on the block to be sold, former Dallas Cowboys coach, Tom Landry bought it and allowed Willie to move back in. Shortly thereafter, Willie and a friend were playing a round of golf on the course and the friend remarked that the course wasn’t in as good shape since the government had taken it over. Willie, in his quiet way, just smiled and said, “Yea, I think it’s the last one I’m gonna let ‘em have.”
When you look into Willie Nelson’s intense, dark eyes, you see there a window to the Universe and you wish you could get on the other side of those eyes and see it the way he does. He has the eyes of a guru, a wicasa wakan, a holy man. They are eyes of great understanding and inner peace -- eyes that try desperately to find and see harmony in the world.
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