Willie Nelson

by Joe Nick Patoski

  “Give it to Willie,” Hank said.

  Hank had two dollars in his pocket. He gave Willie one dollar for gas so he could drive back to Nashville, and Hank followed there. When they arrived at Louie Dunn’s Trailer Court, where Willie had rented a trailer for his family, Hank let out a loud belly laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Willie asked.

  “What’s so funny is that me, my wife, and three kids lived in that same damn trailer when I first got here,” Hank told him. It was also the very same trailer home that Roger Miller and his wife and three children had lived in when they moved from Amarillo a few years before, providing Roger with all the inspiration he needed for the lyrics of what would become his most enduring song, “King of the Road,” with the simple line, “trailers for sale or rent, rooms to let fifty cents.”

  Martha and the children treated Hank like the Music Man. Finally there was hope, even though getting by was still a struggle. For the first three months of Martha’s job at the Wagon Wheel, all she could afford to protect herself from the winter elements were a raincoat and plastic sandals.

  In exchange for the weekly draw, Willie and Hank showed up every day at Pamper’s office on Two Mile Pike in Goodlettsville. Hank arrived early to work the telephone, doing song-plugging research. “I’d just sit down there and call and find out who was recording and what was going on in town, and call Owen’s [Bradley] office. I learned very young that the people who run the damn town is the secretaries, so I got in with all the secretaries. They’d say, ‘Well, you ain’t supposed to know this, but...,’ and I’d say, ‘I don’t know it.’ So she’d tell me who was cutting and what they were looking for.”

  After plugging, Hank would meet Willie out back in the writers’ house, half of the clapboard garage behind the big house, which Willie and Hank refurbished by putting up plasterboard and bringing in two desks, two chairs, and a portable tape recorder. A light bulb was installed outside on the porch to signify “Writers at Work” whenever it was lit. Susie Nelson and her sister and brother would come and play at Pamper while Daddy was at work, and when the red lightbulb was on, they would sit patiently on the porch, drinking soda until the light went off.

  “Me and Willie’d meet out here and write. Just me and him, you know. That’s all it takes.”

  Every day they’d strum guitars, sing songs, throw out lines, write lyrics, record on the reel-to-reel tape machine, and listen to songs on the recorder. Willie Hugh had been preparing all his life for a job like this, having written lyrics on scraps of paper, in notebooks, on boxes, on walls since he was a boy. Getting paid for that was a dream come true.

  Pamper Music bought three hours of studio time at producer Fred Foster’s studio in the Mason building next to the Clarkston Hotel downtown so they could record demo tapes of what they’d written to pitch to artists and producers. Taking turns singing and strumming their compositions, they were accompanied by a cast of musicians that included Hargus “Pig” Robbins on piano, Ray Price’s steel guitarist Jimmy Day, guitarist Pete Wade, bassist Bob Moore, rhythm guitarist Ray Edenton, and pedal steel player Buddy Emmons. Hank or Willie would run through a song so the musicians could write it down on a chart before recording the demo, no do-overs.

  “Musicians would cost you around ten dollars an hour,” Hank said. “It depended on who you got and how hot they were. I could do a demo session for a third of what you could, because I could call certain guys and say, ‘Hey, I need a little favor here. I wanna do three or four songs,’ and they’d just charge me so much a song.”

  Hank and Willie tried collaborating, which was the way many Nashville hits were written. But Hank realized the hard way that Willie worked better alone. One morning in the writer’s house in the back of Pamper, a secretary buzzed Hank. He was needed on the phone to consult a singer who was doing one of his songs in a studio. Hank stepped outside. Willie made the best of the pause by looking at the walls around him and jotting down on a piece of cardboard lyrics that became “Hello Walls.”

  They were getting it done, Hank said proudly. “For days I wouldn’t go home because I was sleepin’ on couches, hitting all the studios in town, running like a sumbitch to sessions at Starday, one at RCA, and one over at Decca. I would say, ‘Man, that Willie’s got a damn song you will not believe,’ and they’d say, ‘Well, let me hear it,’ and I’d say, ‘Well, Dale, I don’t know, I think I...,’ and they’d say, ‘Give me that sumbitch, and cut it.’ I never would tell anybody I thought a song was good unless it was.”

