Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die: Musings From the Road (4 page)

Put something in the pot, boy; it’s your move. Your back is against the wall, and that wall is Wall Street against Main Street. I didn’t come here and I ain’t leaving.

Amen.

LEAVING ABBOTT

W
e moved to Pleasanton, Texas, where I lied my way into the job at KBOP. The owner of the station was a guy named Dr. Ben Parker. Dr. Parker was a wealthy chiropractor who owned at least six radio stations in Texas. My job was to sign on in the mornings, which meant I did news and weather, played music, swept the floor, wrote copy, sold time, and collected. I did everything there was to do in a radio station, except that I was not an engineer and couldn’t work on the equipment. When I applied for the job, Dr. Parker asked me if I had any experience. Of course I lied and said I did. So he asked me to sit down, go on the air, and read a commercial I had never seen. Live. I’ll never forget that commercial. It was for the Pleasanton Pharmacy, and at the end of the commercial I was to say, “This program is brought to you by the Pleasanton Pharmacy, whose pharmaceutical department will accurately and precisely fill your doctor’s prescription.” Of course I screwed that up completely. He asked me if I was familiar with the board, which was an RCA board, because as a disc jockey I would have to operate all the equipment, turntables, and tape machines. And when Doc Parker asked me if I was familiar with this particular board, I said, “No, I was trained on a Gates board,” which I had no idea about either, but I had seen it somewhere. Doc Parker must have just liked me and knew I had a family and needed a job, because he gave me the job and showed me how to operate the equipment.

I had a lot of fun at KBOP. I learned a lot about radio and how it all operates. I worked on Sunday mornings, when all the churches came in to do their Sunday morning church services at KBOP. The Church of Christ, the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, the Catholic Church, and the Pentecostal Church, or the holy rollers as we called them, because they became so emotional and involved. They would shout, dance, and make all kinds of noise. We had to tie the chairs together because otherwise they would be thrown all over the studio. I would sit at the controls, and I could see through to the live studio where all this was going on every Sunday morning. I would always be a little hung over from Saturday night, and they obviously knew this because they all looked right directly at me and preached every word to me, it seemed like.

I did a live radio show, just me and my guitar, from noon until twelve thirty daily. This is where I first met Johnny Bush. I liked his singing well enough that I thought he needed a manager. So I became his manager, and somewhere there are still posters that say
JOHNNY
BUSH
,
MANAGED
BY
WILLIE
NELSON
. I don’t think it hurt him much, because he still sings so beautiful.

Johnny was not only a good singer, but he was a good musician. He played bass and was a fine drummer. He eventually wound up playing drums for me in a three-piece band that included me, Johnny Bush, and Wade Ray. We were pretty good. We played the Panther Hall ballroom in Fort Worth, which was an old professional bowling alley that had been converted into a beer joint. The three of us recorded my first live album at the Panther Hall ballroom.

I remember one night we debuted a Beatles song called “Yesterday.” The crowd loved it. I thought that I had discovered an obscure song that no one had heard of before, not realizing that the Beatles had just sold ninety zillion records.

I also thought I had discovered Julio Iglesias. I was in England on tour, listening to the BBC radio late night, and they played a song—I couldn’t remember the song, but I remembered the voice and decided I had to record with this voice, whoever it was that I thought I had discovered. I found out later that he too had already sold ninety zillion records—but in seven different languages. I eventually got word to him, and we recorded “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” at my studio in Austin. It’s the same studio where I recorded “Seven Spanish Angels” with Ray Charles, who is another hero of mine.

Ray Charles

Ray Charles did more for country music than anyone else. When he recorded the album
Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,
with all the great country classics, millions of Ray Charles fans were introduced to country music. I had been a Ray Charles fan all the way back to “What’d I Say.” To be able to record and sing with him was a dream come true. We eventually became good friends, and I sang many shows with him. The best one was in New York on my sixtieth birthday. Ray Charles flew in from Spain to New York, just to come sing at my birthday show, and when he and Leon Russell sang “A Song for You,” it was the best I had ever heard. So thank you, Ray, and thank you, Leon.

The greatest musician, singer, writer, and entertainer that I have ever seen or heard is Leon Russell. We are still great friends and have a double album of songs that we recorded, called
Together Again,
coming out next year. I first saw Leon in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There were twenty thousand people on their feet yelling and screaming for the whole show. He and I stayed up all night the night before the show drinking and smoking. At sunrise we went onstage and started playing. It was the greatest sight I had ever seen. There were thousands of people walking toward the venue through a cow pasture, carrying everything from beer coolers to sleeping bags. They came to stay a while. There were hippies and rednecks, young and old coming together for the first time to hear the same thing. The magic was the music. It touched all kinds of people, and the world has not been the same since. I remember he had the crowd in such a frenzy that at one moment he stopped and said, “Remember where you are right now, and remember that right now you would believe anything I would say. So be careful who you would let lead you to this place.” Then he threw his cowboy hat into the audience, and the crowd went crazy, which is when I stole the idea of throwing hats to the audience.

I booked Leon for the first Fourth of July picnic in Dripping Springs, Texas. I thought if it worked in Albuquerque and it worked in Woodstock, it could work here; it did. Thank you, Leon, and thank you, Woodstock, for showing me how to do it.

