Willie Nelson Goes Twang: A When You Awake Mixtape

Willie Nelson has been recording since the late 1950s and has produced a catalog of such breadth that selecting from it requires decisions about what kind of artist you are talking about. There are several: the songwriter whose compositions became country standards before he became famous; the outlaw-era recording artist of the 1970s; the crossover pop figure of the early 1980s; the jazz standards interpreter; the duet partner on projects ranging from the obvious to the surprising.

The When You Awake mixtape tries to be comprehensive without being exhaustive. Here is the version of Willie Nelson that this site cares most about: the country artist in the deepest sense, whose relationship to the American vernacular tradition is as serious as any artist alive.

The songwriter first

Before Nelson was famous, he was famous among musicians. "Crazy" was a Patsy Cline hit in 1961. "Funny How Time Slips Away" was covered by Billy Walker. "Hello Walls" was a Faron Young hit. Nelson was writing country songs that had the quality of standards — the melodic inevitability, the lyric clarity, the emotional precision — before he had a recording career of his own.

This is an unusual situation: a songwriter whose compositions circulated as the defining hits of his era while the composer himself remained in the background. When Nelson finally began to record in his own right, he was bringing his songwriting voice into a performing context. The results were sometimes awkward and sometimes transcendent.

Shotgun Willie and the outlaw period

Shotgun Willie (1973) is where the recording career that matches the songwriting begins. The album is loose and confident and strange — a country record that doesn't quite sound like any other country record, partly because it incorporates jazz and folk and rock elements without being any of those things.

The outlaw movement in country music in the 1970s — associated with Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and others — was partly a business dispute (artists wanting control of their recordings) and partly an aesthetic movement (artists wanting to make country music that didn't sound like Nashville product). Nelson's position in this movement was central.

Red Headed Stranger (1975) is the masterwork. It is a concept album about a preacher who kills his wife, her lover, and a woman who tries to steal his horse. It was made cheaply and quickly and the record company almost didn't release it. It became the defining album of the outlaw era.

The mixtape sequence

The Willie Nelson Goes Twang selection runs through:

• "Hello Walls" — the early composition, period recording
• "Crazy" — in Nelson's own recording rather than the Cline version
• "Shotgun Willie" — the title track, which is a complete statement of aesthetic in under three minutes
• "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" — the Red Headed Stranger recording, sparse and definitive
• "Georgia on My Mind" — the standards move, Nelson making the case that country and jazz are cousins
• "Always on My Mind" — the hit, which is the sound of an artist successfully crossing over without losing the core of what he does
• "Pancho and Lefty" — the Merle Haggard collaboration, one of the great outlaw narrative songs
• "On the Road Again" — unavoidable, but genuinely excellent
• "City of New Orleans" — Nelson doing Steve Goodman, one tradition talking to another

What Nelson means in this context

This site covers Americana, folk, and roots music. Nelson belongs in all of those categories while also exceeding them. His career is long enough and various enough that it functions as a historical document of American music in the second half of the twentieth century.

He is still touring and recording. That fact alone is worth acknowledging.

See all the Mixtapes.