Willie Nelson

by Joe Nick Patoski

  The strategy frequently worked. Willie’s collaboration with jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his quintet showed the upside of taking creative risks. Mark initiated negotiations with Wynton Marsalis and his people (Mark’s history with Miles Davis opened doors in the jazz community), and four nights were booked in the Allen Room at Lincoln Center in New York, where Willie spent two days rehearsing before performing with the tapes rolling. It did not hurt that Willie’s jazz sense had been informed by New Orleans jazz as well as Django Reinhardt’s gypsy swing. Not only was Willie in musical sync with Louis Armstrong, Wynton’s primary influence, he comported himself much like Armstrong did, appealing to audiences far more diverse than the music scene he emerged from and serving as an ambassador of good vibes as well as good music. Satchmo and Willie were American originals who made music that sounded like comfort food.

  Sometimes, though, the strategy didn’t work. The Great Divide, released in 2002, was in the tradition of Carlos Santana’s Supernatural, using the same producer, Matt Serletic, and bringing in the same guest vocalist, Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty, whose masculine, emotive voice returned Santana to the charts with the single “Smooth.” Thomas’s self-penned collaboration with Willie, “Maria (Shut Up and Kiss Me),” did not repeat Santana’s hit-single success (maybe it was the disco whistle in the background), but it did get Willie airplay on some noncountry radio stations and legitimized Willie with a certain segment of a younger generation previously unfamiliar with his work. “He’s the America we would like to get back to,” Rob Thomas said of Willie, as if he’d gone away.

  The rest of that album was a strange brew, matching Willie with redneck hip-hopper Kid Rock on “Last Stand in the Open Country,” one of the first protest songs against urban sprawl, with L.A. pop-rocker Sheryl Crow on “Be There for You,” with Texas pop-country singer Lee Ann Womack on “Mendocino County Line,” with the bluesy singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt on “You Remain,” and with rhythm and blues smoothie Brian McKnight on the ballad “Don’t Fade Away.” The album achieved the intended effect of winning converts, although among the faithful the project did little more than affirm Willie’s willingness to try anything.

  Songbird, another Mark album, which Willie made with alt-country rocker Ryan Adams and his band the Cardinals, released in 2006, was a critical and commercial dud despite Willie’s inspired cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” One fan in Salt Lake City mailed his copy of the CD to Willie’s fan club, accompanied by a note that read, “Tell that producer not to set foot in Utah.”

  Milk Cow Blues, a blues album released in 2000, was a Willie-Mark hybrid. Willie and his nephew Freddy Fletcher came up with the idea, putting together a backing ensemble that largely consisted of the house band at Antone’s nightclub in Austin, including guitarists Derek O’Brien and Jimmie Vaughan, bassist Jon Blondell, keyboardist Riley Osbourn, and drummer George Rains. Mark’s role was rounding up blues superstars to join Willie in duets—B. B. King on “Night Life” and “The Thrill Is Gone,” Francine Reed on “Milk Cow Blues” and “Funny How Time Slips Away,” Keb’ Mo’ on “Outskirts of Town,” Jonny Lang on “Rainy Day Blues” and “Ain’t Nobody’s Business,” Susan Tedeschi on “Crazy” and “Kansas City,” Kenny Wayne Shepherd on “Texas Flood,” and Doctor John on “Fool’s Paradise” and “Black Night.”

  The 2005 reggae album Countryman, another Willie album produced by Don Was, was inspired by Willie’s and Jamaican Rastas’ shared appreciation of marijuana and reggae’s backbeat. Ten years in the making, the album featured two Jimmy Cliff classics, “The Harder They Come” and “Sitting in Limbo,” and a handful of Willie’s 1960s vintage weepers such as “One in a Row,” “Darkness on the Face of the Earth,” “Undo the Right,” and “I’ve Just Destroyed the World” (written with Ray Price), with Jamaican-style beats and sound effects such as stretching out the steel guitar with reverb. The project matched Willie with another unexpectedly compatible duet partner in Toots Hibbert, the soulful lead singer of Toots and the Maytals, who joined him for a reading of Johnny Cash’s “I’m a Worried Man.”

