It's a Long Story

1

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MUSIC IN THE BLOOD. MUSIC in the house and music in the fields. Music in the air, in the songs sung by the birds flying through the clear blue Texas sky, in the sound of the wind and the thundering rain. Music in the heart of my father, a fine fiddler, and my mother, a beautiful singer, who gave birth first to my sister, Bobbie, a wonder child of music, before two years later giving birth to me.

Mother was Myrle, three-quarters Cherokee Indian, who'd traveled down from dirt-poor Arkansas with Ira, my father, who had followed his father, Alfred, and his mother, Nancy, to Abbott, Texas, where the land was dark and fertile and the farmland offered a degree of hope.

When I came into this world on April 29, 1933, hope was a sparse commodity. The Great Depression had hit the homeland hard. As an adult, I realized that I had grown up in rural Texas during one of the worst periods in American economic history. But that was something I learned out of books. What I learned out of life was something entirely different. What I learned was love. Like music, love was everywhere I looked and everything I felt. Fact is, I equated music with love, 'cause to hear or play or sing a song put me in a loving mood.

Myrle and Ira married when they were sixteen. They divorced when I was six months old. Other than giving life to me and Bobbie, I don't think they were ever meant to be together.

Myrle was a Greenhaw, a big family spread out between Arkansas and Tennessee that included a number of moonshiners and musicians. My mother had a wild side, no doubt, and an exotic allure that had Texans believing she was Mexican and Oklahomans believing she was Indian. She was a card dealer, a dancer, a waitress, a woman who sought adventure and the open road.

Ira's people, being from the Ozarks, grew up among the Irish and English who carried with them the tradition of Old Country storytelling, folk singing, and fiddling. More than a fiddler, though, my father was a first-rate mechanic. In fact, his main gig turned out to be chief mechanic for Frank Kent Ford Company in Fort Worth. He had a lot less wanderlust than Mom and was happy to fiddle around the honky-tonks along the highways and byways of north central Texas.

You'd think the absence of a mother and father would cause little kids like me and Bobbie all sorts of emotional damage. Well, I'm here to say that it didn't. It didn't because my grandparents—whom we called Mama and Daddy Nelson—took over. They were unflinchingly responsible. In addition to watching over me and Bobbie, they took in my older cousin Mildred. They devoted their lives to our care. Hell, in my case, they spoiled me rotten.

So there I was, in the middle of the Depression in the farmland of Hill County, Texas, in this tiny town of Abbott, population somewhere around four hundred, seventy miles south of Dallas and thirty miles north of Waco. Closest towns were West, population three thousand, six miles to the south, and Hillsboro, population eight thousand, twelve miles to the north.

You might say that I was born in the middle of nowhere, but I feel that I was born in the middle of everywhere. I was born in the middle of what I look back on as a musical miracle. I call it a miracle because so many different kinds of music were coming at me strong and sweet. My heart was being filled up by melodies, just as my body was excited by rhythms—maybe the rhythms that got my father and my mother to run off into the night, rhythms that would soon have me running in a hundred different directions. But mainly the music kept me home because home—the home of Mama and Daddy Nelson—was where the music was strongest. That's where the music was not only played and sung, but where it was taught.

I'm thankful for being born in the heart of Texas in the care of loving grandparents who were also dedicated music teachers. I'm grateful and amazed when I think about the passion these two people had for music. They passed that passion on to me and Bobbie and let us know that there was nothing more beautiful in this world than to make music.

Bobbie became accomplished at an early age. I lagged behind—and remain so to this day. Bobbie is a musician in the true sense of being able to play with great facility in any style. She learned to read beautifully and was known far and around Hill County as a genuine piano prodigy.

That had a lot to do with my grandparents ordering music books that came all the way from Chicago. The method of symbolization was called "shape notes"—"do re mi fa so la ti" each had its own configuration. Many churches used this method to help the whole congregation sing along. Mama and Daddy Nelson were principally church musicians.

Our church was the Abbott United Methodist, but there were also the Baptist, Catholic, and Church of Christ congregations, all right close to each other. Maybe there were differing opinions among the church members about which one had the true line to God, but I'll be damned if I remember a single day of disagreements among the Christians in Abbott. We all went about our religious business in our own way.

