Willie Nelson
For the Good Times: A Tribute to Ray Price

Another Willie Nelson album. A tribute album. Once again. Another one, after those released as a tribute to Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Cindy Walker, and at the beginning of this year 2016, to George Gershwin, 'Summertime: Willie Nelson Sings Gershwin'.

I know. In general, there are a lot of people who absolutely do not consider tribute albums. Even Bob Dylan was recently heavily criticized because of his two homage albums to Frank Sinatra. Personally, I don't have a well-defined opinion in this sense, I certainly think that always being oppositional is crap. I have great respect for Willie Nelson and know very little about Ray Price, so why not listen to this album and maybe, besides enjoying something good, in some way 'learn' something.

Ray Price was born in Texas and grew up between the countryside and the city of Dallas. Once grown, he studied veterinary medicine and took part in World War II. This happened before he started writing his songs. From the forties, he began to become very popular. He moved to Nashville, lived for a short period with Hank Williams, and then formed his own band, the Cherokee Cowboys, which for a period included Willie Nelson himself. He was one of the first to in a sense legitimize honky tonk music, creating his own very personal style, experimenting and innovating his sound by singing slow ballads using 'seductive' arrangements and the contribution of choirs and second voices. Ultimately, his contribution was decisive for the birth of the so-called 'Nashville Sound'.

Ray released his last album ('Last of Breed', Long Highway Records') in 2007 with his old friends Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. He was recognized by everyone as an innovator and a point of reference in the world of country music. He died in December 2013. Willie Nelson recently stated about him that, 'Ray was the best friend one could have. We traveled together, lived together, celebrated together... We shared a lot of good times.'

Here is Willie Nelson. Like his old adventure companion, he has been and is a reference point in the world of music, especially in the United States of America, and - not only - he is also certainly what has been considered since the 1950s a reference point for what is the culture of the entire country. Willie Nelson is a kind of icon. This applies as much to the country genre, which for Willie Nelson has always meant a kind of hybrid between jazz, popular folk culture, blues, and rock'n'roll, but it also applies to all those who live and have been or are devoted to the cult of hippie culture, the myth of Nashville. All things that make Willie Nelson one of the most influential musicians and songwriters in the history of American musical tradition.

It is then impossible to talk about Willie Nelson without also contextualizing him within the culture and history of American civil society. Known for his activism at all levels, with Neil Young and John Mellencamp in 1985, he organized Farm Aid to bring attention and assist the reality of small farmers in the USA. Willie Nelson is historically pacifist and against the war but at the same time, he is also what one might call a patriot: he participated directly in 'America: A Tribute for Heroes', a huge event organized after the September 11 attacks, but at the same time has historically expressed doubts about the attacks and the 'official' versions and condemned the attacks against Afghanistan and Iraq. A supporter of the Democratic Party, and a personal friend of Bernie Sanders for a long time, he recently declared that despite everything, before he dies, he wouldn't mind seeing a woman elected president of the United States of America. A long-time supporter of same-sex marriage and in favor of reforming the laws on the consumption of so-called 'soft drugs', in 2015 at the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, he announced his entry into the marijuana business.

In any case, how could he ever title an album dedicated to a dear friend like Ray Price, if not, 'For the Good Times'. Released last September 16 on Legacy Recordings and produced by Fred Foster and Bergen White and with the presence of Vince Gill, a contemporary country singer and songwriter, as well as a multi-instrumentalist, much appreciated and known in the US, the album is clearly based on what is a true mixture of honk tonk culture and 'countrypolitan'. Accompanied on several tracks ('Heartaches by the Number', 'I'll Be There (If You Ever Want Me)', 'City Lights', 'Don't You Ever Get Tired of Me', 'Crazy Arms', Invitation to the Blues') by The Time Jumpers, a swing group formed in 1998 in Nashville, Tennessee, the album obviously revisits those that were great successes interpreted by Ray Price and songs (twelve in total) that written and interpreted over the years by different authors constitute today a true heritage for American music.

