Willie Nelson - Texas Willie - Extended Liner Notes by Bill Dahl

WILLIE NELSON 

Long before he ascended to mainstream acceptance and eventual iconic status, Willie Nelson was a highly successful songwriter. An extraordinarily prolific one too, first in behalf of other country singers before he kept most of his material for his own use. The twisting, turning route through the decades to embrace performing stardom was long and full of detours, but Nelson gamely persisted. Not without considerable cost to his personal life; arguments with his first wife were legendary in their intensity. Yet his muse was too strong to be denied.

Born April 29, 1933 in Abbott, Texas, Willie Hugh Nelson grew up poor but surrounded by music. His guitar-picking father Ira and free spirit mother Myrle split up early in his life. Willie and older sister Bobbie Lee mostly grew up with their father’s parents in charge. Daddy (a blacksmith by trade) and Mama Nelson were hugely influential to the siblings on several levels. They’d taught shape note singing in Arkansas before they moved to Texas, so their knowledge of gospel hymns (Mama not only sang them, she wrote them) gave the youngsters a strong musical foundation. 

Life was hard—Bobbie and Willie labored in the cotton fields despite their tender years to augment the family income—but thanks to Mama’s expert tutelage, Bobbie learned her way around a piano at an early age, absorbing how to read music fluently. After being patiently steered in a singing direction by his granddad, six-year-old Willie was gifted a Stella guitar—no walk in the park to fret with its sky-high action. A healthy stock of sheet music books was amassed for the two to delve into whenever there was time. Daddy Nelson died when Willie was only seven, but he’d already left his indelible mark on the lad.

Gospel music came first in his life, but Willie eventually shifted his attention to secular pursuits. He was unusually eclectic; sure, he loved Ernest Tubb, Floyd Tillman, Western swing king Bob Wills, Lefty Frizzell, and the inevitable Grand Ole Opry radio broadcasts from Nashville. But Frank Sinatra—idol to countless bobbysoxers--caught his wide-open ear too, and the same radio that beamed in the Opry also enabled him to listen to the era’s big bands. Texas was a musical melting pot; Nelson landed his first occasional gig playing guitar with trumpeter John Rejcek’s expansive polka band when he was in sixth grade. 

Willie assembled his first homemade songbook when he was 11, proudly placing it in the same stack with the professionally published ones that he and Bobbie learned from. After 16-year-old Bobbie married somewhat older country bandleader Bud Fletcher, Willie worked steadily with the charismatic Fletcher’s Texans while still in his early teens. The band performed every Saturday afternoon over KHBR radio in Hillsboro, Texas.  

Willie spent nine unhappy months in the Air Force before lower back pain won him an early discharge. Back in Abbott, Nelson returned to playing country music and found himself a 16-year-old bride, Martha Jean Mathews. It would be a volatile union. Success proved elusive, so it was time to hit the road west to Eugene, Oregon, where Willie’s mother had settled down. But the couple was back in San Antonio by 1953, Nelson joining singer Johnny Bush in Dave Isbell’s Mission City Playboys. He made his first foray into a recording facility (Bill Holford’s ACA Studio in Houston) in 1954 as a member of Dave Isbell’s Mission City Playboys for Charlie Fitch’s Luling, Texas-based Sarg label (two singles were released from the date). 

Landing a disc jockey position at Dr. Ben Parker’s KBOP radio in Pleasanton, Texas, Willie used a little of his downtime there in late 1954 or early ’55 to cut a couple of solo demos that he shipped off to Fitch in Luling, but Fitch wasn’t interested in Willie’s “When I’ve Sang My Last Hillbilly Song.” His next stops were stations in Denton and then KCNC in Fort Worth, and he gigged on local bandstands all the while.

The skull orchards of Fort Worth wouldn’t hold Willie for long. He headed west again, this time to San Diego, Portland, Oregon, and finally Vancouver, Washington in 1957. There Nelson held down a midday deejay shift on KVAN as Wee Willie Nelson, again moonlighting in the evenings with local bands. That autumn, Willie cut his solo debut 45, once again utilizing his radio station as a recording studio and launching his own label, aptly christened Willie Nelson Records, for its release. Recording solo, Nelson wrote the up-tempo and uncommonly brief A-side, “No Place For Me,” dipping into Leon Payne’s catalog for its flip side, “Lumberjack,” which came bookended with axe sound effects. The single sold locally like hotcakes thanks to Willie’s incessant plugs on his radio program (for a buck, you got the platter and an autographed 8 x 10 photo too). Nelson claimed he moved 3000 copies of his record that way. 

