Country Song Roundup
Annual
Fall 1977
The “way-out” Willie Nelson, considered by many the patron saint of the outlaw country music movement, is now an international success. After all those monstrous songs Nelson has written — “Hello Walls,” recorded by Faron young’ “Crazy,” by the late Patsy Cline; “Night LIfe,” by Ray Price, Rusty Draper, Doris Day and Julie London; “Funny How Time Slips Away,” by Willy Walker, Jimmy Elledge, Johnny Tillotson, and the Four Freshmen; and “Pertty Paper,” by Roy Orbison – he captured the big spotlight with Fred Rose’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”
“I did it for a commercial reason,” said Nelson. “I included the song on my Red Headed Stranger album as a teaser.  I knew the public would like the song and – released as a single – they would buy the album and hear some things I have to say.
“Making record albums these days is like making a sale,” said Nelson, who not too many years ago was sneered by the local establishment in Music City, U.S.A. “You’ve got to give ’em something to get ’em in the store.”
Nelson describes his albums as programmed. They tell stories. They have a beginning and an end.”
Nelson’s appeal is widespread. Declared Bill Hance, amusement writer for The Nashville Banner: “No longer is he popular in Tennessee and Texas, but throughout the country, much of it nestled with those coming off the hard rock jag.”
“Anymore,” said Nelson, “you don’t have to be ashamed to like country music. I remember when some people didn’t want their friends to know they dug it.
“Now it’s okay, and I think a lot of it has to do with our changing styles, not just in music, but dress.
“The world, at last, as accepted longer hair. The long-haired person can do anything he wants now, whereas in the past, much of his actions were limited.
“I feel the novelty of the cowboy, the way he dresses, the way he thinks and were he lives, also has had something to do with the surge of my kind of music, which basically is country and western.”
The classic country songwriter, turned performing leader of the Texas-originated “progressive country music” movement, talked about the difference between Nashville and Austin.
“You know,” he said, “it’s different because there are different musicians doing it.”
He said the Nashville Sound comes from session musicians — and they’re outstanding musicians. “But, ” he continued, “down in Texas we’ve got performing bands. “That’s the big difference. It’s the difference between studio musicians and performing bands.
Nelson, 1976 Grammy award winner, came to Nashville in 1964 to be near the country music action on Music Row. The first thing he did was buy a 17-acre farm on the outskirts of town and erect a sign which read: “Willie Nelson and Many Others.”
The many others were his wife and their hogs, chickens and ducks. Willie could well afford to buy a farm. he already had risen to prominence in 1961 with a song which he scribbled on the back of a piece of cardboard — “Hello Walls.”
Nelson, in blue jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers, was talking backstage at the Grand Ole Opry House.
“You know, I left there years ago and moved to Austin. I had trouble communicating with the people in Nashville.
“I had trouble getting my ideas across. The people I had been involved with had done things their way for years and years and had been successful.
“They didn’t want to change their way of thinking, and I didn’t want to change mine. I had definite ideas — things I wanted to carry out.
“I felt my own songs were better than they had been treated.Â
“My records were not being promoted properly.
“I was successful as a songwriter and could have lived here on my farm in comfort. But I wanted to sing, and according to regimented bureaucracy, I wasn’t doing it right.”
In 1972 he migrated to Texas, and has become the focal point of the new music movement, a movement, he says, is responsible for bringing people who are otherwise far apart back on the same parallel.
“Call it what you want, redneck music or progressive country, it has been responsible for rghting many a wrong,” he declared.
“A couple or so years ago we organized an annual picnic in Dripping Springs, Texas, and opened it up for everybody — long-hairs, short-hairs, beer drinkers, anybody.
“We didn’t know how it would turn out, but the results have been tremendous, and as an outgrowth of that, I feel underground country music has flourished.
“It was the first time anyone had seen all types of people together listening to country music.”
“It was actually the first time the hippie and the redneck had gotten together. The cowboy was sitting next to the longhair, and they looked at each other and decided they weren’t scared of each other anymore.
“They drank some beer, smoked some pot, and really kind of made peace.
“The fact is, people are getting back together.
“They’ve gotten together and finally agreed on something — country music.”
