The Only Man Willie Nelson Ever Called “the Greatest Musician, Singer, Writer, and Entertainer” Will Surprise You. ML
Over his 92 years on Earth, Willie Nelson has seen a talented musician or two in his time.
The country legend and recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee has been an elder statesman of music for just about as long as popular music, period. Both were kick-started in the 1950s. Nelson has played with rock, soul, and even hip-hop artists. He has found artists to be impressed with in each of those fields.
It’s often the stars who break free from genre and stand out on their own that he admires the most. As he said of the best lyric that he’s ever heard, “I think the best song I’ve ever heard, especially a country song, is ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’. It’s a Hank Williams song. One verse in particular, I think, is the greatest line that I’ve ever heard.”
He then cited the following: “The silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky, and as I wonder where you are, I’m so lonesome I could cry.” However, there is one star who sustained that stunning, genre-less encapsulation of Americana throughout his career, and Nelson placed him above any other.
That would be pianist Leon Russell. “The greatest musician, singer, writer, and entertainer that I have ever seen or heard is Leon Russell,” Nelson shared in his 2012 book Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die: Musings from the Road.
Adding, “We are still great friends and have a double album of songs that we recorded, called Together Again, coming out next year.” The album was subsequently shelved, but Nelson had nothing but kind things to say about Russell. He was both a numen and a man of the people, a hero and a humble co-star.
“I first saw Leon in Albuquerque, New Mexico,” Nelson writes. “There were twenty thousand people on their feet yelling and screaming for the whole show. He and I stayed up all night the night before the show drinking and smoking. At sunrise we went onstage and started playing. It was the greatest sight I had ever seen.”
“There were thousands of people walking toward the venue through a cow pasture, carrying everything from beer coolers to sleeping bags. They came to stay a while,” Nelson added about the auspicious event. “There were hippies and rednecks, young and old coming together for the first time to hear the same thing. The magic was the music. It touched all kinds of people, and the world has not been the same since.”
“I remember he had the crowd in such a frenzy that at one moment he stopped and said, ‘Remember where you are right now, and remember that right now you would believe anything I would say. So be careful who you would let lead you to this place,’” Nelson remembered. “Then he threw his cowboy hat into the audience, and the crowd went crazy, which is when I stole the idea of throwing hats into the audience.”
It’s that sort of charm that endeared him as a full-threat beyond his talent. “I booked Leon for the first Fourth of July picnic in Dripping Springs, Texas. I thought if it worked in Alburquerque and it worked in Woodstock, it could work here; it did,” Nelson concluded. “Thank you, Leon, and thank you, Woodstock, for showing me how to do it.” Perhaps he wouldn’t have been the same musician without that incident.
