So, here we are, another year and, not so much another Willie Nelson album, but another Willie Nelson tribute album, seeing him paying respect to another of his old buddies. This time, following discs dedicated to Ray Price, Harlan Howard and Rodney Crowell (astonishingly only six months since the Crowell set!), we have Merle Haggard in the frame.
Of course, the problem for a site like this, is that when Willie loves a song–and he loves a lot of ’em–he sings ’em again and again and again. A cover lover has to be on their guard and make sure that any earlier rendition, by or including him, wasn’t the first outing ever for that song. All but one of these songs have been covered previously by Nelson, frequently alongside Haggard, but my research suggests they had all had their original recording un-Willied, so to speak, all coming from Haggard alone, usually with his band, the Strangers.
Haggard and Nelson had history together, dating at least as far back to the early ’70s, each bit players on the Nevada Casino circuit. Haggard, four years younger, after an early life plagued by insolvency and petty larceny, had hardened his ambition to become a country singer. It was hearing Johnny Cash sing “Folsom Prison Blues,” as a twenty-year-old inmate in San Quentin, that lit his fuse. Nelson, who had already quit Nashville disappointment, was seeking alternative routes to satisfy his muse, with the two bonding and becoming part of the eventual “Outlaw Country” movement. Over the years they frequently appeared together, bolstered by a set of four shared duet albums, between 1983 and 2015, the last only a year before Haggard’s death.
Here the recordings have taken shape over the space of several years, between the myriad other projects that Nelson has forever on the boil. As such there are other old friends to respect; this record contains the last recordings of Nelson’s sister Bobbie and longtime drummer Paul English, who died in 2022 and 2020, respectively. The rest of the musicians are all also familiars of what Nelson calls the Family Band, producing the by now familiar mix of loving looseness, all helmed here by Mickey Raphael’s production, his harmonica a warm presence throughout.
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