Willie Nelson (11 page)
Willie found his place at Fort Worth’s barn dance, the Cowtown Hoedown. The Hoedown was not to be confused with its bigger cousins east on Highway 80, the Big D Jamboree in Dallas and the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport. Still, it provided a steady gig in 1958 and 1959 so he could get his act together as a player as well as a performer. Staged every Saturday night at the Majestic Theatre at 1101 Commerce Street in downtown Fort Worth, in the heart of Fort Worth’s second edition of Hell’s Half Acre, the Cowtown barn dance aired on country station KCUL. The two-and-a-half-hour revue was built around a guest headliner along the lines of Faron Young, Webb Pierce, the Browns, Charlie Walker, Roy Orbison, Ray Price, Ernest Tubb, Bob Luman, or Johnny Horton, and anywhere from six to eight local stars, all supported by the house band.
With no admission charge, the ornate 1,565-seat theater, once the city’s grandest movie house, with opera boxes, marble columns, and terrazzo floors, was usually packed for the Hoedown.
Just being around a lot of similarly inclined entertainers was an education, and Willie paid attention. A few of the Hoedown regulars had enjoyed success. Frankie Miller, one of the cast regulars, had written a number one song for Webb Pierce, “If You Were Me (And I Was You),” in 1955 and was on the verge of scoring a huge Top 5 country hit of his own for Starday Records in 1959 with a song he wrote called “Blackland Farmer.”
Howard Crockett, a veteran of the Louisiana Hayride, was still riding high from writing Johnny Horton’s 1957 breakout hit, “Honky-Tonk Man,” and the durable tale “Old Slewfoot.” Tony Douglas, a singer from Martins Mill with a Hank Williams lonesome moan and Louisiana Hayride exposure, was hired as a Hoedown member after receiving five encores the first time he sang there; in 1957 he recorded “Old Blue Monday,” the first of many hits, for the Cowtown Hoedown label.
The Hoedown was hosted by Jack Henderson, the Hoedown’s original producer, who was assisted by Dandy Don Logan from KCUL. The show was broadcast on KCUL from 8 to 10:30 p.m. and rebroadcast the following Saturday night on XEG, a powerful Mexican station within earshot of a good chunk of the Western Hemisphere. After the Hoedown concluded, the star of the night usually left the building and headed out East Belknap to play Rosa’s Western Club. KCUL, whose call letters were
luck
spelled backwards, wanted to emulate the success the Louisiana Hayride had brought to KWKH, a 50,000-watt station in Shreveport, and the Big D Jamboree brought to KRLD in Dallas. The players’ incentive, besides the $10 pay, was exposure to the up to fifteen hundred fans in the theater and the listeners on the radio, as well as the three-track recording studio in the theater that captured the performances on audiotape.
Willie joined the Hoedown as lead guitarist, playing alongside Doug Winnett on bass, his brother Ernie Winnett on guitar, a steel guitarist named Shady Brown, and guitarist Chuck Jennings, one of Tony Douglas’s Shrimpers.
“Not that he wasn’t a good singer or picker, but Willie wasn’t no standout or nothing at that time,” said Joe Paul Nichols, the Jacksboro teen sensation country singer, who joined the Hoedown cast in 1957. “We knew he was a songwriter and had been a DJ on the radio for a while.”
Willie was popular among the players and learned from his peers. “We liked the way he sang behind the beat,” said Frankie Miller, who used to run around Houston with another distinctive country voice, George Jones, when both were just starting out. “Willie was writing good songs,” Miller said.
The gig was good schooling for Willie’s instrumental skills. Paul Buskirk was always giving him tips and turning him on to all kinds of music until he moved to Houston. Playing the Hoedown was the next best thing, teaching him to think on his feet, improvise when necessary, and play it all—or at least look like he was playing it all.
After Jack Henderson sold the show to Ronnie and Peggy McCoy’s parents, Uncle Hank Craig from KCLE in Cleburne and XEG in Mexico became the Hoedown’s voice as well as the show’s producer. Uncle Hank was like a grandpa to most of the cast, who were years younger than he was, and he took a special shine to Willie, representing him as his manager.
“Uncle Hank was a really sharp guy, a really good friend, and he really liked me,” Willie said. “When I would get in over my head, he would bail me out. He was a buddy.”
