Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die: Musings From the Road

by Willie Nelson

  I had a lot of fun at KBOP. I learned a lot about radio and how it all operates. I worked on Sunday mornings, when all the churches came in to do their Sunday morning church services at KBOP. The Church of Christ, the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, the Catholic Church, and the Pentecostal Church, or the holy rollers as we called them, because they became so emotional and involved. They would shout, dance, and make all kinds of noise. We had to tie the chairs together because otherwise they would be thrown all over the studio. I would sit at the controls, and I could see through to the live studio where all this was going on every Sunday morning. I would always be a little hung over from Saturday night, and they obviously knew this because they all looked right directly at me and preached every word to me, it seemed like.

  I did a live radio show, just me and my guitar, from noon until twelve thirty daily. This is where I first met Johnny Bush. I liked his singing well enough that I thought he needed a manager. So I became his manager, and somewhere there are still posters that say JOHNNY BUSH, MANAGED BY WILLIE NELSON. I don’t think it hurt him much, because he still sings so beautiful.

  Johnny was not only a good singer, but he was a good musician. He played bass and was a fine drummer. He eventually wound up playing drums for me in a three-piece band that included me, Johnny Bush, and Wade Ray. We were pretty good. We played the Panther Hall ballroom in Fort Worth, which was an old professional bowling alley that had been converted into a beer joint. The three of us recorded my first live album at the Panther Hall ballroom.

  I remember one night we debuted a Beatles song called “Yesterday.” The crowd loved it. I thought that I had discovered an obscure song that no one had heard of before, not realizing that the Beatles had just sold ninety zillion records.

  I also thought I had discovered Julio Iglesias. I was in England on tour, listening to the BBC radio late night, and they played a song—I couldn’t remember the song, but I remembered the voice and decided I had to record with this voice, whoever it was that I thought I had discovered. I found out later that he too had already sold ninety zillion records—but in seven different languages. I eventually got word to him, and we recorded “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” at my studio in Austin. It’s the same studio where I recorded “Seven Spanish Angels” with Ray Charles, who is another hero of mine.

  Ray Charles

  Ray Charles did more for country music than anyone else. When he recorded the album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, with all the great country classics, millions of Ray Charles fans were introduced to country music. I had been a Ray Charles fan all the way back to “What’d I Say.” To be able to record and sing with him was a dream come true. We eventually became good friends, and I sang many shows with him. The best one was in New York on my sixtieth birthday. Ray Charles flew in from Spain to New York, just to come sing at my birthday show, and when he and Leon Russell sang “A Song for You,” it was the best I had ever heard. So thank you, Ray, and thank you, Leon.

  The greatest musician, singer, writer, and entertainer that I have ever seen or heard is Leon Russell. We are still great friends and have a double album of songs that we recorded, called Together Again, coming out next year. I first saw Leon in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There were twenty thousand people on their feet yelling and screaming for the whole show. He and I stayed up all night the night before the show drinking and smoking. At sunrise we went onstage and started playing. It was the greatest sight I had ever seen. There were thousands of people walking toward the venue through a cow pasture, carrying everything from beer coolers to sleeping bags. They came to stay a while. There were hippies and rednecks, young and old coming together for the first time to hear the same thing. The magic was the music. It touched all kinds of people, and the world has not been the same since. I remember he had the crowd in such a frenzy that at one moment he stopped and said, “Remember where you are right now, and remember that right now you would believe anything I would say. So be careful who you would let lead you to this place.” Then he threw his cowboy hat into the audience, and the crowd went crazy, which is when I stole the idea of throwing hats to the audience.

  I booked Leon for the first Fourth of July picnic in Dripping Springs, Texas. I thought if it worked in Albuquerque and it worked in Woodstock, it could work here; it did. Thank you, Leon, and thank you, Woodstock, for showing me how to do it.

