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Crazy: The Demo Sessions

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This collection of Nelson's earliest Nashville demo recordings shows just how advanced his songwriting and performing abilities had become by the time he made it to Music City. They also show very plainly why a full-on artistic collision awaited him at Liberty and RCA. These unadorned demo sessions (the first eight feature mostly Nelson and his acoustic guitar, the remaining tracks find Nelson backed by a talented and twangy collection of Nashville studio pickers) are full of Nelson's intelligent songwriting and idiosyncratic phrasing, demonstrating the difference between what Nelson wanted to say and what Nashville wanted to hear. These demos are like a snapshot taken seconds before the straightjacket was fitted on him at Liberty and the straps tightened down at RCA.

Many of these songs provided material for Nelson's early albums, including "Three Days," "Undo the Right" and "Darkness of the Face of the Earth" (re-recorded for Nelson's 1962 Liberty debut "And Then I Wrote"), "Are You Sure" (re-recorded for Nelson's 1965 RCA debut, "Country Willie - His Own Songs"), and "Opportunity to Cry," "Permanently Lonely" and "Something to Think About" (re-recorded in a live setting for 1966's "Live Country Music Concert"). Several provided material for then-contemporary artists such as Ray Price and Timi Yuro ("Are You Sure"), Faron Young ("Things to Remember" "A Moment Isn't Very Long"), and of course Patsy Cline ("Crazy").

This latter demo, of the iconic "Crazy," is among the album's most interesting. Nelson's phrasing, highly influenced by Sinatra and other crooners, gives hints of the style in which Cline (and her producer, Owen Bradley) would cut her most famous recording. At the same time, Nelson's own style must also be listened through to hear the hit. Comparing the demo to Cline's finished product is a valuable lesson in what each of songwriter, singer and producer add to a hit record.

Even more fascinating is how much these demos reflect the sound that Nelson would eventually record once he'd broken free of Nashville's conventions. "The Local Memory" would turn up on Nelson's 1973 debut for Atlantic, "Shotgun Willie." "Opportunity to Cry" was re-recorded with Merle Haggard for 1982's "Pancho & Lefty," and "Darkness on the Face of the Earth" was featured on Nelson's 1998 release, "Teatro." Nelson's earliest catalog of songs has also provided material for contemporary artists, with recent takes of these songs by k.d. lang and Waylon Jennings ("Three Days"), Tracy Byrd and Wade Hayes ("Undo the Right"), and George Jones ("I Gotta Get Drunk").

Sugar Hill's collection includes an unlisted sixteenth bonus track that itself includes three more songs, a video interview with songwriter Hank Cochran, informative historical liner notes by Steve Fishell, and song-by-song annotations. The mono sound is clean and compelling, and more than half of these tracks have never before been issued commercially.

These tracks are a major find in the history of a major artist -- a must-have for any Willie Nelson fan.

Texas "outlaw" singer Willie Nelson has long had an uneasy relationship with Nashville. He first made his mark as a songwriter, providing Patsy Cline with her smash hit, "Crazy", and country crooner Ray Price with the immortal boozer's ballad, "Night Life." As a performer in his own right, though, Nelson's solo career was years in coming -- his now-familiar paper-thin voice and odd, off-beat phrasing were square pegs that round-hole record producers were loathe to take on. These early demo sessions, made between 1960-66, when Nelson was still fresh-faced and eager to please, were made for a publishing house rather than a record label, and lay largely forgotten until 1994, when a faintly-marked reel-to-reel tape was unearthed in a dusty vault somewhere in Music City. They reveal Willie at his rawest and most earnest, and at his darkest and most downcast. Tweaking country music's standard formulas, Nelson gave the characters in his songs more to sing about than just losing a girl and getting drunk: they also became mean drunks, hardcore lost causes who contemplated either murder or suicide, often in the same teary sentence. Some of the demos are just sketches of the songs to come, others are haunting versions of songs that would soften and smooth out over the years. It's all a treasure trove for Nelson fans: well worth picking up!

This album is a revelation to me. I've always liked Willie Nelson, but the writing and performances on this collection of stripped down demos has convinced me of his genius. The cuts are so genuine and intimate that it feels like evesdropping. By the way, if you end up loving this album as much as I do, try Roseanne Cash's 10 Song Demo---it's as authentic, stripped down and immediate as the Willie Album.

One of the problems for someone who likes Willie Nelson is knowing which albums to get and which to avoid. He has, over the years, issued an absolutely staggering number of albums, and although he is one of the seminal performers of his age, most of these are forgettable. CRAZY: THE DEMO SESSIONS is, however, one of his very finest albums. That these are demos hardly diminishes their value. Interestingly, these were not demos recorded for the purpose of getting Willie a recording contract, as was the case with most demos. Instead, they were recorded as part of Willie's stint as an inhouse songwriter for Ray Price and Hal Smith's publishing house. The point was to allow prospective performers to hear rough versions of the songs. One such performer, Patsy Cline, was able to hear Willie's new song "Crazy," and history, as they say, was made.