  Willie’s wife, Martha, was doing her part, telling Faron Young her husband had a song that was meant for him when the Sheriff (Faron’s nickname) came into the Wagon Wheel on Broadway, where she was working. Faron was “wilder than a guinea, just like always,” Hank said when he and Willie ran into him, hanging out with Webb Pierce and some musicians at Tootsie’s. In the midst of some lightweight bullshitting accompanied by guitar strumming, Faron looked at Willie and asked him to sing him a song.

  Willie sang “Hello Walls.” Faron asked him to sing another one. Willie sang him “Congratulations,” a sweetly acerbic putdown of a vindictive lover.

  “Can I cut those?” Faron asked. “Hell, yeah!” Hank blurted before Willie had a chance to reply.

  “Bring me a dub tomorrow,” Faron instructed.

  Faron had already taken a shine to the Texas kid, as had most of his posse. “Willie was down to earth and humble, Faron was loud,” said Frank Oakley, a paint company representative who ran with Faron and hung at Tootsie’s. “Roger Miller said Faron had a mouth as big as his heart.”

  Before Faron Young’s version of “Hello Walls” was released, Willie tried to sell him the song for $500. Faron, knowing full well what Willie had coming to him once the recording came out, did him a favor. He loaned him $500 instead, on the condition he not sell the song to anyone else.

  The latest Faron Young single, “Hello Walls” b/w “Congratulations,” was released on Capitol Records in the spring of 1961. Done as an uptempo shuffle, the song resonated. It was about a guy so sad and lonely, he starts talking to the walls and the walls talk back—pure-D honky-tonk subject matter—with a weird harmonic “hello, hello” chorus echoing off the canyons of listeners’ minds. “Hello Walls” reached number 1 on the country singles chart the first week of May 1961 and stayed there for nine weeks. It remained a standard on jukeboxes for years. The song had such wide appeal that Faron’s single crossed over to Top 40 radio, reaching number 12 on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart. The song would be covered by pop crooners Perry Como and Vic Dana, rockabilly Johnny Burnette, orchestra leader Lawrence Welk, and Ernest Tubb, one of Willie’s first heroes. Faron’s original interpretation was recognized by the music trade papers as the country and western record of the year. Willie celebrated the song’s success by French-kissing Faron at Tootsie’s after he received his first royalty check for the sum of $14,000. It was huge money, considering composers earned two cents a record for sales—one penny to the writer and one penny to the song publisher.

  Willie was sitting in high cotton. Songwriters like him were redefining country music, covering the subjects of drinking, sleeping around, and lust—the stuff of real people, real emotions, real problems—in creative tellings. Billy Walker recorded Willie’s “Funny How Time Slips Away” on April 21, 1961, and another Willie original, “Mr. Record Man,” just as Faron Young’s “Hello Walls” was zooming up the charts. Walker’s version of “Funny” edged onto the country singles chart, reaching number 23 that summer. The song had staying power on jukeboxes, though, and eventually was certified for selling a million copies.

  Meanwhile, Hank Cochran used the same strategy for another song Willie had written, called “Crazy,” as he’d used for his own composition “Walking After Midnight” by playing it for Owen Bradley, Patsy Cline’s producer. The words, the melody, and whole song structure were music to Owen’s ears. Patsy should record the song, Owen told Hank. Despite her reputation as the queen of sophistica
ted country female vocalists, she could use a hit. It had been a while since “Walking After Midnight” and “I Fall to Pieces.”

  Charlie Dick, Patsy’s husband and manager, already knew about Willie. He’d heard “Night Life” by Paul Buskirk and His Little Men featuring Hugh Nelson on the jukebox at Tootsie’s but couldn’t find the single in record stores. So when he met Willie Hugh Nelson, Willie gave him a copy. Charlie went home and played the song over and over, marveling at the slow, languid rhythm and the soulful texture of the song and its jazz-influenced use of minor seventh and major seventh chords.

  Patsy wasn’t quite as taken with the song. “She didn’t want to hear Willie Nelson’s name mentioned,” Charlie Dick said. Patsy didn’t much cotton to songs that made her sound so wounded. So when Hank Cochran went over to Patsy’s house to play “Crazy” for her, Willie waited in Hank’s car. Charlie Dick had told Willie of Patsy’s initial reaction to “Night Life,” and Willie didn’t want to ruin his chances.

  “I took it in and said, ‘Patsy, I think I got a hit,’” Hank related. “Whose is this?” Patsy asked. “It’s Willie’s,” Hank said. “Where’s Willie?” she asked. “He’s settin’ out there in the car, he’s too embarrassed to come in,” Hank told her. “Well, I’m going to get that little son of a bitch,” Patsy declared. “She went out there and drug his ass in and had him sing it to her until she learned it,” Hank said.