There was love in our little church. That love was first expressed to me by the Women's Missionary Society, which decided, when I was only six months old, to christen me and make me a lifetime member. That meant God had told them that this child was going to be a missionary. Well, I did find a mission early in life. It was a musical mission, born in that Methodist church. If you look broadly at what it means to be a missionary, at least as I look at it, I'm reasonably sure their prophecy proved true.

I was a believer as a kid, just as I am a believer as a man. I've never doubted the genius of Christ's moral message or the truth of the miracles he performed. I see his presence on earth and resurrection as perfect man as a moment that altered human history, guiding us in the direction of healing love. As I've gotten older, I've augmented my belief in Jesus with other philosophies that complement his. The basis of my faith, though, was formed in that little country church where we sang hymns about "amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me," and "just as I am, without one plea, but thy blood was shed for me," and "in the garden where he walks with me and he talks with me and tells me I am his own."

I didn't know that those hymns had been written in earlier centuries in foreign lands. To me, they were as new and fresh as the corn and cotton growing in the fields just outside church. These songs grew out of the rich fertile faith that was the sum and substance of Mama and Daddy Nelson. With Bobbie playing her little heart out on piano, church was, for me, both a joy and the source of a musical expression that has lasted a lifetime.

Church, however, did not calm my restless and rambunctious soul.

Mama Nelson had to tether toddler Willie to a pole in the yard to keep him from wandering off. Don't know where I'd have gone if I could have, but I had the itch early on—the itch to look beyond the bend in the road.

The Methodist church preached that straight is the gate. Liquor and smoking were seen as first-class tickets to hell, and while I heard those exhortations, even as a small child I never absorbed fear of the fiery pit. I can't remember being afraid of venturing beyond that straight gate. My natural curiosity overwhelmed my religious piety.

My first foray out of the tiny world of Abbott into the larger world of Texas was a six-mile bike ride to West, where there was a large community of Czechs. They spoke in different accents, attended the Catholic church, and had nothing against drinking beer. I was fascinated by the presence of these people who had crossed a great ocean and somehow wound up in Hill County.

I was fascinated by the very fact of being alive—that my heart beat to the rhythm of life under the sun of the huge Texas sky, that my eyes took in the amazing sights of cotton gins and horse-drawn plows and far-off fields scorched brown under the summer heat or blooming green grass in the early days of spring.

My eyes were even more amazed by what I saw on the screen of the Best Movie Theater in West—an even wider world whose heroes were more than mere men in white hats who shot straight and caught the bad guys. They were men who cradled guitars in their arms and sang the stars down from the heavens. They moved through the world serenading away the sinister side of life. Even though they were macho men who feared no rustler, they sang sweetly, effortlessly, and proudly. I saw that a cowboy hero is a romantic lover of life with a song on his lips, a funny sidekick close by, and a beloved horse on whose back he rides the trails of life.

First viewed in the small movie theaters of West and Hillsboro, Texas, the Western became an early and beautiful obsession. The Western was all about daring and danger. Up on the big screen, these fearless cowboys were my first heroes. Their moral lessons, like the lessons of the Methodist church, were clear. You live life based on loyalty. You stay on the right side. You protect your own. And when the going gets rough and the day grows dark, you pick up your guitar and soothe your soul by singing the pain away.

Their songs—eternal anthems like "Happy Trails to You" and "Back in the Saddle Again"—weren't sung in church, but they entered my soul and informed my heart with the impact of the holy hymns taught by Mama Nelson. They were all about the great adventure. Early on, I yearned for a great adventure of my own.

Years later I learned that these songs, whether written by Gene Autry or tunesmiths out in Hollywood, signaled the start of a category called country western music.

Like most every little boy in the America of the late thirties, I wanted to be a cowboy, whether Wild Bill Elliott, Lash LaRue, Eddie Dean, Whip Wilson, or Hopalong Cassidy. But how can you be a cowboy without a horse? And living in a one-horse town like Abbott, that can be a problem. Fact is, Abbott was a no-horse town 'cause the only steed belonged to Mr. Harvel, who lived two miles outside town.

On a sunny day in summer, I'd walk out to his place and ask if I could take a little ride.

