Willie Nelson must be thinking more than usual lately about meeting his maker. That thread runs through the lyrics in several of his songs.
It is not surprising that the prospect of dying pops into the mind of the colorful country music icon every so often. He has lived hard for most of his 87 years.
There is no gloom and doom in Willie’s messages. He is just flippant and whimsical in his references to death.
In the song Last Man Standing, Willie wrote, “It’s gettin’ hard to watch my pals check out. Cuts like a wore out knife. One thing I learned about running the road, is forever don’t apply to life.”
Then he names some of the pals. “Waylon and Ray and Merle and old Norro, lived just as fast as me. I still got a lotta good friends left, and I wonder who the next will be.”
The references are to superstar friends Waylon Jennings, Ray Price and Merle Haggard and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member Norro Wilson.
Willie sums up his feelings in the chorus, “I don’t wanna be the last man standing. On second thought, maybe I do.”
Other songs Willie wrote and recorded in the past few years have touched on death. Like the frivolous number, Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die. No explanation is necessary.
Then there was his song I Woke Up Still Not Dead Again Today. The lyrics go, “I woke up still not dead again today. The news said I was gone, to my dismay. Don’t bury me, I’ve got a show to play. And I woke up still not dead again today.”
I thought of Willie’s unorthodox songs recently when a friend gave me a list of outrageous titles to country songs.
Some of them are well known and became big hits. Like the Roy Clark classic, Thank God and Greyhound She’s Gone, and Jerry Reed’s She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft.
Mel Tillis did a tune called How Come Your Dog Don’t Bite Nobody But Me, and John Denver sang You Done Stomped on My Heart and Mashed That Sucker Flat.
Syndicated columnist Lewis Grizzard wrote a book with about the same title as the John Denver song. I don’t know which one came out first.
Jimmy Swaggart’s unruly cousin Jerry Lee Lewis from Ferriday sold a lot of records with What Made Milwaukee Famous Made a Loser Out of Me.
Old time country music legend Little Jimmy Dickens was in Natchitoches years ago to sing at a political rally for former sheriff Norm Fletcher. He did his big hit, May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose.
Nearly all the songs Roger Miller performed were offbeat, like My Uncle Used to Love Me But She Died and You Can’t Roller Skate in a Buffalo Herd. A popular Statler Brothers song was You Can’t Have Your Kate and Edith Too.
Whispering Bill Anderson sang When You Leave Walk Out Backwards So I’ll Think You’re Walking In.
Billy Ray Cyrus did I’m So Miserable Without You It’s Almost Like You’re Here, and Jimmy Buffett sings, If the Phone Don’t Ring, You’ll Know It’s Me.
Some of those titles cut to the bone, as Willie Nelson said, “like a wore out knife.”
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES