A Few Nelson Classics Hidden on His Debut, ‘Country Willie’

Willie Nelson’s debut album, 1965’s “Country Willie--His Own Songs,”has just been re-released in CD--and it may well be one of those cases of an album cover being more illuminating than the music itself.

Even though Nelson had already written hits for such pop-country stars as Patsy Cline (“Crazy”), Ray Price (“Night Life”) and Faron Young (“Hello Walls”) by the time the album was released, RCA Records’ powerful Nashville division had trouble convincing radio programmers to play Nelson’s album. The problem: His vocal style leaned more toward a precise, almost jazzy sophistication than the rural, honky-tonk tradition favored by country radio at the time.

Hoping to overcome that resistance, the label emphasized Nelson’s country roots by dressing him up in overalls in the debut album cover photo.

The liner notes continued the same theme by describing him as a “farming songwriter-singer” who raises hogs, cattle and chickens on a 100-acre farm outside Nashville.

The hard sell didn’t work.

Nelson had some commercial success later with his RCA albums, but it wasn’t until he gave up on Nashville and returned home to Texas in the early ‘70s and recorded the breakthrough “Red Headed Stranger” collection for Columbia Records that he became a superstar in the field.

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*** Willie Nelson’s “Country Willie--His Own Songs” (Buddha/RCA). Nelson attracted so much attention in Nashville as a songwriter that it’s no wonder RCA saw the potential in him as a recording artist.

Chet Atkins, the celebrated Nashville guitarist who headed RCA’s country division, produced the debut album, but even his prestigious stamp of approval wasn’t enough to win over skeptical radio programmers.

“Country Willie” contains two Nelson classics--”Night Life” and “Funny How Time Slips Away”--plus several other tunes that have become popular pieces in his repertoire, including “One Day at a Time” and “Healing Hands of Time.”

In retrospect, the blame for Nelson’s early lack of success shouldn’t rest solely with the radio programmers. There is a stiffness to the arrangements on the album that marked most of his RCA albums.

Nelson had his own ideas about recording and they often clashed with the RCA powers. In 1971, he recorded “Yesterday’s Wine,” a marvelous concept album about a man watching his own funeral and reflecting on his life. The album didn’t make the charts, but it is considered a classic today by Nelson fans.

“I think it is one of my best albums,” Nelson wrote in “Willie,” a 1988 autobiography, “but [it] was regarded by RCA as way too spooky and far out to waste promotion money on.”

The label’s reaction underscored Nelson’s continuing frustration. “My band would fill a Texas dance hall. We were stars in Texas,” he wrote. “But in Nashville, I was looked upon as a loser singer. They wouldn’t let me record with my own band. They would cover me up with horns and strings. It was depressing.”

The feel of Nelson’s recordings improved when he left RCA in the early ‘70s for Atlantic Records (where he recorded the excellent “Phases & Stages” album in 1974) and then on to Columbia Records, where he enjoyed his greatest success.

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*** Johnny Horton’s “Honky Tonky Man: The Essential Johnny Horton 1956-1960” (Columbia/Legacy). If you only know this late country singer through such ‘60s “saga” novelties as “North to Alaska” and “Sink the Bismark,” it might seem odd to hear him described by some Music City Row veterans as a valuable link between country’s honky-tonk and rockabilly traditions.

But you certainly hear the connection between Hank Williams honky-tonk and Johnny Cash rockabilly in the first half of this two-disc retrospective. It’s a reference point that was subsequently echoed in the music of Dwight Yoakam and producer-guitarist Pete Anderson. Yoakam’s first Top 10 country hit was a remake of Horton’s “Honky Tonk Man.”

There are several invigorating tracks on Disc 1, including “I’m Coming Home” and “Honky-Tonk Hardwood Floor,” but the music loses much of its character on Disc 2, which is dominated by the novelty hits. Horton, a Los Angeles native, was 35 when he died in a 1960 car crash.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), to four stars (excellent).