Illegal Foreign Object

Willie Nelson is one of country music history’s most empathic, vulnerable songwriters, penning classics like “Hello Walls” and “Crazy” throughout a career that has spanned parts of eight decades. His ability to tap into the emotion of a song — Willie, a living, breathing, weathered sackcloth through which the music of others is strained into magic — also makes him the perfect conduit to showcase the talents of others.

Nowhere is this better proven than with “Always On My Mind”. It’s a quintessential Willie song, but Nelson wasn’t even the first person to record it, much less the songwriter. Wayne Carson, who also penned the Box Tops smash “The Letter”, wrote the song in a Memphis recording studio after a fight with his wife.

Wayne called his Mrs. back home in Missouri to tell her the already late-running recording sessions would run even longer, at which point he said his wife kicked up a stink over feeling forgotten. Something clicked when he told her she was “always on [his] mind”. “It just struck me like someone had hit me with a hammer,” he told the LA Times. “I told her real fast I had to hang up because I had to put that into a song.”

Years later, during the Pancho & Lefty sessions, writer/producer Chips Moman and sessions player Bobby Emmons suggested the song to Willie and Merle Haggard. Merle wasn’t keen on the track, but something about it struck Willie. “‘Always On My Mind,’ bowled me over the moment I heard it, which is one of the ways I pick songs to record,” Nelson said in his 1988 autobiography, Willie. “There are beautifully sad songs that bowl me over… haunting melodies you can’t get out of your mind, with lines that really stick.” When the Pancho & Lefty sessions finished, Willie booked extra time in Moman’s Nashville studio and recorded the song.

The album Always On My Mind was released in February of 1982. It went to #1 on the Billboard Country Music charts and #2 on the Billboard 200, selling more than four million albums in the United States. Songs like the Chips Moman/Dan Penn-written “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” and the Gary P. Nunn/Donna Farar song “Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning” became staples of Willie’s live shows.

Willie also covered Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade Of Pale” and Simon & Garfunkle’s “Bridge Over Trouble Water” on Always On My Mind. In both instances, he makes the song his own. Full disclosure: Willie’s cover of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” is the only version I can tolerate. Waylon Jennings’ guest vocal on “Whiter Shade Of Pale” is welcome and perfect. His tone and approach were different than Willie’s, but their pairing always yielded authentic beauty. The oft-covered “Let It Be Me” was also recorded for the album. Everyone from Sonny & Cher to Tom Jones to the Everly Brothers released versions of the song — Willie’s the only one that taps into the emotional release of the lyric.

Overproduction became a real issue in Nashville during the early-’80s. Much of the blame can be placed at the feet of the movie Urban Cowboy. When country music went pop, it permanently lost its way. On Always On My Mind, Willie deftly walks the line between “classic” country and what was at the time an increased focus on layering recordings with too many backing vocals, strings, and whatever else a producer could cram into the tracks. Always On My Mind proved to be Willie’s highwater mark as a solo artist during the decade — on subsequent releases, Willie would get too caught up in the synthesized sounds of the mid-to-late eighties, robbing listeners of his voice’s haunting campfire crackle.

Track List:

1. Do Right Woman, Do Right Man 8/10
2. Always On My Mind 10/10
3. A Whiter Shade Of Pale 8/10
4. Let It Be Me 8/10
5. Staring Each Other Down 8/10
6. Bridge Over Troubled Water 5/10
7. Old Fords And A Natural Stone 8/10
8. Permanently Lonely 7/10
9. Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning 8/10
10. The Party’s Over 10/10

Grade: 80