It's a Long Story

by Willie Nelson

  Because I hadn’t made my mark in Eugene or Waco, I greeted San Antone with renewed hunger. All these nightclubs with all this music meant that I’d surely prevail. My ambition heated up. I’d always seen myself as a winner. Now it was time to claim the victory.

  I met a number of great musicians, but none made a bigger impression than Johnny Bush. When I ran into him in some beer joint downtown, I immediately knew he was a winner. He had a tremendous voice filled with feeling. Later they’d call him “the Caruso of country.” First time I heard him sing “Stardust” I fought back tears. A country singer interpreting Hoagy Carmichael! Made me see that a great singer can sing any song in any genre. Johnny Bush was a great singer.

  He said that he was playing drums because there were more gigs for drummers than singers. He reinforced my belief that a good sideman can always find work. And he and I worked great together. With Johnny on drums and me on guitar, we played in the Pearl Wranglers, a well-known country swing band led by Adolph Hofner. Hofner named his group after his sponsor, Pearl Beer, one of the breweries headquartered in San Antonio. Early on, I learned about the link between big business and music. I liked that link.

  I also liked how Johnny reminded me of Zeke—both good guys who never shied away from a wild adventure. Neither did Johnny shy away from expressing an opinion about my singing.

  “I’m forming a band and I want you in it, Willie,” said Johnny, “but I want you playing, not singing.”

  “What’s wrong with my singing?”

  “It ain’t on the money. You got no time. You’re either ahead or behind the beat. Besides, this band don’t need more than one singer—and that’s me.”

  “Can’t argue with you, Johnny. You’re a belter.”

  So Bush formed the Mission City Playboys—with him singing and me playing. It was a band that went nowhere fast, but we had fun going there.

  I was fast to answer an ad saying that KBOP, a radio station in Pleasanton, some thirty miles outside San Antone, needed a disc jockey. I ran over and, as luck would have it, met a man who’d have a mighty influence on my life.

  “Name’s Parker, Dr. Ben Parker, but people call me Doc,” he said when I arrived at the station.

  “Pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m Willie Nelson.”

  “Well, Willie, first thing I must ask is whether you’ve had experience on the air.”

  “Yes, sir. Worked at KHBR in Hillsboro.”

  “I know KHBR. A fine little station.”

  “We played live music on the air as well.”

  “And you worked the board?”

  “You bet.”

  “They use an RCA board up there?”

  “No, it was a Gates board.”

  “We use RCA. It’s a lot different. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Can’t say I am.”

  Dead silence. I wondered if this meant the interview was over. If I couldn’t operate the board, what good was I?

  “Tell you what, Willie. I see something in you that I like. Something I trust. Let me take a little time and show you how the RCA board works.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  And I did. I paid close attention and was hands-on in short order. Doc Parker was impressed and decided, right then and there, to give me an on-the-air test.

  “Part of the job is to read live news and commercials. You have a problem with that?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “You ready?”

  “Sure thing,” I said with forced confidence.

  “In five minutes you’ll be going live.”

  Doc Parker handed me a few sheets of copy. The news off the ticker machine was easy to read. But the commercial was hard. It said, “The Pleasanton Pharmacy’s pharmaceutical department accurately and precisely fills your doctor’s prescriptions.”

  Somehow I got all those words out. The boss smiled.

  “Excellent, young man. You have a job.”

  That made my year. I was back in my element. And to make matters sweeter, I had a mentor, a man only too happy to school me.

  Ben Parker was “Doc” because of his practice as a chiropractor. He was also a college dean, a pastor, and a sharp businessman who owned seven radio stations. I saw him as a kindhearted human being with great wisdom.

  “Take people for who they are,” he once said to me. “Everyone requires respect. The less you judge people, the more successful your dealings with them. Don’t preach. Don’t be harsh. Don’t be arrogant. When it comes to working with others, understanding is the key. You can’t be too compassionate. Compassion leads to cooperation, and cooperation leads to accomplishment.”

