Willie Nelson has grown to be a legend in the music industry, but when I first knew of him, he was the guy who came down the road a bit from his hometown of Abbott, Tx about 30 miles north of Waco. He often played in little dives in a tiny area between Waco and Belmead, which was known as "No Man's Land" because it was not incorporated as a municipality and had no local police force giving rise to a slough of cinder-block clubs/joints playing blues and country music and doing lord knows what else. The husks are still there as many of the artists, both blues and country, who played there are cherished names in music. It was said, "You can get anything you want there." At that time in the 50's & 60's, Willie was billed as "Little Willie Nelson" no doubt because of his diminutive stature, not his song writing talent, for which he was known at the time, and I saw his name on the marque several times that way just driving by to get to the BBQ joints in the area.
Sad to say, my crowd in high school at the time shied away from country music in deference to the newer teenage stuff although could not help being inundated with it in our Texas location. For that reason, and we were too young for the rowdy dives of No Man's Land anyway, I never saw Willie live then. I've enjoyed him live several times since though. He can be great and he can be poor (especially when he lapses into that annoying way he sometimes has of talking the lyrics instead of singing them), but he is bigger than life without question. Who would have ever dreamed that nasally voice would be such a hit?
It was interesting to note that on the 1962 video he was not appearing with the ubiquitous beat-up guitar with the holes chewed in it and the raggedy tone matching his raggedy voice he is never seen without on stage the last umpteen years. The thing had to have come from J.C. Penny.
On edit:
Looks like I was wrong on the pedigree of Willie's guitar, "Trigger." It is a Martin...and how he gets such a frail tone out of a Martin must be a story untold...
http://www.celebstoner.com/news/cele...uitar-trigger/
More edit: here's a better history of "Trigger" and its impact on Willie's music. Willie's story of where he got the guitar seems to change from time to time, but he's getting "up there," so maybe he is mixing up his facts like us seniors tend to do, then again, the first cite is from a stoner magazine and maybe Willie was sampling his own product while giving the interview —
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/vi...igger-20150211
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Originally Posted by Dave Grubb
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