Country Song Roundup
Lately, it seems whenever Willie Nelson isn’t making records, he’s breaking them. His latest lp, Always on My Mind, reached the number one spot on the country charts, while at the same time he was holding the number-one and number-two spots on the singles charts.
“Always On My Mind,” stayed at number one until it was replaced by ‘Just to Satisfy You,” a duet Nelson does with Waylon Jennings. This is not the first time that Waylon and Willie have gone all the way to the top together. They also scored number-one duet hits with “Good Hearted Woman” and “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” and “I Can Get Off On You.
Willie was like working with your favorite shoe — comfortable, durable and special. Any man who can ad lib a line on camera like, “I’m gonna get me a bottle of tequila, and one of them Keno girls who suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, and kick back’ deserves to be in the movies, writing songs, or in jail.” This was the opinion of Robert Redford after appearing with Willie Nelson in the feature film, “The Electric Horseman.”
Fortunately, Willie is not in jail, but he is in the movies and he does write songs, and he sings most of the songs he writes.
The secret of so many of America’s most significant and durable artists is their ability to melt the traditions of their own heritages and personal pasts into the musical form that is at the same time both authentic and contemporary. Such is the case with Willie Nelson.
Like a handful of other great popular artists of our era, he is a virtual weater vane of musical forces. He has succeeded in transmitting all the years of musical influences he has assimilated in his lifetime to contemporary audiences in a manner that i sivtal and exciting yet fiercely authenitic.
For all of his hard work, America has taken Willie to its heart. Once a Nashville renegade, later a favorite son of Texas, his popularity has now elevated him to a stature approaching that of a contemporary national folk hero. His braided hair and headband is becoming as familiar to many as the Indian on the old Buffalo nickel.
Interestingly, the fundamentals of Nelson’s music have actually changed very little since his rather desperate, formative years in the early 1950s when he began seeking out a living in the rough and tumble clubs around Ft. Worth, Texas. The only difference is that today, instead of falling on the indifferent ears in small-time clubs, his music is being heard by millions.
Many of Nelson’s recent albums have surpassed the platinum (million copies sold) status. At his personal appearnces, he draws sell-out crowds to huge arenas around the country. He transforms staid Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe and Reno showrooms into roaring Lone Star Pickin’ Parlors, while his former annual Forth of July Picnic, held in various parts of Texas, has drawn as many as 100,000 people.
in the past few years, Willie’s visibility has been further enhanced by his venture into major motion pictures. As mentioned before, his first film was “The Electric Horseman,” staring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford.
The film, “Honeysuckle Rose,” featured Willie in his first starring role opposite Dyan Cannon. In late 1980, Willie began filming his next motion picture, “Barbarosa,” his first non-musical role. He co-stars opposite Gary Busey.  Other tentative projects in the future include a co-starring role with Kris Kristofferson in a film entitled, “The songwriter,” and a screen dramatization of Willie’s 1975 concept album, Red Headed Stranger.
Throughout his recent rises to national prominence, and his successful foray into the motion picture industry, Willie has carefully seen to it that he has not been distracted from his first and last love: writing, singing and performing his music. Usually he combines the films with his music. On “The Electric Horseman” soundtrack, he performs many of the custs, including the hit “My heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” and in “Honeysuckle Rose” he received a Grammy for “On the Road Again.”
Since 1975, he has been rpesented with four Grammy Awards and four Country Muic Association (CMA) awards, including Entertainer of the Year Award (1979). Willie also won the Academy of Country Music’s Entertainer of the Year Award, which is that organization’ s biggest honor.
Yet, for all of the adulation that has been lavished upon him, and for all the prerequisites that have come with his immense popularity, Willie’s head has not been swayed form the dee-rooted traditions of his musical heritage. He has not changed, or compromised his music, or his sound to get where he is today.
Instead, he has struggled for nearly three decades and has finally succeed in getting the world to listen to what he’s bee trying to get them to hear all along. Willie is quick to emphasize that that it’s his music that got him wehre he is today ,and it is his music on which he will continue to concentrate. He points out that ultimately, the prupose of hsi venture into films is music. “I want to call attention to the singing, to the music in these films,” he explained recently.
[sorry, I don’t have the date on this clipping, or the author, of this article from the Country Song Roundup.]