Among these, inevitably, there are also songs written directly by Willie Nelson, such as 'It Always Will Be' and 'Night Life' (written with Paul Buslirk and Walt Breeland). Others are written and composed by authors of the caliber of Hank Cochran ('Make the World Go Away', 'Don't You Ever Get Tired of Me'), Roger Miller, Bill Anderson, Bob Wills, Johnny Lee Wills, and clearly Kris Kristofferson with 'For the Good Times', which gives the title to the album and somehow also summarizes in itself the tribute Willie wanted to give to his old friend. But we can also consider this album in a different way and thus not only as a tribute to Ray Price, but precisely for its contents also 'historical', as something that has an important meaning for the country genre and culture and in general for a certain subculture of the United States of America. A subculture that has always existed and that in some way has always been against the so-called established power, yet without for this having similarities with what could be off-parliamentary groups and parties of our country or other European experiences of the kind. An album that still comes out practically just before the presidential elections in the USA (which will be held next November 8) and that will see on one side the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, already First Lady and the woman that Willie hopes becomes the first female president of the country, and the entrepreneur and Republican candidate, the famous Donald John Trump, president of the 'Trump Organization', who at this moment appears to be the favorite (also due to some weaknesses of the opposing candidate) and a figure that I personally consider absolutely unacceptable and not only to hold such an important office and be the president of what probably is still the most powerful nation in the world. A racist and an intolerant person, a wealthy entrepreneur with boundless financial power and a lot of scandals and who in Italy, it is easy to compare to Silvio Berlusconi, the man who for twenty years held in his hands the fate of our country.

But I do not want to delve too deeply into political themes. In any case, I think that for an Italian it is often difficult to see differences between Democrats and Republicans. According to many, the two parties would in fact coincide and would in any case serve the interests of the so-called elite class. Understandably, we have a history and a culture and especially as regards politics, that are very distant from the United States of America, but a history that in some way today is heading in a direction that wants to 'collide' or anyway demands to coincide with the American reality and where inevitably we too are called to have to see and consider differences between political alignments that are far from what our history has 'taught' us. There was a time when for many left-wing Italians, there was a time in Italy if you were left-wing, you were communist and where many of these saw the United States as the enemy. Before the end of the Cold War, I think it was easier in a way to see the world in black and white and define what was right and what wrong. I am a man of my times and what I can make is only a consideration of the facts and think that in the end, 'The more things change, the more they stay the same.' I am not sure that everything has necessarily changed or anyway that today is worse than yesterday. In my opinion, we live in a generally more aware society for example. But that is not the point. What perhaps many miss is that in this context there are always choices to be made and very often to do so we must grasp what we might call true 'nuances'. Apparently, we live in a world devoid of ideals to fight for, they say, and where it is now impossible to dream of living in a better world and a more egalitarian system. A world where it is consequently easier to feel completely alone because of all these things and the absence of points of reference, but this thing is wrong, because, wherever you want to stand, there are a lot of things and causes, small or large, that are still important and that deserve to be faced and discussed and that for this reason invite us once again to come together and compare and discuss. Talking about civil rights is, according to many, nonsense. Things that for many are of little importance, like marriage between same-sex couples and civil unions, even a 'nonsense' like reform on the use of marijuana and soft drugs, all these things actually involve and directly interest a lot of people and in many cases can determine their existence. These may be your causes or your problems, or not, but living in a social system inevitably calls you to take sides and pay attention to what at this point it becomes surely fallacious to define as simple nuances. Willie certainly never considered them such. Today he is eighty-three years old and still always the same son of a gun. According to many, some musicians, but not only, when they reach a certain age should retire, disappear from the scenes, get out of the way, but as far as I am concerned, it is precisely them who must go and screw themselves. Willie Nelson is old, this is evident, and he has lived a long life and a lot of experiences and has a lot of interesting stories to tell. As I said, at the same time, he is a kind of icon and represents a piece of history of the United States of America, a piece of history that he has sung and continues to sing in his songs. Or alternatively singing those of others. When you get old, you lose a lot of friends, that's the way life goes, but you can remember them. You can record an album to commemorate the time you spent together and at the same time prove that you still have something to say.