“Well, it ain’t Roger Miller’s ‘Dang Me’ or ‘Chug-a-Lug,’ ” chuckled Fred, referring to two of the biggest hits of 1964. “But maybe that’s good. Maybe it’s so different folks will stop and listen.”
Some folks did, but most didn’t. The single wasn’t a hit, but the song did find an audience, especially in my home state, where I could always work, no matter how strange-sounding my material.
But not every song fell on only one state’s ears. Couple of months before Christmas I was walking around, just looking over my land, when my mind went back to someone I hadn’t thought about for years: a man without legs who sold pencils and what he called “pretty paper” in front of Leonard’s Department Store in Fort Worth. By “pretty paper” he meant wrapping paper. He had a way of crying out those words—“Pretty paper! Pretty paper!”—that broke my heart.
I can’t tell you why in October of 1964 I had this sudden and vivid memory. But it was so powerful that I picked up my guitar and set the story to music. I cast it as a Christmas scene, thinking that would heighten the drama.
Crowded streets, busy feet hustle by him
Downtown shoppers, Christmas is nigh
There he sits all alone on the sidewalk
Hoping that you won’t pass him by
Should you stop… better not… much too busy
You’re in a hurry—my, my how time does fly
In the distance the ringing of laughter
And in the midst of the laughter he cries
“Pretty paper, pretty ribbons of blue
Wrap your presents to your darling from you
Pretty pencils to write ‘I love you’ ”
I brought the song over to Fred Foster, thinking that it might be perfect for Christmas.
“I think it’s perfect for Roy Orbison,” said Fred.
Well, that certainly was an idea. Roy was a much bigger recording artist than me. As a songwriter, I’ve always wanted my tunes covered by big stars. At the same time, I saw myself singing the song.
While I was thinking, Fred was planning. “Roy’s in London right now,” he said, “but I’ll play it for him over the phone. If he likes it, I’ll book a studio over there and we’ll rush it out in time for the holiday season.”
I could have argued, but I didn’t. A Roy Orbison cover would be a solid score. So I let Fred send the song, and the next thing I knew “Pretty Paper” was cut, released, and racing up the charts—all in time for Christmas.
Ironically, the release of Roy’s version coincided with the end of my contract as a Monument artist. While Fred had successfully placed one of my songs with Roy, he hadn’t been able to score any significant sales for my own records. That’s when I moved to RCA. Figured it only made sense to let Chet Atkins take a shot at me, uniqueness be damned. If Chet couldn’t do it, no one in Nashville could.
It was during this same holiday season that I made my first appearance on The Grand Ole Opry. I’d been waiting awhile to get the invitation, and when it came I was grateful. It wasn’t a matter of money—the Opry paid very little; it was the exposure and prestige of playing on that same Ryman Auditorium stage as Roy Acuff, Minnie Pearl, Porter Wagoner, and Hank Snow.
As excited as I was, the Opry had some definite drawbacks. For one, I couldn’t play with my own band. I was simply part of the ensemble. That limited the kind of material I could do. And because the Opry required me to do at least twenty-six shows a year, that meant twenty-six weekends when I couldn’t be on the road making much better money playing my regular Texas venues.
After a year I quit the Opry but stayed on TV, thanks to Ernest Tubb. Tubb was the ultimate Nashville hustler—and I mean that as a compliment. He recorded, toured, and owned a record store in downtown Nashville. Not only was he on the Opry, but he had his own live show that followed the Opry every Saturday night. The Ernest Tubb Show was something else entirely, different from the sparkled-and-spangled look of the Opry. Ernest dressed more like Perry Como or Andy Williams than Ray Price or Hank Snow. He liked sweaters. I appeared on the show dozens of times from the mid-sixties on. My usual outfit was a plain turtleneck and black slacks. Nothing fancy. But it was more than the casual clothes that made me comfortable. It was Ernest’s great backup band and his backup singers, the Johnson Sisters, that made it so easy. They never cramped my style. In fact, they followed me beautifully.