  His 2006 tribute to songwriter Cindy Walker, produced by his old friend Fred Foster, was one of Willie’s most heartfelt recordings ever, songwriter to songwriter. Cindy was born in Mart, twenty miles southeast of Willie’s hometown of Abbott fifteen years before he was. She was successfully composing songs as a teenager (“Casa de Mañana,” the theme song for Billy Rose’s lavish supper club in Fort Worth in 1936) before going to California, where she was discovered by Bing Crosby, who did her song “Lone Star Trail.” She went on to write hits like “In the Misty Moonlight,” covered by Dean Martin, “Blue Canadian Rockies,” covered by Gene Autry, “You Don’t Know Me,” cowritten and covered by Eddy Arnold and covered by Ray Charles, “Distant Drums,” covered by Jim Reeves, and “Dream Baby,” made famous by Roy Orbison.

  Cindy wrote prolifically for Bob Wills, including such hits as “You’re from Texas,” “What Makes Bob Holler,” “Cherokee Maiden,” “When You Leave Amarillo,” “Bubbles in My Beer,” and all thirty-nine tunes for the eight films Wills did for Columbia Pictures in the early 1940s. A spinster whose love for Wills was said to be unrequited (although she did coauthor “Sugar Moon” with Bob), Cindy lived most of her adult life with her mother in the Texas town of Mexia.

  “Willie and I had talked about an album of Cindy Walker songs years ago because he respected her writing so much,” Fred Foster said of the “Swingin’ Cowgirl from Texas,” regarded as country’s finest female composer. “It never got done. Other things got in the way. One day Cindy called. She said she had a song she wanted to get to Willie Nelson. She sent it to me and I sent it to Willie. He said to hold the song; let’s do a whole album of her songs. She liked to have fainted when I told her that he wanted her to send a bunch of songs. She sent sixty-two songs.” Willie and Fred winnowed them down to thirteen songs for the album.

  For You Don’t Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker, Fred recorded instrumental tracks with a scratch vocalist focusing on the interplay between fiddler Johnny Gimble and steel guitarist Buddy Emmons, who both had deep histories with Willie. Willie came in and did vocals, once with forty-six close personal friends with him in the control room.

  Cindy liked what she heard. “I’ve had many fine recordings. But Willie’s are the only ones I’ve believed,” she told Fred.

  A week after the album was released, in March 2006, Cindy Walker died at the age of eighty-seven.

  DAYS after three commercial jets were hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC, killing more than three thousand people, a group of entertainers gathered in a studio for a somber, emotionally charged performance and fund-raising telethon broadcast nationally as “America: A Tribute to Heroes.” The studio setting was stark. There were no announcers, voice-overs, crawlers at the bottom of the screen identifying the performers, no audience. The players simply played, letting their music speak for them.

  Bruce Springsteen opened the program with a spiritual benediction, “My City of Ruins.” Billy Joel did “New York State of Mind.” Dave Matthews sang a plaintive “Everyday.” Tom Petty played a defiant “Won’t Back Down.” Alicia Keys intoned “Someday We’ll All Be Free.” Neil Young did John Lennon’s “Imagine.” U2 performed “Walk On.” Paul Simon reprised “Bridge over Troubled Water.” Celine Dion achieved a serviceable impression of Kate Smith on “God Bless America.” Hip-hop giant Wyclef Jean covered Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam sang a wrenching version of “The Long Road.” But it was Willie who led the gathering in the closing number, “America the Beautiful.” He was the voice, and the face, of the nation.

  He was still country at heart. Willie had returned to the country Top 10 singles chart in 2002 for the first time in twelve years by singing a duet with Toby Keith on “Whiskey for My Men, Beer for My Horses,” a nostalgic Old West story about chasing down bad guys that held the number one
position on the Billboard country chart for six weeks. Toby, a young heartthrob from Oklahoma, sold Willie on the collaboration by telling him the song title. Toby Keith followed up the single with a patriotic song supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue”; Willie followed with the quiet recording of an antiwar hymn he wrote on Christmas Day 2003 “after watching three hours of bombs on Christmas Day.” Willie told his friend Frank Oakley he didn’t write “What Happened to Peace on Earth?” as a Democrat or Republican but as a Christian. The recording was released quietly as a free download on the Internet rather than on a mainstream record label. He was wary of being “Dixie-Chicked” for his antiwar stance. Several months earlier, on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the multiplatinum Texas country act the Dixie Chicks had been blacklisted from country radio playlists after lead singer Natalie Maines from Lubbock told an audience in London, “We’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”

  Despite their opposing politics, Toby and Willie’s mutual admiration was genuine. Toby recorded a hilarious tribute song called “Weed with Willie” in which he swore he’d never smoke Willie’s potent pot again. “Beer for My Horses” began an extended professional relationship with Toby’s producer James Stroud.

