Then came Sunday. On Sunday, look for me at the Metropolitan Baptist Church, where, in addition to attending services regularly, I taught a Sunday school class. That’s where my dad and his wife were members. It was also where, as an adult, I was baptized, a ritual that deepened my faith.
At this point the Nelson brood—Ira’s family, my family, and Bobbie’s—was living in Arlington, halfway between Fort Worth and Dallas, where apartments were cheap.
I’d often run over to Dallas, a city whose cultural climate was very different from Fort Worth’s. Dallas saw itself as highfalutin. But Dallas also had a vital country music scene. There were huge venues like the Longhorn Ballroom and the Sportatorium, home of the Big D Jamboree. The stage at the Sportatorium was a wrestling ring. On Friday night you might see a wrestling match with Gorgeous George or Killer Kowalski. Come Saturday night, though, you’d get to see stars from The Grand Ole Opry or Louisiana Hayride like Webb Pierce or Roy Orbison.
I was dead set on getting into that wrestling ring. I wanted to play in front of six thousand folks so bad I could taste it. Meanwhile, I didn’t mind playing in front of sixty people back in Fort Worth at Gray’s Bar on Exchange Avenue, where I was hired by a Mexican band to sing lead and play guitar. Might sound funny, but the leader, a man named Momolita, had me singing jazz tunes like “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Black musicians would come up and jam. It was a free-feeling mixture of different styles, all dipped in the blues.
I’d experienced some criticism of my singing style before—and would experience a lot more in the future—but these guys understood me completely. Like me, they didn’t adhere to strict timing. The music we made was loose, unpredictable, and lovely. I felt secure up there on the bandstand, not only because of the easy-flowing, easygoing musical conversation with my peers, but because chicken wire had been rigged in front of the stage to protect us from the flying beer bottles and switchblades.
Great characters were popping up everywhere I looked.
Take Paul Buskirk, a brilliant banjo player. Paul had superb musical knowledge and became a mentor, encouraging my singing, playing, and writing. He was deep into Django. He understood that the bridge between country and jazz has traffic moving in both directions. His singer, Freddy Powers, also became a pal, another man infatuated with a variety of musical styles. The three of us would chew the fat and jam for hours.
“Don’t think of music in terms of categories,” Paul liked to say, “unless those categories are ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ The good musician can go from blues to country back to jazz and swing. He’s not afraid of playing anything outside his comfort zone because his comfort zone keeps on widening—long as he’s following his heart.”
Paul and Freddy would come by KCNC, where they’d sit in with me every day at noon for thirty minutes. Oliver English was part of this same scene. He was another major musical mentor. Not only was his own guitar technique superb, but he had tastes that went far beyond my usual territory. Like Paul Buskirk, he was a devotee of Django, but he also loved Andrés Segovia, the great Spanish classical guitarist.
“Listen to the sound of Segovia playing Bach,” said Oliver, “and you’ll think you’re hearing a whole orchestra.”
I listened, I learned, I saw my world widening.
I saw Oliver bring his brother Paul English to the station one day.
I liked Paul from the get-go. In nothing flat, he laid out his life story. He’d been busted for some petty crimes and gone to jail in Waxahachie. He was running whores out of some Fort Worth jail. He talked about how he’d been on the Fort Worth Press’s “10 Most Unwanted” list five years in a row. He was a gun-toting, fun-loving outlaw with plenty of charm and no fears. But like his brother Oliver, was he also a musician?
“Get that cardboard box over there,” said Oliver. “Give Paul some brushes and let him play drums.”
Paul impressed us with pretty decent time.
Some time would pass before Paul and I hooked up again, but when we did, it would be forever.
I didn’t see myself in Fort Worth forever. Fact is, I didn’t see myself there for more than another month or so. The radio show was fun, but the club gigs weren’t coming fast enough or paying enough.
Time to hit the highway.
As you’ve already seen, this was the early pattern of my life.