Willie’s association with Uncle Hank offered an opportunity to combine his musical skills with his salesmanship, a quality any good Texan was proud to possess. At Uncle Hank’s urging, Willie went downstairs to the basement of the Majestic Theatre to the Jack Henderson Studios. Under Hank’s guidance, Willie made a commercial for the Mexican radio station that Hank was involved with.
With a warm voice brimming with confidence, Willie made the pitch:
“Attention Songwriters and Poets. Here is the big break you have been waiting for—the chance to have your songs on record, recorded by professional musicians. Thousands of dollars are earned each year by songwriters who, not so long ago, were struggling unknowns waiting for their big break—to have their songs recorded and placed before the public. Now there’s no need for you to wait any longer. You can have your songs recorded by professional musicians on your own record to either present to publishers, or just to play in your own home to your friends and relatives, or for your own personal enjoyment. You can actually have your own record library consisting of your own songs—songs you have written yourself. You may have a song worth thousands of dollars to you. Lots of the professional songwriters of today who are financially independent were once amateur songwriters waiting for that one big break. These people learned the hard way that success does not come to you—you have to go out and at least meet it halfway. In order for the right people to hear your songs, you have to take it to them, and there is no better way to present your song than to have it on your own record so they can listen to it played by professional musicians. So if you are a songwriter and you would like to have a professional-sounding record of your own tune, grab a pencil and paper, because I am going to give you the address. Do it now while you are thinking about it, because this could very well be the turning point in your songwriting career. And you are in for a surprise—you’re in for a big surprise—when you learn how little it will cost for you to get your big break as a songwriter, and how little it will cost to have your own song recorded by professional musicians on your own sturdy, durable record that will give you many years of enjoyment. Now here’s what you do: pick out two of your best tunes, or more if you like, but at least two in order to have one tune on each side of your record. Pick out the tunes you want, include the sheet music or lead sheet or a tape recording of your tunes, and send it to Records—that’s R-E-C-O-R-D-S—Records, XEG, Fort Worth, 11, Texas. And now here is the best part—the part that you are going to find hard to believe. For each tune you include, send only ten dollars. That’s all. That will cover everything. That’s just one ten-dollar bill for each tune you send, and this little ten dollars will cover the cost of having your song taped, cut on record by professional musicians, and mailed directly to you, postage paid. And, if you wish, your songs will be listed with your nationally known publishing company at no additional cost. So don’t put it off; do it without delay, and send your songs (at least two—one for each side of your record, and more if you like) to Records, XEG, Fort Worth, 11, Texas, and enclose ten dollars for each tune you send. If you write only words to songs or poems, you may send words or lyrics to your songs or poems and one of our professional songwriters will add the music for the unbelievably low price of ten dollars. There is no longer any need to delay your future in songwriting. That address again is Records—that’s R-E-C-O-R-D-S—Records, XEG, Fort Worth, 11, Texas.”
XEG, the radio station across the Rio Grande that emitted the most powerful radio signal on the continent, sold time to hellfire-breathing preachers, wild disc jockeys like Wolfman Jack and the Howlin’ Rooster, and to promoters like Uncle Hank, who in turn sold gospel records, baby chickens, prayer cloths, autographed pictures of Jesus Christ, and the easy path to songwriting success to millions of listeners across the continent.
From the convincing presentation, a listener might have concluded Willie Nelson had already cracked the code to songwriting success. But he too was still looking for the turning point in his songwriting career. His persuasive powers were more effective than his songwriting talents. Listeners to XEG sent in their $10 bills and their song lyrics and Willie put music to their words “until I got tired of it,” he said. There were better ways to make a living playing music, and he preferred selling his own songs instead of putting music to the words of others.
His worth was validated by Jack Rhodes, a Fort Worth disc jockey and well-known Texas country figure with his own music publishing company. Rhodes licensed the publishing on Willie’s song “Too Young to Settle Down.” Willie gave up half of the credits and potential royalties in the hope that Rhodes would get the song recorded by another singer, which Rhodes knew how to do. He had cowriting credits with Red Hayes on “A Satisfied Mind,” which Porter Wagoner, Jean Shepard, and Red and Betty Foley had just recorded, and would share credits on “Silver Threads and Golden Needles,” and “Woman Love,” which were covered by the likes of Hank Snow, Sonny James, Ferlin Husky, Jim Reeves, Porter Wagoner, and Gene Vincent. Before that, Rhodes led the Western Swing band Jack Rhodes and His Lone Star Buddies (“Mama Loves Papa and Papa Loves the Women”), formerly Jack Rhodes and His Rhythm Boys, which featured Rhodes’s step-brother Leon Payne, whose loose singing style influenced Willie.
