Willie Nelson’s unofficial theme track, “On the Road Again,” stays correct as he turns 90 on Saturday. The nation music legend is on tour, with dates scheduled into October 2023.
Assessing Nelson’s legacy is difficult as a result of there are such a lot of Willies to evaluate. There is historic Willie Nelson, little one of the Depression. There is iconic Willie Nelson, close to embodiment of Texas fable. There is outlaw Willie Nelson, revolutionizing the nation music trade. There is activist Willie Nelson, Farm Aid’s co-founder and biofuel pioneer. There is Willie Nelson the songwriter of uncommon and poignant presents, and extra Willie Nelsons but to be named.
As a Texas music historian, I discover that Nelson’s legacy additionally challenges appraisal as a result of the idea assumes closure, a pastness, whereas the person at 90 nonetheless appears to be energetic in all places. The LBJ School of Public Affairs on the University of Texas not too long ago introduced the Willie Nelson Endowment Uplifting Rural Communities. Nelson is headlining a star-studded tribute live performance weekend in honor of his ninetieth birthday on the Hollywood Bowl on April 29 and 30, 2023. And the nation outlaw is a present nominee for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
While Nelson’s story is huge, it may be distilled right down to this: He sprang from the Texas cotton fields and earned his spurs within the state’s dance halls earlier than turning into one among Nashville’s signature songwriters within the Nineteen Sixties. He then returned to Texas a prodigal son, fostering Austin’s musical ascent and, because the story goes, brokering a peace between the warring rednecks and hippies. He redefined nation music’s picture and trade by the outlaw revolt of the Seventies. He catapulted to pop stardom within the Nineteen Eighties however at all times went out on the highway making music together with his pals, night time after night time.
From Texas to Nashville and again
Born on April 29, 1933, in a small city between Waco and Dallas, Nelson and his sister Bobbie took to music at a younger age. Nelson joined his first band at 10 and was a songwriter by 12. We know this partly from a curious artifact within the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University. Nelson’s first songbook has all of the doodles of a kid’s arts and crafts mission. The songs inside, although – “Hangover Blues,” “Faded Love and Wasted Dream,” “I Guess I Was Born to Be Blue” – communicate to honky-tonk themes far past Nelson’s years.
He spent the subsequent years chasing the life in these songs, hitting the highway as an itinerant performer. Like most aspiring nation artists, Nelson ended up in Nashville. In 1961, he joined Ray Price’s band, the Cherokee Cowboys. Price had been a roommate of Hank Williams Sr.‘s, and the Cherokee Cowboys built on Williams’ legacy, at numerous instances together with not simply Nelson but additionally his buddies Johnny Bush, Johnny Paycheck and Roger Miller.
Nelson moved from success to success as a songwriter, with Ray Price singing “Night Life,” Faron Young singing “Hello Walls” and Patsy Cline singing “Crazy.” He doubtless would have made it to the Country Music Hall of Fame with this early songwriting alone. He did document, however Nelson’s flamenco guitar, jazzy phrasing and eccentric lyricism didn’t match the mould of Nineteen Sixties Nashville. Facing private {and professional} challenges that culminated in his home’s burning down, Nelson left Tennessee for Texas by decade’s finish.
There had already been inklings of the countercultural flip that got here subsequent. Willie had a soulful cowl of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” on a 1966 reside album. In 1971, his resonant voice opened “Yesterday’s Wine,” earlier than any music started, with a New Age declaration:
“There is great confusion on Earth,” Nelson mused, “and the power that is has concluded the following: Perfect man has visited Earth already, and his voice was heard; the voice of imperfect man must now be made manifest. And I have been selected as the most likely candidate.”
This was not Chet Atkins’ nation music. The qualities that made this imperfect man a Nashville outsider reworked him into essentially the most distinguished image for a brand new cosmic cowboy model that was coming collectively in Austin venues just like the Armadillo World Headquarters and occasions like Nelson’s personal annual Fourth of July Picnic, which is scheduled for its fiftieth anniversary on July 4, 2023.
Willie Nelson’s basic band got here into form whereas gigging in Texas with sister Bobbie on piano, Mickey Raphael on harmonica, Bee Spears on bass, Jody Payne on guitar and Paul English on drums. They have been a household band – within the nation sense just like the Carter Family – but additionally within the hippie sense, a roving carnival akin to Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. The group’s sound combined conventional nation with the improvisations of psychedelia and jazz. You can hear the crackling mixture in reside performances from the interval, together with the pilot episode of the long-running PBS tv program “Austin City Limits.”
Rise of the outlaws
Nelson’s albums from the Seventies blazed new paths for nation music. Nelson secured full inventive management for his album “Red-Headed Stranger,” launched in 1975, and its success struck a blow in assist of artists’ independence from the constraints of the nation music trade in Nashville, a insurrection that took additional root with “Wanted! The Outlaws” the next yr. That album – a collaboration with Tompall Glaser, Jessie Colter and frequent companion Waylon Jennings – named a motion.
Outlaw nation was partly a advertising transfer for nation artists who wore their hair lengthy, leaned into rock’s grit or wore biker leather-based. On one other stage, although, Nelson and Jennings lodged a profitable critique of trade practices for nation artists who wished to make use of their very own bands within the studio, have a better say within the materials they recorded, and be thought to be severe artists relatively than merely the label’s employed assist.
The outlaw years took Willie to a brand new class of stardom. He made movies with Robert Redford and duetted with Julio Iglesias.
There have been twists within the path, although. In 1990, the outlaw picture turned literal in a high-profile dustup with the IRS. The lack of his son Billy the subsequent yr was a way more harrowing setback. Through all of it, he stored on the highway, stored recording and caught with household, group and track.
Advocate and elder statesman
It was, maybe, these ups and downs that made Nelson a distinguished advocate for others.
He held the door open for the kinds of parents who had historically had a tough time breaking into nation music. He has constantly showcased artists and points from simply outdoors the bounds of conventional nation, from early assist for Black artist Charlie Pride and advantages for the United Farm Workers within the Seventies to his recording of the gay-themed “Cowboys are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” in 2006. More not too long ago, in a second when nation music’s gatekeepers haven’t been beneficiant with girls artists, Nelson has championed new voices like Kacey Musgraves, Margo Price and Allison Russell.
Nelson has been an elder statesman for a really very long time, however he has chosen to remain within the thick of issues, even because the wheels on the bus start to gradual. Members of the Family Band that traveled so many miles with him have been exiting the stage of late: Bee Spears died in 2011, Jody Payne in 2013, Paul English in 2020 and sister Bobbie in 2022. Nelson’s sons Lukas and Mikah have usually joined the band within the meantime, as has Paul’s brother Billy English.
Things change, seasons cross, however there may be continuity, too, in Nelson’s world.
He reminds us that eccentricity is among the many most conventional of nation music’s verities. In a single live performance, the joking wink to mortality of “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” can share the set with a rousing gospel nearer, Nelson singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” or “I’ll Fly Away” as he factors skyward, imploring the viewers to hitch in on what he calls “the big finish.”
Jason Mellard is d**irector of the Center for Texas Music History, Texas State University.**
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