Wille Nelson
Crazy: The Demo Sessions
Sugar Hill
by William Michael Smith
 These stripped
down, basic tracks show a surprisingly smooth and almost fully
developed Willie Nelson in "playing in your living room"
mode. Some tracks are acoustic and others have a minimalist honkytonk
ensemble (Jimmie Day's steel guitar is to die for!). Nelson's
look-you-in-the-eye lyrics and his complex playing and vocal
delivery cut across the years like a razor-edged time machine.
The tracks show how well developed Nelson's odd phrasings and
"uncountry" progressions were even in his earliest
phase. Then as now, his voice was one of utmost sincerity and
intensity.
Compare these tracks with early major label efforts to make
Willie radio compatible and the falseness of that vision is not
only obvious but downright contemptuous. The ludicrous miscalculation
of trying to turn someone capable of these stunning performances
into a countrypolitan act is a prime example of know-it-all record
executives missing the boat in their reliance on fitting every
act to an en vogue formula.
The sessions, discovered on reel-to-reel in 1994 and restored
by Buddy Miller, also illustrate what a songwriting genius Nelson
was from the beginning of his career. "Undo the Right,"
"Permanently Lonely," "Are You Sure" "I
Gotta Get Drunk," "Darkness on the Face of the Earth,"
"The Local Memory," "Opportunity To Cry"
and his classic "Crazy" show Nelson's incredible understanding
of the honky tonk idiom. Most of these songs simply perspire
with angst at near suicidal levels.
Crazy: The Demo Sessions should rank with Red Headed
Stranger and Phases and Stages as Nelson's strongest
and most lasting works. This incredible assemblage of raw demos
from Nelson's 1961-66 period as staff songwriter for Ray Price's
Pamper Music is some of the most damning proof ever to see the
light of day about how screwed up the Nashville powers-that-were
were, proof that the future king of the musical outlaws should
have been left free to do it his way from the beginning.
* www.sugarhillrecords.com
Contact William Michael Smith at wms-at-rockzilla.net
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