Willie wanted to be like Jack Rhodes and Leon Payne and write songs like he’d always been writing songs, only sell them and have them performed and recorded by others, and perform them himself in front of a crowd. If he had that opportunity, he was confident he’d win them over as long as he wasn’t too drunk or too distracted.
The Cowtown Hoedown and Uncle Hank Craig led to Willie’s first record deal. Several acts on the Hoedown had record contracts with D Records through Uncle Hank, and acting as Willie’s manager, Uncle Hank signed Willie to D Records and to a publishing contract with Glad Music, Pappy Daily’s song publishing firm in 1959. The agreements were little more than mere formalities, because no exchange of money was involved. But Willie finally was a recording artist. In exchange, Willie gave Uncle Hank a piece of his songwriter’s publishing rights to “Man with the Blues” and a piece of his second single, “What a Way to Live,” as well as a taste of “Crying in the Night,” which was later covered by Claude Gray. Selling off some or all of your potential future royalties as a songwriter was expected if you were going to be a recording artist.
Willie cut his first sides in Fort Worth at Manco Studios, a homemade one-track recording facility west of the city on White Settlement Road in River Oaks, next to E. E. Manney’s house, in 1959. Manney had his own label, Bluebonnet Records, which had nowhere near the prestige of D Records. Willie brought along some Western Swing players he knew from Waco—steel guitarist Bobby Penton, Lonnie Campbell on drums, and bassist Johnny “Smitty” Smith—and recruited the Reils Sisters from the Cowtown Hoedown to sing background vocals. The Reils had recorded as the Pittypats behind J. B. Brinkley and as Johnny and the Jills behind rockabilly Ronnie Dee; their little brother Johnny would eventually enjoy success as the Nashville singer John Wesley Ryles. But on this recording, their attempt to replicate the Nashville Sound smothered Willie’s vocal rather than complementing it.
Manco was the same studio where Willie had played guitar on a session earlier that year behind Homer Lee Sewell, another Cowtown Hoedown regular, from Cordell, Oklahoma. Sewell was making a single of two songs he’d written, “Whisper Your Name” b/w (backed with) “She’s Mad at Me.” “I found out he was a good lead man,” Sewell said, “so I asked him if he wanted to play on my record.” Sewell rounded up Willie, Paul East, an upright bass player named Bill Bramlett, and two fiddlers and paid Uncle Hank Craig $200 to get his recording made and released on D Records. An alternate version of “Whisper Your Name,” recorded on the stage of the Majestic with Sewell on fiddle and Willie and Paul East on guitar, supported by Jack Zachary, Hank Craig’s son Eddie Craig on bass, and Bill Bramlett—members of the Hoedown house band—was used as the B side of the single. “I got more airplay on that than I did with ‘She’s Mad at Me,’ ” recalled Sewell. “It had a good beat to it.” Lawton Williams played the record on KCUL, and so did the disc jockeys on KTJS in Sewell’s hometown, Hobart, Oklahoma. But sales were feeble, as Willie’s were.
Willie sometimes wondered whether he was moving forward or just running in place. One night, Oliver English, Willie’s guitar player from back on KCNC, ran into him on Exchange Street after he’d played a gig at Pappa Gray’s with two Mexicans named Momolito and Moose. Willie was down. “They don’t understand my music here,” he complained to Oliver.
But his old friend Johnny Bush noticed a change. Billy Walker had told Johnny that Willie was working the Terrace Club in Waco again, so Johnny and his wife drove from San Antonio to hear him. “I heard him sing a couple songs and immediately recognized I was hearing something different,” Johnny said. “He didn’t sound like the singer I had known.” He’d dropped the Lefty Frizzell pretensions and embraced Leon Payne’s freewheeling vocal style. “It was like the first time I heard George Jones sing,” Johnny said. He was knocked out.
W
ITH MARTHA
and the kids staying at her mother’s in Waco, Willie decided Houston, the biggest city in Texas (pop. 932,680), was worth the 19.9 cents a gallon expense to check out the scene he’d sampled with Johnny Bush a few years earlier.