At RCA, I tried to follow Chet Atkins as best I could. I went along with his suggestion that we call my first album for the label Country Willie: His Own Songs. I also went along with his idea that I rerecord some of my songs that had been hits for other artists: “Hello Walls,” “Night Life,” “Funny How Time Slips Away.” I added some new ones like “My Own Peculiar Way” and “One Day at a Time.” On all of them, though, Chet added the requisite sweeteners—heavy string sections and heavenly choirs that were supposedly making my music more palatable. It didn’t work.
“It’s a cumulative process,” Chet told me. “Be patient, Willie, and you’ll get that mainstream audience you’ve been looking for.”
I was patient. I went along with the same process on my second RCA record, Country Favorites: Willie Nelson Style. This time it was all covers, no originals, including “San Antonio Rose,” the calling card of my idol, Bob Wills. I still found the production heavy-handed and wondered why Chet was so adamant about putting the word “country” in the title.
“If we’re going for that mainstream audience, doesn’t ‘country’ restrict me?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“One step at a time,” Chet answered. “We solidify your country base, and then we expand out from there.”
“Whatever you say,” I said, but remained unconvinced.
15
WAYLON
IT WAS IN THIS SAME period of the mid-sixties that I happened to be working the Riverside Ballroom in Phoenix. Everyone was talking about a performer playing JD’s, a huge nightclub close to Arizona State. I had a distinct memory of JD’s. It was a good-time party scene, where, a few years earlier, an irate man had whacked me over the head with a car jack, claiming I’d been humping his wife. I hadn’t been. I didn’t even know the lady in question. But having seen her flirting with me when I was onstage, the husband assumed the worst. I needed quite a few stitches to sew up my skull. My head ached for weeks. Ironically, other men could have accused me and been right. In this case, when the guy was completely wrong, I got hammered anyway.
So JD’s, a rough and rowdy dance hall and drinking hole, was where this new artist was making a name for himself. College kids loved him.
“Is he a country singer?” I asked.
“Kinda yes and kinda no,” I was told. “He’s part country, part rock and roll. He’s got something of your attitude, Willie, even though he ain’t nothing like you at all.”
That explanation intrigued me to where I drove out to JD’s to see what the fuss was all about.
Didn’t take more than one song to convince me: this son of a bitch was going places.
“I feel like we’re kindred spirits, hoss,” was the first thing Waylon Jennings said to me when we met backstage at JD’s. He was a big-boned man, an assertive man, with rugged looks, bright eyes, and an outsized personality. He was a force of nature.
“Why do you call us kin?” I asked.
“We’re both ornery. We don’t fit in. Fact is, we don’t wanna fit in. We got a different idea of how to do things. And I suspect that’s ’cause we came up the same way—the Texas way.”
Waylon Jennings was right. He was younger than me by four years but had a similar background. He’d grown up in Lubbock and started out as a disc jockey. Like all of us, he idolized Bob Wills and cut his teeth on western swing. But he also loved folk music and rock and roll and wasn’t about to be put in a box.
“The man who got me started was Buddy Holly,” Waylon told me. “We both grew up in Lubbock. Buddy saw my talent before anyone. He recorded me and even put me in his band. Even with all those hits he had—‘That
’ll Be the Day,’ ‘Peggy Sue,’ ‘Everyday’—he kept telling me I could be a hit maker, too. Buddy was a beautiful man.
“I was out there on the last tour with him in the winter of 1959. We had a gig at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. Tommy Allsup was also in the band.”
“I know Tommy,” I said. “He was one of my producers at Liberty.”
“It was me, Tommy, Buddy, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper,” Waylon went on. “From Clear Lake we were due in Moorhead, Minnesota, the next night. It was more than four hundred miles, so Buddy decided to charter a plane and fly. The weather was bad. The snow was coming down hard, but Buddy couldn’t see sitting on no bus for eight or nine hours. The problem, though, was that the plane only held three passengers plus the pilot. Two of us would have to take the goddamn bus.
“ ‘Hey Waylon,’ the Big Bopper said. ‘I think I’m coming down with the flu or something. You mind if I ride on the plane?’
“I thought about it for a second. Flying was a helluva lot easier, but how could I make the Bopper, who had to weigh at least 250, squeeze into one of those little bus seats?