A taste of prosperity and solid ratings went straight to Willie’s red head. He marched into his boss’s office one day and demanded a $100 a week raise. The station manager informed him he was freshly unemployed. It was back to Texas for Willie and his family (two daughters and a baby boy on the way). This time they tried Houston. 

Nelson’s growing skills as a songwriter ultimately saved the day. He stopped off at the Esquire Club on the way into town to see bandleader Larry Butler and offered to sell Butler some of his precious songs at the bargain rate of $10 apiece, including “Mr. Record Man.” It must have been tempting—Butler loved the tunes—but he took took a pass on the offer for all the right reasons. Instead he lent Willie $50 and hired him to play in his band.  

Harold ‘Pappy’ Daily, the co-founder of Starday Records, had launched a new Houston-based imprint simply called D. Through Uncle Hank Craig, one of the emcees on KCUL radio’s weekly live country program Cowtown Hoedown in Fort Worth, Willie cut two of his own fine compositions, “The Storm Has Just Begun” (with backing vocals by the Reil Sisters, older siblings of future country star John Wesley Ryles) and a gently swinging “Man With The Blues” (Bobby Penton’s steel guitar work is delicious; Willie may be on lead guitar) at E.E. Manney’s Manco Studio in Fort Worth with Craig producing in the spring of 1959 as his first D single. Nelson had written its flip “The Storm Has Just Begun” as a kid (it was the other song that he’d demoed for Sarg a few years earlier). 

D pressed up Willie’s encore for the imprint in March of 1960. Cut at Bill Quinn’s Gold Star Studios in Houston with guitarist Paul Buskirk’s combo in support, it paired two more self-penned gems, the mellow “What A Way To Live” displaying a Western swing-tinged arrangement thanks to a deft blend of Ozzie Middleton’s steel and the twin fiddles of Darold Raley and Clyde Brewer. The heartrending “Misery Mansion” presaged Nelson’s penchant for personalizing sad structures that resurfaced in “Hello Walls,” though this depressing domicile couldn’t talk. The labels showed Craig claiming half the writers’ credit on both sides. 

Try as he might, Nelson couldn’t interest Daily in his masterpiece “Nite Life.” Pappy thought the song, inspired by Willie’s own neon-spattered nocturnal existence, not country enough (it also boasted more than the three requisite chords that most traditional country songs were then constructed around). Willie was moonlighting as a teacher at Buskirk’s guitar school at the time and offered him the tune’s writers’ credit for $150 (it ended up split with Walt Breeland). Not long before that, Buskirk had picked up authorship for $50 on another Nelson gem, “Family Bible,” that became a major country hit for Claude Gray on D in the spring of 1960 (Gray and Breeland also acquired a piece of the writers’ pie). At least Willie got co-writing credit on Claude’s B-side, “Crying In The Night.”

Nelson accepted Buskirk’s payment and went back into Gold Star, recording “Nite Life” for Paul’s one-off Rx label (“Prescription for Happy Times,” the label promised), which issued it in mid-1960 as by Paul Buskirk and His Little Men Featuring Hugh Nelson. Its flip, “Rainy Day Blues,” lived up to its title by being a full-fledged blues theme spiced by Dick Shannon’s saxophone and Herb Remington’s steel guitar. Willie’s exquisite behind-the-beat phrasing was a major departure from boilerplate country. Daily wasn’t happy with the subterfuge regarding Willie’s participation when he learned of it and threatened legal action.

Ultimately, Willie knew relocating to Nashville was key to his future. He moved there in the spring of ‘60, hoping to make it not just as a songsmith, but as a singer as well. Rolling into town in a 1950 Buick that died at the precise moment he hit downtown Nashville, Nelson was finally where he needed to be to make it big in the country music field. His unconventional vocal style was too unusual for some industry old-timers to grasp at first, but that didn’t deter him. 