  Stroud produced the 2004 album It Will Always Be, a Mark album that was the kind of classic Nashville assembly-line production Willie had so famously rejected thirty years before. The music tracks were laid down in Nashville with studio musicians based there. He did the vocal tracks back at Pedernales, just like he had recorded with Fred Foster. “I had a lot of faith in James and the Nashville musicians,” Willie said. “Whether I could add the feel or not without the musicians, that was a challenge. I think maybe next time we’ll try it the other way, just to see if there’s a difference. But I thought James got the best musicians possible to do this album and help me put together what I think are some good songs.”

  HIS celebrity remained viable enough to endorse more products. Old Whiskey River Kentucky Bourbon was promoted with T-shirts and cowboy hats and free recipes for such mixed-bourbon drinks as Red Headed Stranger, Wet Willie, Silly Willie, On the Road Again, and Naked Willie, which was a double shot of Old Whiskey River. Willie’s version of ZZ Top’s “She Loves My Automobile,” a classic Texas rhythm and blues shuffle in the sophisticated style of T-Bone Walker, was the theme song for a Red Bull energy drink television commercial. He became spokesman for the Texas Roadhouse restaurant chain in exchange for a small taste of company ownership.

  The more things changed, the more they seemed to stay the same. In April 2002 a reporter for the Montgomery Bulletin, Rhonda Bell, who’d followed Willie since his Houston days in the late 1950s, caught a show and noted several changes and some reassuring consistencies in Willie and Family. “The groupies are getting a lot older,” she wrote. “The band and crew are not even looking at them, they just want to go home to their families. I look at my old friend and I see a lot more lines on his face behind that smile and sparkle in his eye. Willie looks tired. It’s 2:30 in the morning and Willie is still shaking hands, taking pictures, and even autographing blue-jeaned butts. He is still giving his all to his fans.”

  He also stayed close to old friends, phoning them, visiting with them, recording with them whenever possible. Johnny Bush was in awe that “Whiskey River” remained an integral part of Willie’s stage show more than thirty-five years after Johnny had written it. “To have one of the greatest songwriters ever, right up there with Hank Williams and Leon Payne, choose to cover my song at his shows is beyond flattery,” Johnny said. At last count, Willie had recorded twenty-seven different versions. To coincide with the publication of Johnny’s book Whiskey River (Take My Mind), a gritty recollection of Texas honky-tonk life extending back to the Mission City Playboys, when he met Willie, Johnny recorded an album of songs titled Kashmere Gardens Mud that Johnny was exposed to growing up on the poor side of Houston. Willie joined Johnny to duet on “Pancho and Lefty” and a stirring “Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On.”

  Helping Johnny Bush underscored the fact that Willie enjoyed saying yes. “If you can get to him, nine times out of ten, he’ll tell you yeah, no matter what it is you’re asking,” his personal assistant David Anderson said. Over the years, David had cultivated a furrowed-brow facial expression intended to run people off without having to say anything. It was part of being Willie’s gatekeeper and knowing his boss was an easy touch.

  “It is pure selfishness to not allow every Tom, Dick, and Harry to pitch a benefit,” David said. “We get paid by the day, and if it’s a benefit, we don’t get paid. Plus, one guy can only do so much.” Willie did all he could, saying yes to raising money for the Montessori school his boys had attended in Hawaii, to putting his name behind the Willie Nelson shortwave radio channel, to promoting a video series of shoot-’em-ups staged in Luck starring Willie and his buddies, and even to an arts scholarship foundation that David Anderson put together with his boyfriend. If the ideas didn’t pan out, it mattered little. He’d do anything for his friends.

  Friendship kept Paul English and Willie together all these years, Willie said. “The kind you can’t buy, that’s not for sale. You know it when you see it. Paul is probably the best friend I got.”