  Leon Russell

  ALWAYS NOW

  It’s always now

  Nothing ever goes away

  Everything is here to stay

  And it’s always now

  It’s always now

  There never was a used to be

  Everything is still with me

  And it’s always now

  So brace your heart

  And save yourself some sanity

  It’s more than just a memory

  And it’s always now

  And here’s your part

  Sing it like a melody

  There’s really only you and me

  And it’s always now

  NASHVILLE

  I went to Nashville because Nashville was the marketplace, and if you wanted to succeed in country music you had to go to Nashville—so I went to Nashville. I drove there from Houston in a ’51 Buick. I had been teaching guitar at Paul Buskirk’s music studio. I taught a class where I had about twelve full-time students. I loved teaching guitar. I could play pretty good, so I would knock out a few blues licks to impress the class, then jump into Mel Bay’s book and teach little fingers to play. It was and still is a great way to teach. By the time you went through the first book, you had learned a lot about reading music, and I was learning as much as I was teaching.

  I had just recorded “Night Life” with Paul Buskirk’s band. He was the best rhythm guitar player I had ever heard. Dean “Deanie Bird” Reynolds played great upright bass, and I played lead guitar. I had also just written “Family Bible,” which was recorded by Claude Gray. I sold the song for fifty dollars, because I needed the money to pay my rent. The song went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts. So when I hit Nashville, I had a record and a No. 1 song.

  I met Hank Cochran at a bar called Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, which is right across the alley from the Ryman Auditorium, the home of the Grand Ole Opry. All the artists and musicians who played the Grand Ole Opry would spend a lot of time at Tootsie’s. It’s where I met Faron Young, who turned out to be a great friend and who recorded my song “Hello Walls,” which became his biggest hit.

  Tootsie’s was also where I met Charlie Dick, who was married to the great Patsy Cline. He heard and liked one of my records on the jukebox, so I played him a tape of “Crazy.” He took me to Patsy’s house and woke her up so she could hear it, too. I remember I was embarrassed to go into their house—it was past midnight—so I stayed in the car. She came out and made me come in, and she recorded “Crazy” the next week. It was the biggest jukebox song of all time.

  Back to Hank Cochran—Hank heard me jamming with Jimmy Day and Buddy Emmons one night in Tootsie’s. He was a writer for Pamper Music, which was owned by Ray Price and Hal Smith. Also, there were Harlan Howard, Ray Pennington, Don Rollins, and Dave Kirby. All great writers. Hank had a fifty-dollar-a-week raise coming but told Hal Smith to hire me as a writer and give me the fifty dollars-a-week instead. It was fantastic, and I thought I had hit the big time!

  There is a new singer in town who has a great voice and a good heart and is doing really well. His name is Jamey Johnson, and he is doing an album of Hank Cochran songs. Hank wrote some great songs, like “Make the World Go Away” and “A Little Bitty Tear.” We did one the other night that I had only recently heard for the first time called “Livin’ for a Song.” It was me, Jamey, and Kris Kristofferson singing on that one. I’m glad Jamey is kicking the can on down the road, so people don’t forget Hank and people like him. Thank you, Hank, wherever you are.

  Thought for the Day: You have all the power there is. There is no one more powerful
than you. You just must be aware of it and know it; don’t doubt it. Faith, dummy. (Those last two words were for me.)

  THINK IT. BE IT. YOU ARE THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL YOUR THOUGHTS. Remember you are who you wanted to be. If you’re happy, thank God and move on. If you want to change, you can. Intentions are important, but remember you can kill yourself with good intentions. If everything fails, start over. Failure is not fatal. It’s inevitable that you learn from your mistakes. If you fail, you start over. If you fail again, you start over again. If you fall seven times, get up eight. Amen. Or om, or . . . ?

  I can still see the Abbott Panther motto: “A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits.” Abbott High School was the greatest school in the world for me and small enough that I could take every subject. You will pass some and fail some, but the ones you fail you will remember longer. Kind of like in life, you keep coming back till you get it right, or as someone said, “Keep doing it wrong till you like it that way.” I think I already said that, but it’s important.

