Today, April 29, 2023, is the day that one of my all all-time favorite performers begins his tenth decade on the planet, I’m reposting a piece from exactly two years ago, and looking forward to seeing the man himself in concert this upcoming August. Ain’t it funny (how time slips away)?
Happy 88th birthday to one of my perennial favorites, the one-and-only (other) red-headed stranger in my life, Willie Nelson.
May your career last another 65+ years, and may you continue to compose instant classics for yourself and others to sing:
And the song that always has the same effect on me as the La Marseillaise scene in Casablanca. It’s a relic of my youth, and of the fact that the other person involved departed this earth decades ago:
Happy Birthday, Willie. Thanks for Never. Giving. In. All the way up to your 108th (I think), original and most recent album, released earlier this year.
A song (also from a recent album) which you didn’t write, but which perfectly expresses your oeuvre:
Do you have a favorite “Willie Nelson” moment? (I know my sister does. Perhaps she’ll reveal it here.)
PS: Yes, time slips away, regardless, or irregardless at the case may be, of what we think should be its natural progression. You may think you’re immortal. But you’re not. Love someone? Tell them. Hug them. Don’t let them get away (which they have a regrettable tendency to do, either under their own steam or through the influence of others). Life’s too short to waste affection, whomever we’re inclined to lavish it on, and no matter how deserving, or undeserving of it that person may be. So don’t waste it. Mean it. At the end of the day, the most important thing that can be said of us is that we love–and that we were loved. Nothing else really matters:
2023 Update: The album mentioned above is no longer Willie’s most current offering. That would be “I Don’t Know a Thing About Love”, released in March, 2023. It’s a compilation of the songs of Harlan Howard, the man who gave Nelson his first shot as a songwriter, all those years ago.
I’ve always been fond of “Streets of Baltimore” (which Howard co-wrote with Tompall Glaser, and which I first came across as a duet between those seriously star-crossed lovers of the 1970s, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.)
https://youtu.be/J6L3ncp9-CU
This one, I didn’t know. Harlan Howard and Willie Nelson meet Edgar Allan Poe in the “Beautiful Annabel Lee.”
https://youtu.be/GdnATw6oNdE
Just wonderful.