Wide open, the physical layout of “America’s Industrial Frontier” and “World’s Greatest Petro-Chemical Center” was perched at the edge of Galveston Bay, fifty miles from the Gulf of Mexico. Houston’s hot, humid, buggy, and muggy climate was one ingredient in a strange gumbo that also included poverty, cheap guns, stoved-up passion, and redneck sensibilities fermented in alcohol; when cooked together, they fostered Houston’s reputation as Murder City, USA.
Houston was Texas, all right, but in many respects, more Southern than Fort Worth, Abbott, San Antonio, or Waco, even. It was the blackest city in Texas, with African Americans comprising more than a quarter of the population with almost as many Mexicans as San Antonio. Since the end of World War II, Houston had become a magnet for thousands of Cajuns and Creoles from southwest Louisiana and southeastern Texas as well.
Big Houston was big fun, and big business. The galaxy of homegrown country stars included Floyd Tillman, George Jones, Benny Barnes, Smilin’ Jerry Jericho, Claude Gray, Sonny Burns, James O’Gwynn, Link Davis, Ted Daffan, Leon Payne, Leon Pappy Selph, and Eddie Noack. Two significant country music record companies were based in Houston—Starday Records, formed by Pappy Daily and Jack Starnes, which launched the career of George Jones, and Daily’s D Records, created in the wake of Starday’s move to Nashville. While dance halls, honky-tonks, and icehouses were the scene’s underpinnings, its showcases were Houston’s recording studios, especially Bill Quinn’s Gold Star Studio in southeast Houston.
Harry Choates recorded his Cajun classic, “Jole Blon,” at Gold Star. George Jones cut a string of early hits there, beginning with “Why, Baby, Why,” and the Big Bopper did his rock and roll chart topper “Chantilly Lace” at Gold Star. The bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins recorded most of his early material with Quinn, and conductor Leopold Stokowski was bringing in the Houston Symphony Orchestra to take advantage of the studio’s superior acoustics.
“Quinn was always trying to get you a good sound,” said Frankie Miller, who cut his biggest hit, “Blackland Farmer,” at Gold Star Studio. “He wanted to get it right.”
So did Willie Nelson, which is why he went to Houston.
In the spring of 1959, he showed up one afternoon at 11410 Hempstead Highway on the northwest fringe of Houston to check out the Esquire Ballroom, the spacious dance hall owned by Raymond Proske, where the house band led by Larry Butler was rehearsing new material. A waitress informed Larry that a man wanted to talk to him. After rehearsal Larry sat down at a table and drank a beer with the out-of-town musician who wanted to play some songs for Larry. Larry was game. Willie played him four compositions—“Mr. Record Man,” “Crazy,” “Night Life,” and “Funny How Time Slips Away.”
Those are good songs, Larry told him.
“Ten bucks apiece,” Willie said. Larry could have the songs, publishing and everything, for $10 each. He needed the money. Larry leaned across the table. “Don’t do that,” he said. “They’re worth more than ten bucks. If you need money, I’ll loan it to you. You can pay me back by joining my band and working at the club here.”
Larry fronted Willie $50, and Willie became one of Larry Butler’s Sunset Playboys, the house band at the Esquire. Larry went one step further. Musicians worked for union scale in Houston. As bandleader, Larry made $25 a night and the other musicians made $15. When owner Raymond Proske said he couldn’t afford Willie, Larry offered to add him to the band by splitting his leader’s pay with him, as long as he showed up and did his part.
Larry Butler gave Willie hope, letting him showcase his own songs during the band’s sets and closing out the evening with Willie’s original “The Party’s Over.” Frankie Miller, who’d played with Willie at the Cowtown Hoedown, was surprised to run into him at the Esquire, “playing guitar, paying his dues,” when Miller passed through, promoting his single. In addition to working with Larry, Willie was playing gigs with Denny Burke, with Curley Fox and Texas Ruby, the husband-and-wife fiddling-singing duo who brought country music to Houston television, and with anyone who needed a guitarist who could sing and write songs.
The gig at the Esquire and other pickup work convinced Willie that Houston was for him. With Larry Butler’s help, he moved Martha, Lana, young Susie, and baby Billy into a tiny rent house in the shadows of Houston’s oil and chemical refineries clustered around the Houston Ship Channel in Pasadena. He scored a shift at KRCT 650 AM in Pasadena, the Houston-area country music radio station owned by Leroy Gloger; the job didn’t pay much, but he used the airtime to plug upcoming gigs.