Go here, go there, stay for a short while, and then move out.
If you had asked, I couldn’t have told you exactly why it was time to make that move. I could have kept hustling in Fort Worth. I could have gone back to San Antonio or even to Waco. I could have done anything. The fact that I said to Martha, “Let’s try California,” doesn’t indicate that I had a plan. I didn’t. I didn’t have shit—no money, no blueprint for the future.
“Why California?” asked Martha.
“Why not?” I answered.
The answer was good enough for Martha, who understood my wanderlust because she had so much wanderlust of her own.
“Where in California?” she asked.
“Might as well start in San Diego.”
“I hear they got good weather down there.”
“Well, maybe San Diego’s the spot,” I said.
“It’s got my vote.”
“When do you wanna leave?”
“Yesterday.”
“That means tomorrow.”
“That means right now.”
8
COASTIN’
THE BLUES ARE DEEP—A DEEP part of American music, a deep part of my own life.
I love the blues for showing me how my feelings, no matter how sad, can be turned into song.
But I can’t say I loved the blues when they swept over me and nearly wiped me out.
The blues can be unrelenting—attacking in the morning, attacking at night, making you feel that nothing’s ever gonna be right.
I got the blues in San Diego.
When I moved out there with Martha and little Lana, I couldn’t find any work. Martha, bless her heart, supported us with another waitress gig. I felt guilty that I couldn’t care for my own family.
I arrived with high expectations. After all, Charlie Williams, the deejay who’d been at KCNC in Fort Worth just before me, had been hired by a country music radio station in L.A. California liked Texas deejays.
But not me. No San Diego station was interested.
No matter. San Diego had a big navy base with lots of bars and dance clubs. One way or the other, San Diego was sure to accommodate me. I’d find a gig somewhere.
“If you wanna gig,” said one club owner, “you gotta join the union.”
“What union?”
“The musicians’ union.”
I’d never been in a union before in my life. But why not? I looked up the number and called.
“What does it take to join?” I asked, half expecting I’d have to prove that I could play.
“A hundred bucks.”
“I don’t have a hundred bucks.”
“Well, buddy, that’s your problem.”
Night after night, my problem got worse.
I figured there had to be some beer joint owner who didn’t give a shit about union membership, but I figured wrong. No work anywhere in San Diego.
The can’t-find-no-work-nowhere blues are bad blues, the kind of blues that suck your soul dry.
The blues got me down. The blues got me scared. The blues got me out beating the bushes, going from dance club to beer joint to nightclub, anywhere they might need a picker or a singer.
No one needed shit.
No one needed me.
Despair took hold of me, grabbed my neck, cut off the circulation.
And one night, with ten bucks in my pocket, I cut out. Left Martha and the baby with the car and walked to the main highway, where I stuck out my thumb in the direction of L.A.
Just me, my guitar, and a small suitcase.
L.A. was sunny, but L.A. was dark. L.A. was the same ol’ story as San Diego. Night after night, club aft
er club, L.A. said no. We don’t know you. We don’t need you. We don’t want you.
Only good thing in L.A. was two sweet women who took a liking to me. After singing them a couple of songs, they said they heard something sweet. They took me in and said they wanted to help.
They said they knew the music scene and would take me around.
Thank you, ladies.
They took me here and they took me there. I had a couple of short auditions where everyone smiled but no one said yes. Everyone said no.
This went on for a week.
L.A. is a fantasyland, but in L.A. I had to face reality. And reality couldn’t be plainer: California was a fuckin’ bust. I had to get out. Here I was, homeless, jobless, and too ashamed to go back to Martha and admit defeat.
Instead, I did what little boys do when they’re scared and feeling lost:
I went to see my mother. Mom and her husband, Ken, had moved to Portland. Portland had a music scene and my mother had a house. I left my suitcase with the two ladies and gave them Myrle’s address with instructions to send on my stuff in a few days.
