Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Growing old with Willie Nelson

by Julie Carter

Haircuts don't generally make national news, but when Willie Nelson's braids hit the cutting room floor this week, newsfeeds went rampant with the report.

His fans have come to expect a touch of eccentricity from the legendary crooner, but he pulled off a shocker this time.

However, there is a generation of followers who find it somewhat humorous because we recall when Willie's hair was banker-short and shoe-black dark, and he wore a suit and tie to the stage. Tell that to a Willie fan under the age of 40 and a resounding "Nooooo, never," is their response.

Of course at the time, gas was 25-cents a gallon and America was giving birth to the decade of the "hippie."

He was only 7 when he wrote his first song, "Family Bible" and sold it for $50.

Turning 77 last month, Willie can again say "Funny how time slips away," another of the many songs he wrote that someone else made famous. In that same time period, he penned Faron Young's "Hello Walls" and Patsy Cline's rendition of "Crazy."

His gritty, roadhouse sound didn't fit into the traditional Nashville music style in the 1960s and it wasn't until he ditched Tennessee for Texas in the '70s, that his unique brand of outlaw country music took off.

Wearing a little more hair, looking somewhat like the Beatles-gone-to-Austin, Willie launched album after album defining himself in both lyric and title, like "Shotgun Willie" and "The Red Headed Stranger."

In a decade when Glen Campbell and Bobby Goldsboro were crooning the softer side of life, Willie, along with the like-minded and hard-partying Waylon Jennings, made an indelible mark on the Austin music scene.

He took it by storm when he teamed up with Waylon Jennings, Jessie Colter and Tompall Glaser for the Outlaw albums, answering a call to a honky-tonk era that had crossed over the rural-urban boundaries and shouted for some boot-stompin', whiskey-drinkin' music.

In the '80s, Willie sought to recreate that success by making more albums with industry greats.

The "Honeysuckle Rose" sound track album for the movie of the same name was a rowdy rendition of Willie's life "On the Road Again."

Willie and his down-home Texas buddies, including Western-swing fiddle legend Johnny Gimble, songwriter Hank Cochran and the sultry songbird Emmy Lou Harris gave the album a good-timin' vibe that has people, still today, humming the signature song every time they pull out on the highway.

Willie cranked out al-bums with Waylon Jennings, Ray Price, Roger Miller, Faron Young, Hank Snow, Webb Pierce and Kris Kristofferson.

With Merle Haggard in the "Pancho and Lefty" album, the duo gave musical notes to their bad-boy personas with a series of boozer-loser ballads that packed a wallop right up to the "Reasons To Quit" and "No Reason To Quit" double play.

Dubbed the "supergroup" of them all was The Highwaymen, Willie's 10-year gig with Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. These four legends of outlaw country music recorded three major label albums and a number one hit penned by Kristofferson, called, of course, "Highwayman".

Willie has written more than 2,500 songs and recorded hundreds of albums. Aside from his brilliance as a song writer and musician, he's funny and charming with a charisma that emanates from the very core of his powerful and oftentimes rebellious nature.

From the 1985 Farm Aid benefit concerts that raised money for American farmers, to the Willie-Aid album, "Who'll Buy My Memories?" made to help him pay off his IRS debts, to his confession of smoking pot before his appearance on "The Larry King Show", Willie continued to perpetuate his personification of the country rebel.

Gray, grizzled and without the signature braids, Willie's unmistakable voice, the one that Nashville turned its back on a half a century ago, is still without equal in its uni-quely "just Willie" way.

The evolution of Willie. You don't have to be a Willie Nelson fan to recognize the legend in his story.

But it seems now, that it was only yesterday
Gee, ain't it funny, how time slips away.

Julie can be reached for comment at jcarter@tularosa.net.