Leon Russell

ALWAYS NOW

It’s always now

Nothing ever goes away

Everything is here to stay

And it’s always now

It’s always now

There never was a used to be

Everything is still with me

And it’s always now

So brace your heart

And save yourself some sanity

It’s more than just a memory

And it’s always now

And here’s your part

Sing it like a melody

There’s really only you and me

And it’s always now

NASHVILLE

I
went to Nashville because Nashville was
the
marketplace, and if you wanted to succeed in country music you had to go to Nashville—so I went to Nashville. I drove there from Houston in a ’51 Buick. I had been teaching guitar at Paul Buskirk’s music studio. I taught a class where I had about twelve full-time students. I loved teaching guitar. I could play pretty good, so I would knock out a few blues licks to impress the class, then jump into Mel Bay’s book and teach little fingers to play. It was and still is a great way to teach. By the time you went through the first book, you had learned a lot about reading music, and I was learning as much as I was teaching.

I had just recorded “Night Life” with Paul Buskirk’s band. He was the best rhythm guitar player I had ever heard. Dean “Deanie Bird” Reynolds played great upright bass, and I played lead guitar. I had also just written “Family Bible,” which was recorded by Claude Gray. I sold the song for fifty dollars, because I needed the money to pay my rent. The song went to No. 1 on the
Billboard
charts. So when I hit Nashville, I had a record and a No. 1 song.

I met Hank Cochran at a bar called Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, which is right across the alley from the Ryman Auditorium, the home of the Grand Ole Opry. All the artists and musicians who played the Grand Ole Opry would spend a lot of time at Tootsie’s. It’s where I met Faron Young, who turned out to be a great friend and who recorded my song “Hello Walls,” which became his biggest hit.

Tootsie’s was also where I met Charlie Dick, who was married to the great Patsy Cline. He heard and liked one of my records on the jukebox, so I played him a tape of “Crazy.” He took me to Patsy’s house and woke her up so she could hear it, too. I remember I was embarrassed to go into their house—it was past midnight—so I stayed in the car. She came out and made me come in, and she recorded “Crazy” the next week. It was the biggest jukebox song of all time.

Back to Hank Cochran—Hank heard me jamming with Jimmy Day and Buddy Emmons one night in Tootsie’s. He was a writer for Pamper Music, which was owned by Ray Price and Hal Smith. Also, there were Harlan Howard, Ray Pennington, Don Rollins, and Dave Kirby. All great writers. Hank had a fifty-dollar-a-week raise coming but told Hal Smith to hire me as a writer and give me the fifty dollars-a-week instead. It was fantastic, and I thought I had hit the big time!

There is a new singer in town who has a great voice and a good heart and is doing really well. His name is Jamey Johnson, and he is doing an album of Hank Cochran songs. Hank wrote some great songs, like “Make the World Go Away” and “A Little Bitty Tear.” We did one the other night that I had only recently heard for the first time called “Livin’ for a Song.” It was me, Jamey, and Kris Kristofferson singing on that one. I’m glad Jamey is kicking the can on down the road, so people don’t forget Hank and people like him. Thank you, Hank, wherever you are.

Thought for the Day:
You have all the power there is. There is no one more powerful than you. You just must be aware of it and know it; don’t doubt it. Faith, dummy. (Those last two words were for me.)

T
HINK
IT
. B
E
IT
. Y
OU
ARE
THE
SUM
TOTAL
OF
ALL
YOUR
THOUGHTS
. Remember you are who you wanted to be. If you’re happy, thank God and move on. If you want to change, you can. Intentions are important, but remember you can kill yourself with good intentions. If everything fails, start over. Failure is not fatal. It’s inevitable that you learn from your mistakes. If you fail, you start over. If you fail again, you start over again. If you fall seven times, get up eight. Amen. Or om, or . . . ?

I can still see the Abbott Panther motto: “A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits.” Abbott High School was the greatest school in the world for me and small enough that I could take every subject. You will pass some and fail some, but the ones you fail you will remember longer. Kind of like in life, you keep coming back till you get it right, or as someone said, “Keep doing it wrong till you like it that way.” I think I already said that, but it’s important.

BASS 101

T
he best country singer of all time was, and still is, Ray Price. His bass player Donny Young, who later became Johnny Paycheck, quit and I was hired to replace him. I had never played bass in my life, but when Ray asked me if I could play bass I said, “Can’t everybody?” Jimmy Day tried to teach me on the way from Nashville to Winchester, Virginia, which was Patsy Cline’s hometown. It was a struggle for us both. Johnny Bush played drums for Ray, but I played bass, so he was screwed from the get-go. I asked Ray later how long it took him to realize I was no bass player. He said the first night, but he kept me around, so thank you, Ray.

Ray had his band dressed in pink and blue Nudie suits with sequins. Donny was about fifty pounds lighter than I was, so the suit was a little snug, but after a while on the bus eating truck-stop food, it began to fit better. I opened with the band and sang a few Hank Williams songs and told a couple of Little Jimmy Dickens’s jokes. Then I would introduce Ray. Most of the way through my show there was a lot of heckling, like “Where’s Ray? We paid to see Ray Price!” It was a very humbling experience. I understood very well what they meant, and I too was glad when Ray came on. Later, when Johnny Bush opened for me, he had to listen to, “Where’s Willie? We paid to see Willie!” It’s all funny now. We actually have a new CD called
Young at Heart
coming out next year. Here I go plugging my music again. Bite me.