  BASS 101

  The best country singer of all time was, and still is, Ray Price. His bass player Donny Young, who later became Johnny Paycheck, quit and I was hired to replace him. I had never played bass in my life, but when Ray asked me if I could play bass I said, “Can’t everybody?” Jimmy Day tried to teach me on the way from Nashville to Winchester, Virginia, which was Patsy Cline’s hometown. It was a struggle for us both. Johnny Bush played drums for Ray, but I played bass, so he was screwed from the get-go. I asked Ray later how long it took him to realize I was no bass player. He said the first night, but he kept me around, so thank you, Ray.

  Ray had his band dressed in pink and blue Nudie suits with sequins. Donny was about fifty pounds lighter than I was, so the suit was a little snug, but after a while on the bus eating truck-stop food, it began to fit better. I opened with the band and sang a few Hank Williams songs and told a couple of Little Jimmy Dickens’s jokes. Then I would introduce Ray. Most of the way through my show there was a lot of heckling, like “Where’s Ray? We paid to see Ray Price!” It was a very humbling experience. I understood very well what they meant, and I too was glad when Ray came on. Later, when Johnny Bush opened for me, he had to listen to, “Where’s Willie? We paid to see Willie!” It’s all funny now. We actually have a new CD called Young at Heart coming out next year. Here I go plugging my music again. Bite me.

  Ray Price helped us out on the CD and sang great, as usual, but he’s been a little under the weather lately. He told me he had to cut back. His exact words were “I’m only living six days a week now.” Now that’s funny!

  RAISING HOGS

  I spent some great years living in Tennessee. I first lived in Dunn’s Trailer Park in Madisonville, Tennessee, just north of Nashville. Roger Miller and Hank Cochran both lived there at one time for no reason that I can think of, except that it was twenty-five dollars a week, with everything furnished. Not such a bad deal.

  Then I bought a farm in Ridgetop, Tennessee, which was some of the best and worst of times.

  When I was married to Shirley Collie, we lived in Ridgetop, and Johnny Bush lived close by. One day, I decided to quit touring—I literally took myself off the market, because the only place I was doing good at all was in Texas—and to stay home a year to write songs and raise hogs. Why hogs? Because I had been raising hogs nearly all my life, starting out in the FFA at Abbott High School, where I raised hogs for show, food, money, or whatever. I even won some blue ribbons. So it wasn’t unusual for me to decide I wanted to raise hogs in my year off with nothing to do. I got Johnny Bush to help me build a hog pen. Then we went to the auction sale over in Goodlettsville, where I bought seventeen weaner pigs. I paid twenty-five cents a pound, put them in the back of my pickup, drove back to Ridgetop with Johnny, backed the pickup truck up to the loading gate, and unloaded the pigs in the pigpen we had just built. Unfortunately, the bottom rung on the pigpen was about two inches higher than the tallest hog. Consequently, all seventeen pigs hit the ground running. They went straight out under the fence and separated out in the woods. It took us days to finally round up all the pigs. By the time we got them back in the pen, they were almost too big to crawl out again, but we fixed the bottom of the pen and I started raising hogs. Another mistake I had made was having the hog feeders and the water trough too close together in the hog pen. The pigs wouldn’t get any exercise because they didn’t have to walk and got so fat, they were rupturing—they were literally falling out of their own asses. Long story short, I fed the seventeen pigs for three months and took them to the market to sell them, and the hogs that I had paid twenty-five cents a pound for—and had fed for ninety days—brought only twenty cents a pound. I lost a minor fortune my first and only year raising hogs.

  ROPING

  During that same year I decided I would build a roping arena, and with the help of Johnny Bush, again, I did.