  Patsy still wasn’t convinced, living up to her reputation as hard to please. But Owen Bradley liked it enough to propose a compromise, like he always did: “You choose one song, and I’ll choose one song, but I get the first pick,” Owen told her. He was going to cut Patsy Cline singing “Crazy,” and that was that.

  “Look, Hoss, there ain’t no way I can sing it like he’s singing it on the demo,” Patsy protested to Owen. But she did more than a credible effort of adopting Willie’s unique phrasing, singing slightly behind the beat, waiting to sing until the chord hit, lingering on key words a little longer before cutting the phrase off cold while singing about the instability unrequited love brought on. The way she wrapped her voice around the opening line, “Crazy,” was just like Willie had heard Floyd Tillman intone “Baby” at the beginning of “I Gotta Have My Baby Back.” It wasn’t that long ago that Paul Buskirk had told Willie, “Write me something like Floyd Tillman.” With “Crazy” he had done that.

  The instrumental part of the song was rehearsed and recorded over the course of one session. Pianist Floyd Cramer, a veteran of the Louisiana Hayride, played the signature piano notes that seemed to be walking alone in a dark alley on a rainy night. Gordon Stoker played a jazzy tick-tack bass tuned on octave lower than a normal guitar and an octave higher than a normal bass. Harold Bradley, Owen’s brother, picked a subdued guitar. Owen focused on slowing Patsy down to sing the song as more of a blues than a dance tune. She was mad at Owen for making her do that, but that emotion somehow translated into hurt on the record.

  Patsy did her vocal in one take. Owen Bradley invested another three-hour session on background singers and music, bringing in the Jordanaires, Elvis Presley’s backing singers, to add a reassuring vocal chorus.

  “I don’t want four male voices covering mine up,” Patsy protested to Owen.

  “You just leave that to me, Patsy,” he reassured her. “You’ll be all right.”

  There was still one stumbling block. Billy Walker had placed a “hold” on the song, meaning he had first dibs on recording it, according to song publishing protocol. Hank Cochran panicked. Hank went to see Billy Walker. “Please, please, release your hold on the song,” he begged. “I’ll get you a hit song, I promise.” Billy Walker relented for Willie’s sake.

  Almost overnight, “Crazy” became Patsy Cline’s signature song. The record peaked at number 2 on the country charts and, like Faron Young’s cover of “Hello Walls,” crossed over to pop and easy-listening charts but in an even bigger way, breaking into the pop Top 10. A number one country song was good for maybe a hundred thousand copies sold. A pop chart topper could sell up to ten times that.

  Patsy also covered Willie’s “Funny How Time Slips Away.” Billy Walker had done the first cover version and others would follow. A particularly soulful interpretation by Jimmy Elledge, an eighteen-year-old singer produced by Chet Atkins, would reach number 22 on American pop charts and was eventually certified gold for selling one million copies. Teen heartthrob Johnny Tillotson’s version of “Funny” peaked at number 50 on the pop charts, while a mellow falsetto interpretation by Memphis soul balladeer Joe Hinton for Houston’s Peacock Records in 1964 broke into the pop Top 20.

  Willie possessed an innate understanding of a great country song—keep it short, keep it simple enough to work within the box that producers provide, and make it tug at the heart. Willie had been composing sad songs since he was a child, before he could comprehend the emotions he was writing about. Cindy Walker, a Christian woman who grew up twenty miles from Abbott and never took a drink of alcohol in her life, said she wrote “Bubbles in My Beer,” a hit for Bob Wills, using her imagination. Willie possessed that gift too. But as an adult, he drew on firsthand experience for his hard luck songs about lost love, and it showed.

  Willie’s songs, and his adoption of Tootsie’s as his home away from home, were following in the footsteps of Hank Williams, the honky-tonk spirit of country music. “It was called Mom’s when Hank Williams was hot,” explained singer-songwriter-picker Darrell McCall, who was a Tootsie’s regular when Willie hit town. “Hank would go out the back alley behind the Ryman. Hank and the boys would have a bottle back by the rear entrance of Mom’s where some cardboard boxes were stacked. Later on, some tables were put in the back room. The owners knew we wanted to pick and stay up all night. So they got to letting us go in that top room. They come up and say, ‘Boys, you can stay as long as you want to, but we’re going to have to close the bar down. Help yourself to the beer box. We’ll be back tomorrow morning.’ When they’d open back up in the morning, we’d still be picking.”