Instead of playing for scale as a sideman, which was $12 to $15 a night, he was able to get up to $25 from front men such as Smilin’ Jerry Jericho, for whom Johnny Bush was playing, in exchange for free mentions on the radio. Guitarist Lucky Carlisle frequently called on Willie to play rhythm for him, but he didn’t think Willie’s media status justified a higher salary.
When Lucky called, Willie asked, “What’s the pay?”
“The usual, scale.”
“I don’t like to get out much these days for less than twenty-five,” Willie replied, trying to up the ante.
“I bet you stay home a lot,” Lucky said.
“Come to think of it, you’re right,” Willie said, wrapping up the negotiation. “I’ll be there.”
Paul Buskirk, Willie’s mentor and friend, offered a third job to Willie, which would fit in with his plan to make a living writing, singing, and playing music. Paul had moved from Dallas to Houston to open the Buskirk Music Studios at 108 East Bird in Pasadena while picking up recording session work on the side whenever he could. He thought Willie would make a good guitar teacher. Willie hesitated. He’d taught Sunday school, but he’d never taught music. “C’mon, brother,” Paul Buskirk cajoled, pooh-poohing Willie’s complaint. “Teaching music isn’t hard. Just buy a beginner’s book and teach what you learn from that.” Willie did just that, reading a lesson a night from the Mel Bay book of beginning guitar and the next day imparting what he had learned. “It’s really where Willie learned to play guitar,” said Freddy Powers, Paul’s friend. Between Paul’s teachings and Willie’s book learning, he figured out chords and styling that would have otherwise gone unappreciated.
Willie didn’t know it, but his own songwriting was improving too. Houston was an inspirational setting for some of his best songs. The struggle to provide for Martha and three kids was more of a challenge than ever, but it offered plenty of material for sad songs. The long, lonely commutes on the Hempstead Highway, the Gulf Freeway, and Eastex Freeway provided close to an hour’s worth of quality time to think and create every night. If a lyric came to him, he wouldn’t necessarily write it down until he’d reached his destination. “If I forgot the words,” he would later say, “they weren’t very memorable in the first place.”
The twinkling lights and pungent odors of oil and chemical refineries, paper mills, and factories turned private thoughts into poetry as he reviewed the day, the night, the people he encountered, the family he was trying to support, his wife, the other women who were attracted to him, the slices of life that crossed his mind. The songs flowed like never before. “Night Life,” “Crazy,” “Mr. Record Man,” “I Gotta Get Drunk.”
He showed his stuff to his sister on a visit to Fort Worth. “That’s the first time I remember ever seeing a tape recorder,” Bobbie said. “He had this little tape recorder. On his way up, he had written three songs. He was so excited. One of them was ‘In God’s Eyes,’ one was ‘It’s Not for Me to Understand,’ and one was ‘Family Bible,’ ” the song he’d played for Mae Axton two years before.
His musicianship continued to improve. Paul Buskirk was turning him on to more Django Reinhardt. They discussed singing and vocal styles, agreeing Floyd Tillman was as much of a crooner as Frank Sinatra was. And when Willie found himself behind on bills, Paul bought some of his songs.
Selling songs was nothing new to Willie. Despite his three jobs, he was so broke, he didn’t have a pot to piss in. Finding someone willing to pay for something that he made up was validation in his eyes. If one he sold ever became a hit and made the buyer all the money, there were more where that came from. “I knew my songs were good,” Willie said.
Buskirk paid $100 for the rights to “Night Life” and $50 for “Family Bible.” Willie had been enjoying a beer and barbecue with him in a Pasadena bar when he sang “Family Bible” and told him, “This is one you’ll like. I’ll sell it to you.” Selling a song was more honorable than borrowing money, in his mind.
Buskirk led to a second buyer. Claude Gray was a spindly six foot five honky-tonk singer from Henderson, in East Texas, who worked as a DJ in nearby Kilgore before moving to Houston to sell Plymouths and Dodges for a living after he’d gotten out of the navy. The same year Willie came to Houston, Claude quit selling cars when he scored another disc jockey job at a radio station in Meridian, Mississippi.
Claude returned to Houston, though, for several recording sessions at Bill Quinn’s studio, paid for by D Records and Pappy Daily. Paul Buskirk put together a studio band for Claude and between sessions sent several songs for Claude to consider covering. They were “Night Life,” “The Party’s Over,” and “Family Bible.” Claude knew Willie from the Esquire Ballroom up north of Houston and followed Buskirk’s suggestions by recording them all.
