{"id":8601,"date":"2020-04-17T13:35:27","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T13:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/terenceblacker.com\/New\/terence-new\/?p=8601"},"modified":"2021-03-19T13:40:07","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T13:40:07","slug":"friday-song-willie-nelson-red-headed-stranger-carl-stutz-edith-calisch-1954","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terenceblacker.com\/New\/friday-song-willie-nelson-red-headed-stranger-carl-stutz-edith-calisch-1954\/","title":{"rendered":"FRIDAY SONG: Willie Nelson, RED HEADED STRANGER (Carl Stutz \u2013 Edith Calisch, 1954)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just now and then, as you\u2019re growing up, an album comes along that shakes and re-orders your musical landscape like an earthquake. For me, as for many others,\u00a0Highway 61\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0had that effect, as did the Beatles\u2019\u00a0White Album\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The Paul Simon Songbook<\/em>.\u00a0 Less obviously, there was\u00a0The Band<\/em>\u00a0and Davey Graham\u2019s\u00a0Folk, Blues and Beyond.<\/em><\/p>\n

A bit later, Willie Nelson\u2019s strange and haunting album\u00a0The Red Headed Stranger<\/em>\u00a0came along, sending me westward-ho with a new love of country music.<\/p>\n

I had, from the Everly Brothers onwards, enjoyed the country sound, but this was different. It was spare, personal. The fancy production and rhinestone glitter. There was no trace of a pedal-steel guitar or even backing vocals.<\/p>\n

There was just musical story-telling of mesmeric quality.<\/p>\n

The Red Headed Stranger<\/em>\u00a0was, I suppose, a concept album, but in 1975, when it was released, that term had become a bit embarrassing.. Concept albums were inevitably pretentious, over-long, over-produced , self-indulgent. It was a time when pop was getting too big for its boots.<\/p>\n

This album is the very opposite of that.<\/p>\n

\"\"It has a quiet, stories-round-the-campfire feel to it. The songs weave around a tale of betrayal, murder, guilt and loneliness. Each track is brief, sparely produced and simply played. The\u00a0astonishing song\u00a0 \u2018Time of the Preacher<\/a>\u2018, which, opening with six bell-like chords,\u00a0 sets the scene at the start of the album , then returns throughout, sometimes sung, sometimes as an instrumental:<\/p>\n

\u2018It was the time of the preacher<\/em>
\nWhen the story began<\/em>
\nWith the choice of a lady<\/em>
\nAnd the love of a man<\/em>
\nHow he loved her so dearly<\/em>
\nHe went out of his mind<\/em>
\nWhen she left him for someone<\/em>
\nThat she\u2019d left behind<\/em><\/p>\n

He cried like a baby<\/em>
\nHe screamed like a panther<\/em>
\nIn the middle of the night<\/em>
\nAnd he saddled his pony<\/em>
\nHe went for a ride<\/em>
\nIt was the time of the preacher<\/em>
\nIn the year of \u201901<\/em>
\nNow the preachin\u2019 is over<\/em>
\nAnd the lesson\u2019s begun.\u2019<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Looking back, I can now see why I couldn\u2019t stop playing that album. Miraculously, Willie Nelson had pulled together elements of which have particular appeal to me: the story of a lonely outsider, the pared-back production, the vocal style, the easy way Willie plays his Spanish guitar, like a conversation in counterpoint to what is being sung.<\/p>\n

And he brought in some great old songs that he remembered from his days as DJ. There\u2019s\u00a0\u2018Down Yonder\u2019<\/a>\u00a0from 1921,\u00a0 his arrangement of \u2018Sobra las Olas<\/a>\u2018, a Mexican waltz from 1888, now called \u2018O\u2019er the Waves\u2019. Country hits from 1940s \u2013\u00a0 \u2018Remember Me\u2019<\/a>\u00a0(1940),\u00a0\u00a0\u2018I Couldn\u2019t Believe It Was True\u2019<\/a>\u00a0( 1947) and, most memorably, Fred Rose\u2019s\u00a0\u2018Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain<\/a>\u00a0(1947).<\/p>\n

If you listen to the originals of those songs\u00a0 (follow the links) and then Willie\u2019s versions, you begin to see what an extraordinary act of musical transformation\u00a0 he achieves throughout the album.\u00a0 Covering decades of different styles of music, they all belong together.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strange fact that, although Willie is perhaps the greatest writer of country songs we\u2019ve seen, only two and a half songs on this album came from his pen.<\/p>\n

The half, incidentally, is \u2018Blue Rock Montana<\/a>\u2018, which, before it morphs into \u2018Red-Headed Stranger\u2019, tells the story of the murder at the heart of the story.<\/p>\n

\u2018He found them that evening in a tavern in the town<\/p>\n

In a quiet little out-of-the-way place.<\/p>\n

And they smiled at each other when he walked through the door<\/p>\n

And they died with the smiles on their faces.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Another oddity. As\u00a0this article in Wide Open Country<\/a>\u00a0explains, the album was the result of Willie Nelson stepping off the Nashville treadmill to develop his own sound.<\/p>\n

Most artists, given a free rein by their recording companies, would go big. Willie went small, assembling a few musicians and recording songs he know from the past, some of which he sang as lullabies to his children.<\/p>\n

It was only because the contract with Columbia gave him artistic control that the record was made and released.<\/p>\n

\u2018Nothing about this record yodels \u201ccommercial smash.\u201d It flew in the face of current country practices, and many CBS execs fought not to put it out, claiming it sounded like a half-baked demo that no one would buy. \u201cThey thought I\u2019d gone insane because there wasn\u2019t that much there,\u201d says Nelson of the now infamous board meetings. \u201cI think Waylon Jennings shamed them into putting it out.\u201d\u2018<\/em><\/p>\n

Since his contract stipulated complete creative control, no changes were made to the tapes .\u2019<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It has been fascinating researching around the album \u2013 I particularly recommend this\u00a0brilliant 2017 essay by Rebecca Bengal<\/a>\u00a0in pitchfork.com. The album needs to be listened to as a whole,\u00a0 but the title track, written by the husband-and-wife team of Chuck Stutz and Edith Calisch in 1954, is a good way into it. Here, yet again, Willie Nelson takes a pretty bog-standard\u00a0 song and turns it into something mythic and dreamlike, a tale of loneliness and wandering, of not belonging and freedom.<\/p>\n

For me, this is Willie Nelson at his best. The album, which became a surprise hit and was listed among the\u00a0Rolling Stone Magazine<\/em>\u2018s top albums of all time, is a testament to what can happen when a songwriter \u2013 at least this songwriter\u00a0 \u2013 is liberated from\u00a0what Joni Mitchell once called \u2018the star machinery behind the popular song\u2019<\/a>\u00a0and is allowed to follow his own musical star.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0lyrics<\/a>\u00a0, finally, contain some of my favourite lines from a cowboy song:<\/p>\n

\u2018The yellow-haired lady was buried at sunset,<\/em>
\nThe stranger went free, of course<\/em>
\nFor you can\u2019t hang a man for killin\u2019 a woman<\/em>
\nWho\u2019s tryin\u2019 to steal your horse.\u2019<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ah, those were the days\u2026<\/p>\n