  The change in ownership of the humble beer joint was a mere formality. Tootsie Bess’s stepson, Steve Bess, drummed with Ray Price. Her husband was a prison guard. “So nobody gave Tootsie too much trouble,” Darrell McCall said. “She had a damn hat pin about [twelve inches] long. If someone got drunk in there, if someone got belligerent, it could be a picker or anybody, she’d pull out that hat pin and push them all the way out the door.”

  THERE were three levels of pickers in Nashville: the A team, the musicians who got most of the studio work; the demo guys, who honed their chops so they could make the A team; and the club guys, who played live or on the road.

  The artists, the ones who sang the hits, liked to carouse and gamble and trade war stories; they could afford country clubs and second homes out on Old Hickory Lake. The songwriters were bent on playing their latest compositions for their peers in the hopes it might lead to an artist interested in the songs. All the pickers wanted to do was pick. Whenever they weren’t on the road playing behind one of Nashville’s stars or working in the studio, they were picking and playing as long as they physically could in some motel room or somebody’s house.

  Darrell McCall came to Nashville with another local boy from southern Ohio, named Donny Lytle, who would later change his name to Donny Young, then Johnny Paycheck. Darrell and Donny were taken in by Buddy Killen, owner of the Tree International song publishing house. Both fell into work as harmony singers in the studio, complementing the vocal talents of artists such as Faron Young, Webb Pierce, Ray Price, and George Jones.

  “That was our little niche,” Darrell said. “I did a ‘hearts’ album with George—‘Heartaches by the Number,’ ‘Candy Heart,’ ‘This Ol’ Heart,’ then ‘Keys to the Mailbox’ with Freddie Hart. Faron [Young] heard me and picked me up and I started doing harmony with him in front of his band on the road and on his recordings of ‘There’s Not Any Like You Left’ and ‘Congratulations.’”

  In 1960, Darrell’s harmon
y work led to his unintended role as one of the Little Dippers, a harmony group whose recording “Forever” was in the Top 100 songs of 1960 and landed them on television’s American Bandstand. But Darrell was all about hard-core country and fiddles and steel, which led to road work with Faron Young, Ray Price, and Webb Pierce while he was trying to develop his own career, with sporadic success. A booming baritone with considerable vocal power—he sounded operatic—he sang the title song to the motion picture Hud and had a Top 20 country hit in 1962 with “A Stranger Was Here,” his first and biggest country hit. But when he was off the road, he ran with pickers like Buddy Emmons, Jimmy Day, Bobby Garrett, and Tommy Jackson. “We were all one little group,” Darrell said. “If one of us had five bucks, we all had it. We all ate out of the same bowl of chili.”

  They shared illicit substances to keep it all going. The pills were as much to stave off an appetite as to stay awake. Pickers lived hand to mouth. “We was all eating those diet pills, Roger [Miller], Buddy Spicher, all of us,” Darrell said. “Buddy gave me my first Old Yeller diet pill. L.A. Turnarounds. West Coast Wagon Wheels, Black Mollies, those were the heavies. We were more into Dexedrine Spansule capsules, but mainly the Old Yellers. They were a vitamin pill for pregnant women. They were full of vitamins but they had Obedrine in them. You take two of them and you’re ready to pick—I mean pick—in front of the president of the United States.”

  Darrell got to know Willie when “Hello Walls” hit for Faron Young. “He was so different,” he said. “Up until that point, Faron’s idols were Eddy Arnold, George Morgan, and Hank Williams. You’d hear a little of each of them up until that point. Once ‘Hello Walls’ hit, you heard Willie. Faron took to him right away.”

  Willie was the toast of Music Row. But all the time he spent with his rowdy friends and business associates, blowing his publishing royalties as fast as he could, was time away from his family. Martha did not necessarily approve, especially when she was still waiting tables and tending bar while he was out having a good time with his party pals. One night at the Wagon Wheel, Willie egged her on so bad that Martha picked up a shot glass and aimed it at her smart-mouth husband. Willie ducked and the glass hit the wall and ricocheted straight into Hank Cochran’s chin. Willie took Hank to the emergency room. Ben Dorcy, a Nashville hanger-on who saw what happened, walked up to Martha and said, “You can’t talk that way to my friends.” Martha stared daggers into Ben’s eyes, reached down and picked up a giant ashtray, and coldcocked Ben on the head, splitting his head open.