D Records issued 45 rpm singles of Claude Gray singing “My Party’s Over,” slightly changing the song title, and “Family Bible.” Claude Gray paid $100 for a piece of “Family Bible” and another $100 for the musicians and studio time to cut that tune as well as “Night Life,” “The Party’s Over,” and “Leave Alone.” In exchange for the session work, Gray shared ownership of “Family Bible” with Paul Buskirk, who backed up Gray on the recordings, and Walt Breeland, a friend of Paul’s who was a business agent for the Drivers and Helpers Union and an aspiring singer with a Jim Reeves voice, who was looking for songs. Claude signed a napkin, promising to buy “Night Life” if his version was released as a single. “Willie wanted it released,” Claude said. “He would give me half the writer’s [royalties]. But Pappy Daily didn’t think it was country enough.”
Pappy Daily’s D Records was one of the main reasons Willie had come to Houston. He was signed to the label, and if he was closer to the home office, maybe he would get more attention from D Records and Glad Music, the record label and publishing company owned by Pappy Daily.
D Records was the big dog of country music in Houston, a critical piece of the vertically integrated country-music empire Pappy was trying to build out of his H. W. Daily one-stop record wholesaler. With all the elements working, he could take what he learned with his previous label, Starday, and make his new start-up label competitive with any Nashville record label short of Decca and RCA.
Willie’s first single for D Records, the surprisingly upbeat “Man with the Blues,” done honky-tonk style, b/w “The Storm Has Just Begun,” one of the first songs he’d ever written, were released on both D Records and Betty Records in 1959 after the sides were recorded in Fort Worth.
In Houston, Willie managed to do two more sessions for D Records at Bill Quinn’s Gold Star. “What a Way to Live” and “Misery Mansion” were recorded on March 11, 1960, with the backing of Paul Buskirk on guitar, Ozzie Middleton on pedal steel, Dean Reynolds on bass, Al Hagy on drums, and Clyde Brewer and Darold Raley on fiddles. Both songs were head and shoulders above his D sessions in Fort Worth, a reflection of the musicianship behind him, the recording facility, and Willie’s developing talents. He sang the vocal of “What a Way to Live” like a spirited blues, in contrast with the melodramatic sound of the backing band, and tackled “Misery Mansion” like a traditional country beer-rhymes-with-tear weeper. They were fine, though unspectacular, tunes.
A few weeks later, Willie and Paul Buskirk, Al Hagy, and Dean Reynolds returned to Gold Star, along with pianist Bob Whitford, steel guitarist Herb Remington, and vibraphonist-saxophonist Dick Shannon, to do two more originals. Something had happened between the two sessions.
“Rainy Day Blues” was a classic Texas shuffle, a popular dance rhythm that had been played with equal exuberance by white country players and black rhythm and blues artists since the 1930s. The music, projected over sad honky-tonk lyrics, showed Willie had chops as a guitarist.
“Night Life” was from another realm. Mature, deep, and thoughtful, the slow, yearning blues had been put together in his head during long drives across Houston. At Gold Star, he was surrounded by musicians who could articulate his musical thoughts. He sang the words with confident phrasing that had never been heard on any previous recording he’d done. Paul Buskirk’s and Willie’s guitar leads were straight out of the T-Bone Walker playbook, while Dick Shannon’s bluesy saxophone was pure Texas tenor, with his vibe work adding subtle jazz atmospherics. If not for Herb Remington’s low-note hokum on his steel guitar and his Hawaiian flourishes, the song could have passed for race music. No matter what style the music was or how personally Willie sang it, the lyrics were a commentary just about anyone could relate to:
When the evenin’ sun goes down
You will find me hangin’ ’round
Oh, the night life, it ain’t no good life
But it’s my life . . .
Life is just another scene
In this old world of broken dreams
Oh, the night life, it ain’t no good life
But it’s my life.
“It was a level above what we had been doing,” Willie said of the session.
Pappy Daily hated the song. He refused to release the song as the A-side of a single because it was neither country nor commercial as far as he was concerned. If Willie wanted to write blues, he should be doing it for Don Robey over at Duke-Peacock Records, the nigger music company down on Erastus Street in the bloody Fifth Ward of Houston.
