Appreciation …

… Willie Nelson, Interpreter of the Great American Songbook. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

It should be noted that these songs weren’t just old chestnuts picked for a theme album. These were tunes Willie had grown up with. As a child in Abbott, he heard the full spectrum of American popular song from his household’s Philco radio, which could pick up faraway stations. Night after night, he listened and learned. He heard Armstrong and Ellington out of WLS, in Chicago. He enjoyed the more countrified sounds of KWKH, in Shreveport (the station that later helped launch Elvis to fame). In 1943, when Willie was only ten, he was already admiring Sinatra, who performed on CBS Radio’s Your Hit Parade and impressed the youngster with his phrasing. In his teen years he listened to XERF, a powerhouse station operating by its own rules across the border in Mexico, that played everything from gospel to hillbilly tunes. Along the way, Willie also picked up jazz style points frobm a range of other performers, people like Crosby and Django Reinhardt.