  Compassion and understanding were the two qualities Doc exhibited on a daily basis. He was never too busy to stop and offer me praise when I deserved it and a critique when I needed it.

  “What I like about you, Willie,” he said, “is that you let your easygoing personality come out. Listeners like someone who’s not trying to impress them with his importance. What they don’t like, though, is when they turn on their radio early in the morning and discover that the deejay isn’t there. They don’t like that at all.”

  Doc was referring to the fact that, due to late-night gigs I had with Johnny, I had arrived late for a couple of my early morning shifts. Another boss would have fired me. Not Doc.

  Doc said, “Look, Willie, I know you’re looking to find yourself as a singer and a songwriter. No doubt you have talent, boy. I wouldn’t do anything to discourage that work. In fact, if it’s easier for you, I’ll move you to an afternoon shift.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’m looking for you to do big things, Willie. You and that Johnny Bush as well.”

  Doc also gave Johnny a deejay shift.

  “Both you guys are characters,” he said, “but the kind of characters our listeners like. Our listeners are getting a kick out of you.”

  One morning, rushing to KBOP, I could have kicked my own ass when I ran out of gas. Making matters worse, I was hungover. Had no choice but to hitchhike.

  I’d be goddamned if the first person to stop wasn’t Johnny Bush.

  “You’re one sorry son of a bitch,” said Johnny, also on his way to the station. “Get in. Good thing I happened by.”

  We started shooting the shit. But then, ten minutes outside Pleasanton, Johnny’s car started coughing and wheezing before it stopped dead.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Johnny hesitated before saying it, but finally he had to.

  “We’re out of gas.”

  “You’re one sorry son of a bitch,” I said.

  The story ended with the two of us on the side of the road, thumbs out.

  You might say that the story of my recording career began at KBOP. I use the term “recording career” loosely. Though I loved being a deejay with a show of my own, I never gave up my ambition to write and record songs of my own—not for a minute.

  Because I had this access to so many records, I was always inspired. I was spinning discs by Faron Young, Ray Price, Porter Wagoner, Marty Robbins—every country star in the nation. I also slipped in pop hits that I loved—Sinatra’s “Young at Heart” or Nat King Cole’s “Answer Me, My Love.”

  I had the additional good fortune of working at a radio station at the birth of rock and roll. I imagine I was among the first deejays in Texas to play “Rock around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets, a record I loved.

  But not everything was good. There were a lot of shit records being put out. Which got me to thinking: Hell, I can do better.

  With that in mind, I used the equipment at KBOP to record a couple of songs—just me and my guitar. I sent them to a man who had a little label in Luling, Texas. Never did hear back.

  Was I discouraged? Not on your life. I was just getting started. I was stubborn as hell, still certain this music thing was gonna work out.

  “It’s all gonna work out just fine,” I told Johnny Bush after he heard me convince a lady who o
wned the Red Barn, a club in Leming, Texas, to hire our four-man band.

  “But Willie,” said Johnny, “we don’t got no four-man band. All we got is you and me. She wants a fiddler and steel player and we don’t got either one.”

  “No worries,” I said.

  Come the day of the gig, we’d found a steel player, but no fiddler.

  “No fiddler,” said the owner, “no money. Folks come here to dance. And without a fiddler, they won’t be dancing, which means they won’t be drinking, which means you won’t be seeing a red cent.”

  “We’ll have a fiddler by tonight,” I told the lady.

  Outside, Johnny said, “You’re crazy, Willie. You’re making all sorts of promises you can’t keep. How can you stand there and say it’s all gonna work out?”

  “ ’Cause it will.”

  And it did.

  Later that afternoon, who should turn up but my dad, Ira Nelson. He had come to see his little granddaughter, Lana.

  “Bring your fiddle, Dad?” I asked.

  “Naturally.”

  “Feel like playing?”

  “Always.”

  That night the music was hot enough to burn down the Red Barn.

