Â
Reunion Arena, Dallas, Texas
Dallas Morning News, by Pete Oppel
December 30, 1981
Willie Nelson sat on the rust-colored couch that wrapped around the back wall of the rear room inside his custom-designed bus. He leaned forward, resting his arms on the circular table, and spoke in a voice barely above a whisper about a man he admired. It seems his heroes have not always been cowboys.
“I never got the chance to meet Hoagy Carmichael,” Nelson said moments before he took the stage Wednesday night for a concert at Reunion Arena. “But on his birthday, two years ago — I found out it was his birthday — I sent him a telegram wishing him a happy birthday.
The subject of Hoagy Carmichael was there, not just because the composer died earlier in the week, but also because one of Nelson’s biggest hits was a version of Carmichael’s “Georgia on My Mind” and one of Willie’s most popular albums was named after another Carmichael composition, “Stardust.”
“When I was a kid, Bobbie, my sister, used to buy these songbooks,” Nelson said. “She was taking piano lessons. She’d buy all these World War II songbooks — everything from ”Stardust” to “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” and all those songs.  That’s all we would do all day. She would read the music out of the books and I would sit there with my guitar and play along with her. I couldn’t read the music, but I learned the chords to most of them through playing guitar while she played piano. So I learned all those Hoagy Carmichael songs — “Old Buttermilk Skies” and “Lazy Bones” and “Georgia” and all those.”
“I liked Hoagy Carmichael personally,” Nelson said. “I liked the character that I saw in the movies. I never did see him too much on TV or hear him on the radio talking alot, but the character that he portrayed in the movies — the lazy, laidback type of guy that he was — I’m sure that’s the way he must have been in real life. Even as a kid growing up I could see how good he was.”
Which is exactly the reason Nelson recorded “Georgia on My Mind” and “Stardust” on the “Stardust” album.
“Actually I picked my all-time 10 favorite songs right off the top of my head for the “Stardust” album — the songs I thought were the best songs ever written by anybody, the classics, the masterpieces,” Nelson said. “Those were the 10 I came up with.Â
Nelson looked fit and in good health. Earlier this year he suffered a collapsed lung while in Hawaii and was hospitalized for a copule of months. The hospitalization and ensuing recuperation period didn’t slow the man down, however.
“It’s really strange, but when I had to take off from the road because I was sick, I had all this time on my hands so I went into the studio and started recording albums. It felt great and I felt good and I thought it was good for my lungs, so I went ahead and did it.”
“I recorded five albums,” he said with a laugh. “So now Waylon Jennings and I have two albums ready. One’s coming out on RCA (Waylon’s record label) and one on CBS (Nelson’s company). Merle Haggard and I have one. Roger Miller and I did one together and I did another one with the Over the Rainbow Band and I did one or two on my own. So there’s five or six albums that i did while I was off and not working.”
“We’ve got a movie starting in February in Austin. David Anderson (a member of Nelson’s crew) and I wrote a movie so we’re gong to start making it in February. It’s called ’Write Your Own Songs.”
It goes ‘you’re calling us heathens with zero respect for the law, but we’re only songwriters just writing our songs and that’s all. We write what we live and we live what we write, is that wrong? If you think it is, mister music executive, why don’t you write youu own songs and don’t listen to mine. They might run you crazy and they might make you dwell on your feelings a moment too long. We’re making you rich and you’re already lazy… so just (lay around), getting richer or write your own songs.’
“So that’s the title of the movie. It’s about me and this record company and we get into a fight and I sing this song to the president of the record company. So I get thrown off the label and the band busts up…”
“That’s going to take a lot of acting, won’t it?” he said with a laugh as he climbed from behind the table, strode to the front of the bus and began the short walk to the Reunion Arena stage.