“ ‘Sure thing, hoss,’ I said. ‘You go on the plane with Buddy.’
“Meanwhile, Ritchie Valens and Tommy Allsup flipped a coin for the third seat. After the gig, Buddy was hungry and asked me if I’d get him a couple of hot dogs. When I brought him his food, he said, ‘Heard you ain’t flying with me tonight. Heard you chickened out.’
“ ‘I ain’t scared of no plane,’ I said. ‘I was just being a good citizen. The Big Bopper is coming down with something.’
“ ‘Well, I hope that damn bus freezes up on you,’ said Buddy.
“And then I said the words that will haunt me till the day I die. I said, ‘I hope that li’l ol’ plane crashes.’
“The bus pulled into Moorhead at ten the next morning. It was bright and sunny. I’d slept all the way. When we got to the hotel, the tour manager came out and said he needed to tell me something. I knew by his voice and the look in his eyes that it was something I didn’t wanna hear. So I just said, ‘No. I don’t want to talk to you. Talk to Tommy.’ Tommy Allsup was the first to hear. He came and told me. ‘They’re gone,’ was all he said. ‘The plane went down in a blizzard, and they’re all gone.’
“Well, Willie, it was like I had caused it. My fuckin’ words had caused the plane to crash. I know that’s crazy, but that’s how my fucked-up mind was thinking. On any given night, I still do think that way. If I drink enough whiskey, sometimes I can chase the thought away. But thoughts of that tour always come back.
“After the crash, we were promised money to attend Buddy’s funeral. But the money never came, and I never got to tell my friend good-bye. The boy was a genius. You know how old he was when he died?”
“Real young,” I said.
“Twenty-two.”
“A terrible loss.”
“He was just getting started. I guarantee you, Willie, he would have been bigger than Elvis.”
“Well, you’re here, and you got yourself a great gig here in Phoenix,” I said, wanting to change the subject, kinda surprised but honored he was trusting me with all this. “They’re breaking down the doors to hear you.”
“Maybe so, but tell you what, Willie. I’m about to get outta here.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Too fuckin’ confining. Can’t stay in one place for too long.”
“Sounds like me. Where you headed?”
“Nashville.”
“What are you gonna do there?”
“Cut me some hit records. Sell me some hit songs. What do you think, hoss?”
“I think you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do, Waylon. But if you’re asking my advice…”
“I am.”
“Well, sir, after having been in Nashville for some time, I don’t see it as your town. Nashville will wanna mold you, and you don’t need no molding. Nashville will wanna clean you up, and you don’t need no cleaning.”
“So what do I need?”
“You need to stay away from Nashville.”
“I hear you, Willie.”
Maybe Waylon did hear me, but the next thing I knew he’d packed up, left Phoenix, moved to Nashville, and, like me, was signed by Chet Atkins to RCA.
While Waylon was recording, I went back on the road. In 1966, producer Crash Stewart and I put together a Texas tour that included Hank Cochran, Johnny Bush, and my own band. By then Paul English had moved to my farm and become my permanent drummer—wild, street-smart Paul who always had my back and got me out of more scraps than I care to recall.
Crash wanted to add a new artist to the bill: Charley Pride.
“He’s not only a good country singer,” said Crash. “He’s a novelty.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“He’s black.”
That worried me only because the tour was going into deep South Texas and roughneck Louisiana. I envisioned riots.
“Before you decide,” said Crash, “listen to his single.”
I listened and liked it. It was a song called “The Snakes Crawl at Night.” Charley had a singing style all his own.
“Book him,” I told Crash. “Paul and I will deal with the consequences.”
Charley turned out to be a great guy—smart, congenial, and humble. Some country fans were taken aback when they saw a black man singing in my show, but the minute he opened his mouth they shut theirs. They heard that Charley could sing.
Then came the night I was off work and went to hear Johnny Bush at the Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas. That big barn of a nightclub was owned by Dewey Groom, who had a strict segregation policy when it came to artists and their audience. To use Dewey’s unfortunate expression, he’d call Tuesday night “nigger night.” That meant B.B. King or Bobby Blue Bland or Jimmy Reed was headlining and the crowd would be all black. Country music nights, like the one with Johnny Bush, were all white.