"Sure thing, little Willie," he'd say. "Just don't go too far."

Sitting on top of that old nag, I pretended to be Tex Ritter riding the plains of Wyoming until a friend spotted me and called out, "Hey, Willie. You look like you 'bout to fall off that thing."

"Not gonna happen," I said. And it never did. Been a comfortable rider all my life.

From an early age, I was also comfortable writing poems. I liked stringing words together and telling little stories. I liked the fun of rhyming, the easy flow of expressing my feelings.

Mama and Daddy Nelson were big on proper speech. In addition to giving us music lessons, they taught us elocution. And though Bobbie and I were essentially shy country kids, they encouraged us to perform before the public, especially when the appearance was part of a religious event.

The seminal event happened when I was four or five. My grandparents had given me a poem to read in front of a gala outdoor tabernacle meeting in Brooking, Texas. The day was part revival, part picnic. You'd eat, you'd pray, you'd hear some preaching, you'd do some singing. This went on all afternoon. Mama Nelson had dressed me up in an all-white sailor suit. The outfit brought me pride, but the idea of reciting a poem in front of this huge audience gave me jitters. Just before I was set to go on, I started picking my nose. I was nervous and didn't realize how deeply I had dug into my skin. When I hit the stage, red blood was pouring all over my white suit. Right then and there, I ditched the poem and improvised a new one on the spot.

That's how I got the nickname Booger Red.

What kind of kid was Booger Red?

I was scrappy. I was physical. I played all the sports. I loved to compete. Winning was important. Winning felt good. I wouldn't call myself a sore loser, but I did all I could to avoid defeat.

And even though I'd get into fights now and then, I got along with everyone. I had a naturally easygoing nature.

Felt natural, for instance, to be living across the street from a Mexican family. We accepted them and they accepted us. Our Mexican neighbors worked out in the fields right alongside us. Before I was old enough to pull my own cotton sack, I'd ride on Mama Nelson's sack while she picked cotton. I loved that puffy white landscape of cotton plants bursting with blossoms. I also loved listening to the black workers making music of their own. They weren't singing songs of complaint. They were singing songs of hope driven by a steady beat and flavored with thick harmonies made up on the spot. I couldn't help but sing along. These were songs that praised the Lord.

So once again I got the notion that God was everywhere. Even in the midst of backbreaking labor, God was inspiring his children to sweeten the air with melodies of joy. The field workers knew that they were being exploited with tiny pay for heavy labor. And yet they sang. They used music to turn their mood from dark to light. Music was offered up to the sky. Whether they were picking cotton, baling hay, or shucking corn, music was part of the work. As music expressed the pain, it eased the pain.

For a young kid to absorb that idea was both a heavy and heart-lifting experience.

Wherever you go, take music with you.

Music never has to stop.

Let the music keep coming through you.

Keep singing and playing and telling your story—no matter how happy or sad—through music.

Music will protect you.

Music will keep you going.

Music surrounded me, and rhythm was everywhere, too. Daddy Nelson was a blacksmith. His work fascinated me. I hung out in his shop every day and acted like his little assistant. I loved watching him take the metal from the fire before hammering the horseshoe into shape. I didn't really have the strength to handle the anvil myself, so he'd put his hand on mine and together we'd start pounding.

"You're strong, little Willie," he'd assure me, "and getting stronger every day."

Daddy Nelson was enormously strong himself, a heavyset man who wielded the heavy tools in his blacksmith shed like they were toys. I saw him as the strongest man in the world. On those occasions when I disobeyed him by running down the road and not returning till dinnertime, he'd spank me, but the spanking was never severe. It wasn't in the man's nature to hurt me. But when he did, he'd say, "If you don't obey, son, we'll never trust you." Hearing those words hurt me—and, at least for a while, I stopped running off.

Might sound corny, but the truth is we were dirt-poor in material possessions but rich in love. Along with our garden and animals, love was our sustenance. I had calves and hogs. These were creatures that I fed and raised. I remember when one baby calf was so small I could stand him on my chest. That thrilled my heart. I spent hours watching the hogs sloshing around their pen. I saw that they had their own kind of keen intelligence. I saw that animals, like people, responded to love.