Nelson and his family moved into Dunn’s Trailer Court (its marquee contained the famous first line of Roger Miller’s future classic “King Of The Road”: “Trailers for sale or rent”), settling into a green model whose previous tenants included Miller and country songsmith Hank Cochran, Eddie Cochran’s mid-‘50s singing partner in Los Angeles. Willie met Hank at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, a local landmark situated behind the Ryman Auditorium (home of the Opry) and a songwriters’ hangout. Hank knew compositional talent when he heard it. He invited Willie to audition at Pamper Music, the Goodlettsville, Tennessee publishing house where he worked. Cochran went the extra mile, telling Pamper owner Hal Smith that he could use his new $50-a-week raise to hire Willie instead. Nelson finally had worthy steady employment.

Willie embarked on an incredible hit writing roll in 1961, led by Faron Young’s chart-topping rendition of Willie’s clever “Hello Walls” and Patsy Cline’s immortal reading of his “Crazy.” Nelson’s “Funny How Time Slips Away” was a country charter for his friend Billy Walker, while “Night Life” came up big in 1963 for Ray Price (Willie played bass for Price’s Cherokee Cowboys during this period).

Joe Allison, country A&R boss for L.A.-based Liberty Records, took a chance on Willie in 1961 as an artist. Liberty was an established entity; Eddie Cochran’s ‘58 rock and roll hit “Summertime Blues” was on the imprint, and young producer Snuff Garrett, a Texas émigré, was racking up violin-enriched pop hits at Liberty by Bobby Vee, Gene McDaniels, and Johnny Burnette. A songwriter himself whose catalog included Faron’s ‘55 smash “Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young” and Jim Reeves’ 1960 blockbuster “He’ll Have To Go,” Allison had launched Liberty’s C&W line in 1959, enjoying some success with ex-Sun rockabilly Warren Smith. 

Allison produced Willie’s first Liberty single in 1961 in Nashville with guitarist Harold Bradley in charge of the music. Coupling the originals “Mr. Record Man”—the song Nelson nearly sold to Butler in Houston—and “The Part Where I Cry,” the platter failed to chart but established Willie as an up-and-comer. Nelson’s first bow on the C&W Top Ten came in March of ‘62 on his next Liberty outing “Willingly,” a duet with his future second wife Shirley Collie that was written by Willie’s buddy Cochran. “Touch Me,” another Nashville waxing that Willie penned himself, proved his first solo hit that spring, topping out at #7 C&W. 

…And Then I Wrote, Nelson’s debut Liberty album in the autumn of 1962, was a masterpiece. Along with his first Liberty singles, the long-player featured Willie’s own renditions of his top hits for others—“Crazy,” “Funny How Time Slips Away,” “Hello Walls,” and “Three Days,” another major seller for Young that same year. They were done at Hollywood’s Radio Recorders with an intriguing studio cast that included guitarists Roy Nichols and Billy Strange, bassist Ray Pohlman, and drummer Roy Harte. 

Nelson scored two more self-penned country charters for Liberty, 1963’s “Half A Man” and the following year’s “You Took Away My Happy,” both produced by Tommy Allsup (Buddy Holly’s lead guitarist on “It’s So Easy” and “Heartbeat”), who had taken over the label’s country A&R reins from Allison. A second album in 1963, Here’s Willie Nelson, saw the singer display his Western swing roots on revivals of “Right Or Wrong” and “Roly Poly” alongside another more of his own creations. 

The whole time he was on Liberty and then some (1961-1966 are the assumed parameters), Nelson was also cranking out wonderful demos of his songs. That’s what the majority of this revealing collection consists of. Time and again, Nelson turned in subtle, intimate readings of songs that he may not have ever recorded again. A lot of them are right here.

Quite a few of these tapes were revealing acoustic solo efforts, rendered as though he was in the middle of a guitar pull with his fellow songsmiths. Several of the best ones he kept for himself; the haunting “Darkness On The Face Of The Earth” and “Undo The Right” were recut with full instrumentation and included on …And Then I Wrote, while “Where My House Lives” was transformed into a ’62 Liberty single. A rendition of “Go Away” was laid down for Liberty, but the label archived it. 

Nelson never quite got around to revisiting the ballad gems “Both Ends Of The Candle,” “The Ghost,” or “Wasting Time” while he was tied to Liberty. He clearly didn’t believe in stretching these solo run-throughs any further than necessary—quite a few time out at well under a minute-and-a-half, and “Where My House Lives” runs less than a minute in length. Willie’s high-pitched vocal on “It’s Lonesome Without You” is so different from everything else here that it barely sounds like him; perhaps he was custom-writing with someone else in mind.