  7

  POSITIVE THINKING

  MY MARRIAGE TO MARTHA WAS unpredictable as a Texas twister.

  Even though I adored little Lana and pledged to be a better husband and responsible dad, the nightlife kept calling. The nightlife meant playing any club that would have me. It meant driving long distances and staying out till three or four in the morning before heading over to KBOP for my early shift. It meant meeting some mighty pretty ladies who didn’t require any wooing. They were more than willing.

  It meant facing a fact that, as a young man, became more and more apparent to me:

  A hard dick has no conscience.

  Some might say that’s low-consciousness thinking, but I do believe it’s true. At the same time, my mind has always been open to high-consciousness thinking.

  When I was scrambling around Texas in the 1950s, for instance, I happened to pick up a book by a pastor named Norman Vincent Peale. The title intrigued me: The Power of Positive Thinking.

  “Many people make life unnecessarily difficult for themselves by dissipating power and energy through fuming and fretting,” wrote the minister before quoting Scripture, John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.”

  I soon saw that the book was about peace of mind—peace that can be realized by replacing a negative thought with a positive one.

  “When you expect the best, you release a magnetic force in your mind,” said Peale, “which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you.”

  I loved the pastor’s attitudes and took them to heart.

  A peaceful mind generates power.

  A relaxed attitude receives peace.

  To be in tune with the infinite is to embrace His positive energy.

  Positive thoughts lead to positive actions.

  And there’s nothing more positive than love.

  The message of the book never left my mind, even—and especially—during times when I might be thinking in a negative way. Just like that, I brought myself back to Peale and his message of inner peace. That attitude got me through a whole bunch of career roadblocks, not to mention domestic wars.

  Martha and I brought our love wars to Fort Worth. We figured we might find some peace there—and work to boot—since the San Antonio/Pleasanton circuit had run its course. I loved Doc Parker, I loved playing with Johnny Bush, but the gigs were drying up. Time to move on.

  Fort Worth was calling principally because sister Bobbie was living there. She and Bud were divorced and entangled in a nasty dispute over the custody of their sons, Randy, Freddie, and Michael. Sister needed my moral support. My father was also in Fort Worth—another plus. The closer I got to family, the better.

  When it came to country music, Fort Worth was Honky-Tonk Central. One joint after another—rough joints frequented by rough characters—lined the Jacksboro Highway: illegal gambling joints, dance joints, beer joints, buckets of blood. You could hear live music from one end of Fort Worth to the other. The stockyards and slaughterhouses gave the city a distinctive stink. The whorehouses ran night and day. Gangsters fought over territory with live ammunition. Fort Worth was “where the West begins”—the Wild West.

  My kind of town.

  After arriving, I landed a deejaying job in Denton. The 120-mile-round-trip commute was a killer.

  I soon found something better at KCNC in Fort Worth. I had two shifts—early morning and early afternoon—and took this gig very seriously. In my eyes, Fort Worth was a big market and I wanted to be heard.

  Though I stole some of the riffs from other on-the-air personalities, my sign-on had a certain flair. Sometimes I still say it in my sleep.

  “This is your ol’ cotton-pickin’, snuff-dippin’, tobacca-chewin’, stump-jumpin’, gravy-soppin’, coffeepot-dodgin’, dumplin’-eatin’, frog-giggin’ hillbilly from Hill County, Texas.”

  I thought I was hot shit.

  When I wasn’t thinking of myself, I was often thinking of sister Bobbie. Because I thought the world of her, it tore me up to see her dealing with these painful family problems. I also deeply respected how, faced with adversities that would overwhelm most people, she stayed true to music. Bobbie was resourceful. Musically, she could hold her own at any honky-tonk, but how many honky-tonk piano players could land a job demonstrating the Hammond organ? In addition to selling organs at music stores, Bobbie was playing in clubs, while on Sundays she commanded the organ at the very proper Highland Park Methodist Church in Dallas.