  Johnny is a good friend. He played drums for me one time, fronted my band, and now he was helping me put up an electric fence. That’s a real friend. But to show you how bright we were, Johnny and I dug the holes, drove in the metal fence posts, and put up the wiring for an electric fence during a thunder and lightning storm. I was riding my black quarter horse Preacher, whom I dearly loved, over toward the roping pen we had just built, and when we got to the electric fence, Johnny Bush lowered the wire. My idea was to ride Preacher over the electric fence while Johnny Bush held the wire down to the ground. When we were halfway across the wire, John let it go, accidentally I’m sure. Hence the first Ridgetop Rodeo!

  I had never roped calves before, but I knew it had to be a lot of fun. I bought a book called Calf Roping by Toots Mansfield. Toots was a many-times-over champion roper from West Texas. He had a calf-roping school that he ran in either Midland or Big Spring, Texas. He had a lot of young calf ropers to whom he taught the finer skills of roping, so I was sure I could learn from his book. I studied it and read it over many times until I was sure I knew what I had to do. I was to catch a running calf by throwing a loop over his head, throwing the calf, dismounting the horse, and tying the calf’s feet together, in as short a time period as possible. Unfortunately, my roping horse Preacher had not read the book.

  DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE NERVOUS BANK ROBBER? HE SAID: “STICK up your ass or I’ll blow your hands off!”

  IT WAS CHRISTMASTIME, AND THE LADY ANSWERED THE DOOR. IT was the postman. She said, “Come in, I have something for you.” She took him to the bedroom and screwed his brains out, then fixed him a nice big breakfast of biscuits, gravy, ham, and eggs. Then she walked him to the door, gave him a dollar, and said, “Merry Christmas.” The postman said, “Lady, what just happened?” She said, “I asked my husband what to give you for Christmas, and he said, ‘Fuck him, give him a dollar.’ Breakfast was my idea.”

  I DID AN INTERVIEW TODAY WITH AN OLD FRIEND FROM SAN ANTONIO named Paul Venema. He’s a great guy and an old friend. I’ll see him tomorrow night in Helotes, Texas, at our show at John T. Floore Country Store. John T’s is one of the better beer joints in Texas. John T. Floore was a really good friend of mine and loaned me money one time when I really needed it. I wrote a song about him:

  SHOTGUN WILLIE

  Shotgun Willie sits around in his underwear

  Biting on a bullet and pulling out all of his hair

  Shotgun Willie’s got all of his family there

  Well, you can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothing to say

  You can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothing to say

  You can’t play music if you don’t know nothing to play

  Shotgun Willie sits around in his underwear

  Biting on a bullet and pulling out all of his hair

  Shotgun Willie’s got all of his family there

  Now, John T. Floore was a-working for the Ku Klux Klan

  At six foot five, John T. was a hell of a man

  Made a lot of money selling sheets on the family plan

  Shotgun Willie sits ar
ound in his underwear

  Biting on a bullet and pulling out all of his hair

  Shotgun Willie’s got all of his family there

  MAUI, SUMMER 2011

  Annie and I are on Maui having fun. The weather is perfect; it usually is. Texas was getting a little warm, but Maui feels fantastic. Jim Fuller and I played chess and dominoes today. We will play golf in the morning. Jim is one of my best friends. He used to own a restaurant called Charley’s in the town of Paia, on the North Shore of Maui. I played music there a lot and had a lot of fun. Jim is not only a good friend but a good poker player, and a pretty good golfer now. I know he took some lessons, because I used to give him two strokes a hole and now he beats me a lot. One day I was playing golf and won Charley’s! Of course I immediately lost it back. I don’t need a restaurant.

  Jim and I play chess and dominoes together. I hope to see him tomorrow night in Django’s, my clubhouse, or man cave, where we play all sorts of games, like poker, dominoes, and chess. Stan Cohn, Ben Holtz, Big Ben, Donny Smith, Roy, and Joe Gannon are regulars. Ziggy Marley showed up for a game and won a bunch. Then his wife, Orly, said they had to leave to take the kids home. Right . . . we will get Ziggy back! Anyway, all my pals will be there. I will win some and lose some, but at least I don’t have to fly to Vegas!