More than half of the tracks on this compilation feature full band backing; the swinging “One Step Beyond” merited recutting for Liberty but was shelved at the time. “Right From Wrong,” “I’ll Stay Around,” “End Of Understanding,” “Let’s Pretend We’re Strangers,” the second version of “Wasting Time,” “Pride Wins Again,” “I’m Going To Lose A Lot Of Teardrops,” “Why Are You Picking On Me,” and “A New Way To Cry” all ride understated up-tempo support, but ballads again predominate the proceedings. 

Nelson’s low-key, conversational vocal approach is on full and impressive display on “Suffering In Silence.” “No Tomorrow In Sight,” “Slow Down Old World,” “I Feel Sorry For Him,” “I Can’t Find the Time,” “You’ll Always Have Someone,” and “Any Old Arms Won’t Do” are beautifully realized weepers spotlighting Willie at his heartbreaking finest. Nelson laid down a fresh rendition of “Home Motel” for his encore set Here’s Willie Nelson, but this one is splendid just as it is. A blues-soaked “I Didn’t Sleep A Wink” doesn’t fit neatly into any convenient camp, Willie easing into its lowdown contours like he was born to it.  

Nelson’s demo dates were marathon affairs; one reportedly produced 25 songs on tape in three hours. Steel guitar and piano dominated the backing; Jimmy Day and Buddy Emmons often got the call on pedal steel, while Hargus “Pig” Robbins, second only to Floyd Cramer in Music Row’s sessioneer pecking order, usually rattled the 88s, proving adept at Cramer’s signature slip-note style. Guitarists Ray Edenton and Pete Wade, bassists Bob Moore, Junior Huskey, and Lightnin’ Chance, and drummers Buddy Harman and Willie Ackerman were other regulars on Nelson’s demo dates (precise personnel listings have yet to surface).

Liberty retained Nelson’s services as an artist through 1963. From there, he made a brief ’64 stop at Fred Foster’s Monument label (home to Roy Orbison and Music Row saxist supreme Boots Randolph) prior to settling at RCA Victor late that year, where Eddy Arnold, Bobby Bare, and Willie’s future musical partner Waylon Jennings thrived. But Nelson inherited Chet Atkins as his producer, and his lavish countrypolitan studio technique, full of violins (as opposed to fiddles) and harmonious vocal choruses, didn’t translate overly well to Willie’s quirky phrasing and advanced chord concepts. Nelson charted on a fairly consistent basis at RCA, yet never cracked the C&W Top Ten. Only “One In A Row” in 1966 and 1968’s “Bring Me Sunshine” dented the Top 20.

The tide began to turn when Nelson abandoned the trappings of Nashville and moved back to Texas in the early ‘70s. He broke free of RCA, earned considerable acclaim for his work on Atlantic (1974’s “Bloody Mary Morning” was the biggest single he’d had in years), and then self-produced his landmark album Red Headed Stranger for Columbia. It contained his marvelously sublime revival of “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain,” which became his first C&W chart-topper in 1975 and barely missed the pop Top 20. The hits flowed freely after that. Willie and Waylon spearheaded country music’s outlaw movement, their long hair and rock-influenced attitude appealing to a new and younger demographic turned off by the Nudie suits and ten-gallon hats of traditional Opry mainstays. For a time, Nelson was a genuine movie star as well.

They stood tall as the visionary future of country music.

Willie Nelson remains a revered icon to this day, transcending any and all idiomatic boundaries. The early rarities constituting this collection stand as part of the foundation on which his massive multi-faceted legacy resides. 

--Bill Dahl

SOURCES  

Willie: An Autobiography, by Willie Nelson with Bud Shrake (New York: Cooper Square Press, 1988)

45cat website: www45cat.com

Hillbilly-Music website: www.hillbilly-music.com/programs/story/index.php?prog=970

House of Hits: The Story of Houston’s Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios, by Andy Bradley and Roger Wood (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2010)

Joel Whitburn’s Top Country Singles 1944-1988, by Joel Whitburn (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research Inc., 1989)

PragueFrank’s Country Music Discographies website: http://.countrydiscography.blogspot.com/search/label/Nelson%20Willie

Wikipedia website: https://en.wikipedia.org

YouTube website: www.youtube.com