I left the ladies that night and headed out to hitch to Oregon.
No rides.
I gave up about 4 a.m. and slipped into a ditch to catch some sleep. It was a cold night so I gathered up some newspaper and kindling and built a fire. The blues just about did me in—literally. The smoke just about asphyxiated me.
But there’s something about human nature that says, “Get up and move on. Do what you got to do. Survive.”
So I got out of the ditch and hitched over to the railroad yard, where I hopped a freight heading north.
The freight rolled through one night and then another, me clutching my guitar, hungry as hell but somehow certain that I had to be moving in the right direction.
I thought of Norman Vincent Peale and all his positive thoughts. I thought of how he said no situation is too negative to be turned around. I thought of Daddy Nelson and Mama Nelson and sister Bobbie and Martha and Lana and all the people who loved me. In that boxcar, for hours on end, I meditated on love. I prayed that love would see me through. And on a brisk winter morning, I was delivered.
I opened the boxcar door and the cold Oregon air smacked me in the face. I saw we were in Eugene, a hundred miles south of Portland.
With guitar in hand, I caught a ride.
“Going to Portland?” I asked.
“ ’Fraid not,” said the truck driver, an older man, “but I’ll drop you at the Greyhound station, where you can catch a bus.”
I just nodded and said thanks.
The trucker looked me over and read my soul.
“You don’t got no money for a bus ticket, do you, son?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Well, this is your lucky day. Don’t know why I’m doing this, but something tells me you’re on a worthwhile mission. So here’s ten bucks for the bus.”
I was moved to tears. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“Don’t get mushy on me, boy. Just take the money and skedaddle.”
With great gratitude, I made it to Portland, where I called Mom from a phone booth.
She didn’t sound surprised to hear from me.
“We been waiting on you,” was all she said.
Her husband, Ken, came to get me at the bus station. He was all smiles.
When we arrived at the house, the smiles got wider.
There was my mother, there was Martha with little Lana in her arms. All safe, all home.
“I figured you’d be making your way to your mama’s home,” said Martha. “So I called her and she kindly sent us plane tickets.”
For once, there were no recriminations, no questioning of why I had disappeared in the middle of the night, no fighting. Just hugs and kisses.
“You’re crazy as a loon, Willie Nelson,” said Martha, “but I love you.”
Heard someone say that just when you’re sure things are coming apart, they’re actually just coming together. That’s the lesson I learned in Portland. Hang in there long enough and your change will come.
Beautiful things started happening in Portland. The most beautiful of all was the birth of Susie, our second daughter, on January 20, 1957. I thought it was gonna happen a couple of weeks earlier, when we took a little trip to Mount Saint Helens. By then Martha was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. We were walking around the grounds surrounding the mountain when we heard rumbling. Before we knew it, the volcano had blown its top. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the eruption would coincide with Susie’s birth. I saw a first aid station and was about to run for help when Martha said no, Susie wasn’t quite ready.
When Susie did make her appearance, we welcomed her with open arms. She was gorgeous. Along with Lana, Susie became the love of our lives. At twenty-four, I was blessed with two miraculous daughters. More than ever, I needed to provide for them.
And I’m proud to say I did.
Martha’s folks came up from Waco to help care for Susie and Lana while Martha found work—you guessed it—as a waitress. Then Myrle told me about a radio station in Vancouver, Washington, a smaller town some fifteen miles from Portland. That’s where I found work. Fact is, that’s where I found myself. I rediscovered who I was.
In a matter of weeks, I went from being a vagrant in a boxcar to an on-the-air personality on KVAN, 910 on your dial, serving Portland/Vancouver.
“We’re the station with the sense of humor,” the promos said. “The station with the personalities.”
Those personalities included deejays Shorty the Hired Hand and Cactus Ken. Add one new addition to the roster:
Wee Willie Nelson.