  Fred Lockwood was never very proper. He and his brother Ace were musicians who worked the seedy clubs on Jacksboro Highway, Mansfield Highway, Hemphill Street, and White Settlement Road—the down-and-dirty joints where shootings and stabbings were every-night occurrences.

  We were in one of those joints, sitting at the bar and nursing our whiskeys, when the Army-McCarthy hearings came on TV. It was a nasty business—Senator Joseph McCarthy accusing everyone and his mama of being a secret commie—so I downed my drink and ordered another.

  “We’d probably get happier faster if we blew some tea,” said Fred.

  “Never tried it,” I said.

  “It’s time you did.”

  Naturally I knew about pot. Musicians called it tea or weed or boo or reefer. They said it made the music sound better while making you horny. They said it put a nice filter on things.

  But hell, I was a hick from Abbott. I’d seen Reefer Madness, and I was a little worried that a little pot might get me crazy. Wasn’t I crazy enough? Besides, whiskey was working for me.

  Or was it? Booze emboldened me. Brought out the fighter. And on more occasions than I wish to remember, the fighter picked on guys bigger than him. Because I had already started studying jujitsu and martial arts, there were times when I prevailed. I wish I could tell you that those times were frequent. But honesty requires that I admit that more often than not I got the shit kicked out of me. Booze did nothing to improve my dexterity or my judgment in provoking an opponent.

  But booze would remain the main ingredient for years to come. I wasn’t ready for reefer, at least not then.

  “Take this little joint anyway,” said Fred, handing me a skinny cigarette twisted at either end.

  When I eventually did light it up, I hadn’t been schooled on how to smoke it. So I inhaled and exhaled like I was puffing on a cigarette. I didn’t get high. I didn’t see the big deal.

  Some time later Fred gave me another joint that we smoked together.

  “No, you dumb son of a bitch,” he said. “You don’t treat it like no Lucky Strike. You hold in the fuckin’ smoke. Watch.”

  I watched, I learned, I got high.

  From time to time, I’d smoke a joint if someone handed it to me. But I never bought penny matchbooks or lids like other musicians. Because I was a chain-smoker, I saw grass a
s merely another thing to smoke when the occasion arose. It’d take years before I’d understand its beneficial properties. In the meantime, I stuck to my main two habits: cigarettes and booze. I was too young and dumb to see the harm they were doing.

  When it was time to go on the air, I was dead sober. I called my radio show Western Express, and I promoted it tirelessly.

  Every afternoon when I came on the air, I’d spin a beautiful song called “Red Headed Stranger.” It was the perfect tune to help parents put their kids down for a nap. Guitar Boogie Smith’s version was a classic. When I played it, I’d give a shout-out to baby Lana at home.

  “This one’s for my little girl,” I’d say.

  When I got home that night, she’d want me to sing the song. When I did, she fell asleep in my arms.

  The song was both simple and profound, a deep Western yarn of a cowboy from Blue Rock, Montana, who, mourning the loss of his love, has fallen into a murderous rage. The rage, though, is hidden inside. The song sounds innocent as a nursery rhyme. I loved the line that says, “He’s wild in his sorrow, he’s riding and hiding his pain.”

  I could see the redheaded stranger. I could feel his heavy heart. And yet singing this song, I could also feel how little kids, unaware of its tragic message, were mesmerized by the sweet melody, the easy rhythm, and the beautifully repeated patterns that warn us not to boss him or cross him, not to fight him or spite him.

  I saw the song as an epic movie. And as a redhead, I naturally cast myself in the leading role. But that was just the idle fantasy of a twenty-two-year-old kid running around Fort Worth, figuring out ways to promote himself.

  For instance, I’d do remotes from all over the city—Leonard’s Department Store, car dealerships, any business that would have me. I was determined to get my name out there.

  That was daytime. Come nighttime I circulated around the city’s nightclubs, where, little by little, I gained a reputation as a guy who could sing and play.