  Paul returned the compliment. “Willie is the main relationship I have had in my life,” he said. “It started fifty-one years ago. He’s a great entertainer and a great writer, and I am proud of him for that. Mainly, though, he’s my friend. He sometimes says I’m his best friend. I really appreciate him saying that, because I know he means it, and I love him. He could get a far better drummer than me for half the price. The entertainment business is mentally tougher than the other businesses I’ve worked in. It takes more loyalty, and you don’t get that much in the business unless it’s Willie. I’ve been disappointed by a lot of people, but mainly because they can’t measure up to Willie.

  “Family is more than just blood, especially for me,” Paul said. “We’ve been through so much together—the death of a father, the death of a son, the death of my wife, Carlene. When Carlene died, I went from one eighty [pounds] to one thirty, and I was mean. I would have really liked to die, but he was there for me.”

  Those around Willie learned to tolerate his eccentricities. It was standard operating procedure on Willie’s bus to wait until he’d mentioned something a second or third time before taking him seriously. Otherwise, they’d be running around, trying to carry out orders all day, only to have the boss say, “What did you do that for?”

  Mark Rothbaum spoke to him at least five times a day and otherwise looked after Willie’s interests, especially whenever Willie said yes. “Willie can’t say no,” Mark said. He cited the time Brian Ahern, the producer and husband of singer Emmylou Harris, had persuaded Willie to buy the Enactron Truck Studio, which recorded Stardust. When Ahern arrived one day before the scheduled signing of papers, Rothbaum was waiting for him in Willie’s hotel room ready to kill the deal. “When he saw me, he knew it wasn’t going to happen,” Rothbaum said. The last thing Willie needed was another studio.

  Another time, Doug Holloway brought Willie a deal for a Willie Nelson credit card, and Willie signed an agreement with him before Mark intervened.

  “That’s a very smart deal you made,” Mark told Willie.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, it’s genius.”

  “How can that be genius?”

  “Well, think about it: A third of all credit cards go into receivership, so a third of your fans will go bankrupt, and they will have to look at your picture on that credit card. Every time they see your picture, they will think, That prick is making money off of me. You’ll be making money off of their credit card, so what you won’t have a career. You’ll be making money and that’s the important thing. It’s a smart deal.”

  Willie asked Mark to get him out of the agreement.

  AS much as he seemed to defy aging, seven decades of physica
lly contorting his fingers into chords and holding picks to strum strings first caught up with him in 2003. Willie developed carpal tunnel syndrome, a repetitive-motion injury to his wrist that ultimately required surgery. For months Budrock had noticed Willie shaking his wrist during performances. In Las Vegas, Willie quit twenty minutes into a show for the first time and told the band, “Let’s go home. I can’t do this anymore.” He tried herbal and alternative methods of healing before finally giving in to Mark Rothbaum’s plea for surgery. The Willie Nelson Show was put on hold for four months while Willie healed. With his arm in a sling, he had to have helpers roll him his joints and was so itchy for the road, he was sleeping on his bus instead of in his cabin. On his first string of dates back out, Joey Floyd, who played Willie’s son in the film Honeysuckle Rose and had grown up to play guitar with Toby Keith, sat in with the band to spell Willie.

  The surgery forced him to give up signing every autograph request thrust in his direction. Honeysuckle Rose left the building within minutes after the show was over. “We have to do it that way because he feels guilty,” explained driver Gates Moore. “He always felt like the meet-and-greet was part of his job, and I have stood beside him in the freezing fucking cold with a flashlight for hours and hours when people who hadn’t even been to the show were getting in line, but he wouldn’t quit. His hands were black from the markers, but he would not quit.” Those hours of signing were important to Willie. “I think that’s what made him,” Gates said. “At his shows, you can’t find a person who won’t pull a picture of him and Willie out of his wallet and say, ‘Yeah, I know Willie. I’m in the family.’” Will spent his seventy-first birthday healing from surgery and listening to Leon Russell play at Poodie’s Hilltop, the closest honky-tonk to the Hill, Luck, Texas, and the Pedernales Country Club. Leon had “backed off,” according to Willie, and settled into playing small clubs. Playing Poodie’s was just another gig, even though the audience was special.