Yes, sir, I was back on the air, back with the name of my show in Texas—Western Express—and back with the same can-do positive attitude that said, “Friends and neighbors, this is a man who’s got the music you love, a man you gotta like.”
First they had me on in the afternoon. I was so well liked they moved me to a morning slot, where I competed with Arthur Godfrey, whose national radio show was one of the most popular in the history of radio. I actually held my own against Godfrey.
The folks at the station saw how I was catching on. They even took out a newspaper ad, touting my show. The ad features a photo of me, hair combed nice and straight, big grin on my face. Across from me is a drawing of a donkey holding a guitar. The jackass is looking at me and asking, “Who, him?”
The copy reads:
“Why, he’s yer cotton-pickin’, snuff-dippin’, tobacca-chewin’, stump-jumpin’, gravy-soppin’, coffee-pot-dodgin’, dumplin-eatin’, frog-giggin’ hillbilly from Hill County, Texas…
“Willie Nelson!
“Just rode into town to take over his own show on KVAN.… See that pan-handled description up there? Them’s his very own words! Willie’s got wit, warmth and wow…!”
In Oregon, the roller-coaster ride from burnout to recharge was just beginning. The ride would last a lifetime. But at this point, in my mid-twenties, the fact that I could reinvent myself and find favor among the good folks of the great Northwest calmed my soul.
The year all this happened—1957—was a big one in the music biz.
As a deejay, I was in the driver’s seat. I got to pick and choose the songs I loved most. Those included hits like Ferlin Husky’s “Gone,” Johnny Cash’s “There You Go,” and Ray Price’s “My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You.” But I also got to play Elvis, who had exploded on the scene a year earlier with “Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel.”
I was an Elvis fan from the get-go. I heard he was essentially a country boy raised up in country music, but I also heard that, like me, he had absorbed a big dose of black blues. There was also a gospel strain in Elvis’s voice. He wove all these strains together and came out rocking with an energy that lit up the world. From where I was sitting at KVAN in Vancouver, I saw he wasn’t only dominating the pop charts; he had number one hits on country stations across the nation: “All Shook Up,” “
(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear,” and “Jailhouse Rock.” I never understood why certain Elvis songs charted on the country stations when others didn’t. What makes “Teddy Bear” and “Jailhouse Rock” country? Who knows? And who cares? The truth is that no one knew how to categorize Elvis. He busted through all the categories and turned the industry on its ear.
Outside the station, things were starting to work, too. I found music gigs all around the region. Tiny Dumont’s Dance Hall, a pavilion much like the places I’d played back in West and Hillsboro, was filled with country-music-loving folks looking to unwind and cut a rug to western swing.
I swung out in other directions, too. Wearing a white Stetson cowboy hat and a fancy white-fringed black leather suit sewed by Martha, I jumped on the back of a palomino that I had bought from an engineer at the radio station and paraded down Main Street during every holiday ceremony.
Here comes Wee Willie Nelson from KVAN!
I attended civic events and car dealership promotions in Davy Crockett gear—raccoon-skin cap and all—since this was the era of the Fess Parker franchise of that celebrated folk hero.
Did I see myself as a folk hero? Hell, no. I was merely a self-promoting deejay looking to get my picture in the papers to boost my ratings.
You suggest it, I’d do it. I was the first, for instance, to sign up for a highly publicized stock car race where all the deejays in Oregon got behind the wheel and went for broke. A race was all I needed to fire up my competitive engines. Watching those other fuckers falling behind, it pleased me no end to finish first.
It pleased me even more to cut a record, my first, and hustle it on the air. I used the station’s equipment to record two songs. I wrote the first. I called it “No Place for Me” and, typical of my early stuff, it’s about loneliness, man rejected by woman. “Your love is as cold as the north wind that blows,” I wrote, “and the river that runs to the sea… but, baby, there’s no place for me.” The B side was “Lumberjack,” a tale of the logger life written by my pal Leon Payne.
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