Willie Nelson continues to, if not dominate, at least figure large on these pages, certainly the most prolific nonagenarian we have ever featured. Hot on the heels of Amy Irving’s quirky take on a number of Wilson and Wilson associated standards, Always Will Be, the maestro himself is turning out a tribute of his own. With form here, a lot of form, Wilson has taken to interspersing his own new material with offerings dedicated to old friends along the way, both living and dead. Harlan Howard was one recent recipient, but it is the turn now for Rodney Crowell to get some love, in a set of 12 by and large deeper cuts, occasionally songs written or made successful by others, rather than from his own not infrequent chart forays.
Crowell is no dusty memory either, still active and still performing, writing songs and singing ’em. After all, at 74, he is a mere strip of a lad compared to his grizzled interpreter. Over a 50-year career, starting off as second guitar and occasional songwriter for Emmylou Harris, he has winkled his way to the top of the pile, largely courtesy his writing. Although he kicked off his solo career in 1977, it was other folk who kept bread on his table, until hitting pay dirt with 1988’s Diamonds and Dirt and the five consecutive country #1’s it begat. But don’t look for those here, as they aren’t included. Neither is his arguably best known, and certainly most covered song, “‘Til I Gain Control Again,” initially a hit for Emmylou. Why not that last? Well, probably because Willie’s done it before, on a number of occasions, at that.
The album open with one of the only two co-writes, 1992’s “What Kind of Love,” a song, in Crowell’s own version, which certainly channeled the style of one of the other writers, a certain Roy Orbison (who never recorded it himself). Wilson messes little with the template, if emphasizing the innate country feel of the song, courtesy Bobby Terry’s steel. Wilson applies his own signature, his voice simultaneously frail yet urgent, the singer adding characteristic acoustic twangs from Trigger, his trusty aged guitar. The same sense of world weary experience seeps through “Banks of the Old Bandera,” originally a hit for Jerry Jeff Walker, himself a recipient of an earlier Nelson tribute album. It is a gloriously yearning version, Trigger again to the fore.
“The Fly Boy and the Kid” is one of three selections from 2014’s Tarpaper Sky. A clip clop song of wishing future wellness, in the vein of Dylan’s “Forever Young,” here it is little more than copied. You could argue he does little more for “40 Miles from Nowhere,” but that perhaps misses the point; it the voice and the off-kilter phrasing that makes Nelson the icon he justly is. It is also worth noting his delivery is pertinently stronger than on his last couple of releases, and that, by sticking, by and large, with his usual crew of musicians, there is an in-built given that, even if this is facsimile, it is bloody good facsimile. The keyboards, piano for this, of Moose Brown deserve a deliberate mention.
Another from Tarpaper Baby, “I Wouldn’t Be Me Without You,” follows. It’s a song that begs to have been covered by Johnny Cash, even if it never was. Nelson can’t imitate Cash, but he can do Willie, drawling his way inimitably through the lyric, with no small appeal and another hefty dose of Trigger. Possibly to Nelson’s advantage, Crowell only belatedly covered “Making Memories of Us,” on an acoustic solo retrospective set, the version by Keith Urban being far better known. It is that version, if not the first, by Tracy Byrd, that Nelson follows, but his voice easily rises above Urban’s bland vocalization. There is also the first overt appearance of Micky Raphael and his glacial harmonica, enough to seal any song into superior status.
The title track cheats a little, employing the old Nelson trick of inviting back the songwriter to appear, as a guest, on their own song. Not Crowell’s greatest song, it relies rather too much on the lift from “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in the harmonica intro. Even Raphael can do little with or to that, and it remains not amongst Crowell’s finest, the sentimentality a little too saccharine. Better, a little, is “Open Season on My Heart,” giving Nelson the choice between evening the Tim McGraw version and the one Crowell included on his album with Emmylou, “Old Yellow Heart.” I guess the outcome is a bit of mix and match, diluting the piano heft of the latter version.
Bob Seger was the first to pick up on “Shame on the Moon,” but Crowell did his own version first. Sparse acoustic rockabilly in his own iteration, Seger actually drew out a bluegrass flavor. This is one of the few songs where the arrangement is new. Sure, the melody and meter is untouched, but it becomes a minor masterpiece, the backing from Terry, Brown and Raphael consummate. The bass and drums come from Glenn Worf and Fred Eltringham, with extra guitar from James Mitchell. To do this, you need a sound producer, and Buddy Cannon gives just that touch.
“She’s Back in Town” is the most recent song here, from Crowell’s time-limited digital-only release, Songs from Quarantine, Volume 1, a charity compilation of songs he coerced his buddies to contribute to, during Covid. It is a slightly throwaway rocker, a genre within which Crowell is at his weakest. Nelson restores a sense of gravitas to the otherwise triteness of it, it becoming a spritely country blues. It is followed by one of my personal Crowell favorites, the knowing “Still Learning How To Fly.” Nelson strips it back a little, with pedal steel replacing the dobro of Jerry Douglas, in that version. I confess I hadn’t heard previously the “original” and first version, by the Cicadas, a onetime side project of Crowell, but it sounds Nelson had.
Closing with the second co-write, with Guy Clark, “Stuff That Works,” and one that it easy to imagine the burly Texan singing. In fact he did, a year later than Crowell, on his Dublin Blues album, in 1995. Nelson pitches it midway, with the rhythm of Crowell but the wry pitch of Clark, topped by a crown of steely glory from Terry.
Do we need yet another Nelson album? On the basis of Oh What a Beautiful World, the answer is a definite yes. If his last handful have begun to smack of shutting down his legacy, this one slaps any such thought in the face, suggesting that it is playing and performance that is keeping him alive. To which we can only add, and kicking!
Oh What a Beautiful World tracklisting:
1. What Kind of Love (Rodney Crowell cover)
2. Banks of the Old Bandera (Jerry Jeff walker cover)
3. The Fly Boy and the Kid (Rodney Crowell cover)
4. Forty Miles From Nowhere (Rodney Crowell cover)
5. I Wouldn’t Be Me Without You (Rodney Crowell cover)
6. Making Memories of Us (Tracy Byrd cover)
7. Oh What a Beautiful World (Rodney Crowell cover)
8. Open Season on My Heart (Tim McGraw cover)
9. Shame on the Moon (Rodney Crowell cover)
10. She’s Back In Town (Rodney Crowell cover)
11. Still Learning How To Fly (The Cicadas cover)
12. Stuff That Works (Rodney Crowell cover)