On this particular white night I got silly drunk and decided to take to the stage. My buddy Johnny didn’t mind.
“What are you gonna sing for us, Willie?” asked Johnny.
“I’m not gonna sing a lick,” I said, “but I am gonna ask a friend of mine to come up here and entertain you.”
I had Paul go get Charley, who was waiting outside, and bring him to the stage.
I could hear all sorts of groans and moans and nasty catcalls. The loudest protest came from Dewey himself.
But I just held up my hand and said, “Wait till you hear him.” And then, even surprising myself, I kissed Charley Pride full on his mouth.
Then silence.
Then Charley breaking into his beautiful “The Snakes Crawl at Night.”
Then rapt listening.
And, when he was through, thunderous applause.
“You see?” I said to Dewey. “God didn’t strike no one dead. The world is still turning. Along with everyone else, you just fell in love with Charley Pride.”
Dewey was a good sport. He came back to the motel with all of us, where we had an all-night guitar pulling session. Everyone got plastered. When morning came, I looked over and saw that Dewey and Charley had both passed out on the same bed. Due to my own inebriation, I lacked the presence of mind to snap a photo. But I did manage a smile and offered up a prayer. I thanked the Lord for strange bedfellows.
Shirley and I still shared a bed when I was home, but those times became more and more infrequent. The more tense our marriage, the more I stayed away from Ridgetop. I also had the excuse—and it was a good one—that in order to keep this farming enterprise going, I needed to make money. If I had wanted to, I could have put Shirley in my road show. But the plain truth is that I didn’t want to. And if from time to time she got fed up with me and threw me through a screen door, I couldn’t blame her. I had shut her out of my inner circle.
By 1967 or so, that circle included Johnny Bush on drums, Jimmy Day on steel, and David Zettner on bass. When David was drafted, he suggested
his buddy Bee Spears, only nineteen. Bee was from San Antonio. Didn’t have great chops at first, but Jimmy Day schooled him in a hurry, and just like that, Bee held down that bottom bass part just fine.
We had different names on different tours. Sometimes we were the Offenders. Sometimes we were the Record Men. Other times we went out as just the Willie Nelson Show. At one point we went out with a Lincoln Continental pulling a trailer. Then there was a big ol’ Mercury Marquis station wagon.
We played clubs in New York and California, but Texas was always our money state, even though the money was hardly huge. For all my songwriting success, my RCA albums languished on the shelves. I was far from what you’d call a superstar. I wasn’t playing concert halls or arenas. I was still playing joints.
On the road, I didn’t dress like a country singer. I’d given up all the fancy frilly Nudie costumes long ago. A Nehru suit was as dressed up as I got. I told the boys in the band to wear whatever they liked.
“I like that black cape for you,” I told Paul one afternoon as we window-shopped in Hollywood.
“It’ll make me look like the devil.”
“With that face hair, you already look like the devil. Why else are those gals chasing after you?”
I went in and bought it for Paul. He wore it onstage for the next fifty years.
Back in Nashville, Chet Atkins was still racking his brain, trying to find ways to get my records to sell. He came up with a concept, Texas in My Soul, that had me singing songs about my home state. Not a bad idea. Sang stuff like “Streets of Laredo” and Cindy Walker’s “The Hill Country Theme.” But when I tried to use my road band in the studio, Chet said no. Same thing happened on the next album—Good Times—where my lead vocals were drowned in a pool of overly sweet string arrangements and syrupy backgrounds by the Anita Kerr Singers. If you can believe it, the bizarre cover was a photo of me on the golf course instructing a cute young lady on how to putt. The album sank.
Once again, I was stuck in a rut. The music I played on the road, the music I’d cultivated with my band, had vitality. It was live music played for live people. I knew how to entertain a crowd for two, three, even four hours at a stretch. I knew how to keep them happy, keep them dancing—slow dancing, fast dancing—and touch them where they lived. They lived in the now. If I wanted to get fancy, I could call it the eternal now.
It's a Long Story Page 13