Demos work better with Willie Nelson better than many other performers, partly because he later would embrace a minimalist approach to performing. On many of these songs we hear only Willie and his guitar, anticipating the sound of RED HEADED STRANGER in the seventies. Even on the earliest of the recordings he sounds pretty much as he does today, already singing in his distinctive style, in which he tends to come in slightly behind each note, which is highly unusual in country music.

Many of these songs are familiar. "I Gotta Get Drunk" and "Crazy" are, of course, classics. But virtually all of the songs are superb. I especially loved the stripped down version of "Are You Sure," which was used to such great effect at the end of one episode of LOST in its first season.

I heartily encourage the collecting of Willie Nelson albums, but I especially encourage selective collecting. I would recommend this as a part of any collection of Willie's essential recordings. My own such list would also include RED HEADED STRANGER, STARDUST, NITE LIFE, GREATEST HITS (AND SOME THAT WILL BE), THE ESSENTIAL WILLIE NELSON, PHASES AND STAGES, and YESTERDAY'S WINE.

From the first few seconds of "Opportunity to Cry," a lonesome meditation half-sung, half-spoken in Willie Nelson's distinctive style and accompanied merely by plunking chords from a nylon-stringed guitar, you know exactly what to expect from Crazy: The Demo Sessions.

Many songs on this new collection of 1960s demos were staples of the Nashville Sound, the movement in country music that took the rough barroom beat of honkytonk and turned it into something more slick and urban. Though Nashville was kind to Nelson as a songwriter -- many of these songs, recorded by the likes of Patsy Cline and Faron Young, became hits -- it was tough on him as an artist. Nelson's own recordings of his songs were butchered in production by Nashvilleans (Nashvillains?) who thought his vocals too odd to sell records unless they were covered up with violins, horns, and background vocals. Only after the rise of the 1970s Outlaw movement did Nelson find a recording style that suited him.

Thanks to Sugar Hill, we now have these recently remastered tracks to vindicate Nelson's early career as a recording artist. Crazy is split into sections: the first features Nelson accompanied only by his guitar. The soft rumble of the nylon strings (Willie is still about the only country artist who plays a classical guitar) and Nelson's faintly gruff croon go together famously, and even a casual listen proves the influence of more than just country music on Nelson's style. As the liner notes remind us, the conversational style of the vocal phrasing owes more to Frank Sinatra than to anyone else.

The other half of the album features Nelson with a group of musicians from Ray Price's top-notch backing band. The rhythms are not the steady string-rich shuffles of Price's uptown honkytonk, though, but the wandering strolls we associate with the red-headed stranger. There is a nice balance between sparse and overdone; the steel guitar is less virtuoso than simple complement to the melody. Here we find the earliest Nelson version of the title track of this album, the song that became Patsy Cline's career hallmark.

Some of these songs are simply too short, however. They really were not recorded for commercial release; their only purpose was to solidify the shape of the song's sound. Four of these tracks clock in at a minute and fifteen seconds or less, several others at less than two minutes, making this set too choppy to give it coherency and flow.

Sugar Hill might have placed these less complete songs at the end; instead, we get unnecessarily hidden tracks and a video interview of Nelson's fellow songwriter Hank Cochran. (Why not have Willie himself talking about his early career?) But what Sugar Hill lacks in packaging sensibility it makes up for by the very act of releasing these songs at all. Altogether, this release provides a fitting prologue to Nelson's Outlaw coming of age.

Matt Patterson
Junkmedia.org Review

An amazing piece of recorded history. Willie  well past his last nickel  goes for broke on these recorded demos in hopes to peddle his wares to Patsy Cline and the like. The hunger and desperation are palpable in failed-relationship-as-apocalypse classics such as Ive Just Destroyed the World and Darkness on the Face of the Earth. But you can also hear the artistry of a man who studied Frank Sinatra for timing and could coin a country phrase with the best of em. Still, this stuff is so haunted that its a wonder anyone heard the hit potential behind all the pain. For those who think Johnny Cashs recent cover of Nine Inch Nails is as low as ay man ought to sink, try Opportunity to Cry or Permanently Lonely, the best broken heart revenge song ever written.

. . . about Willie's reputation as a songwriter, check this out. In addition to the title song, "Opportunity to Cry," "Permanently Lonely," "Darkness on the Face of the Earth," and "Half a Man (hidden track)" are all magnificently written. And I know that you can get all of those songs in other versions on other Willie CDs, but here, you get them stripped down, sometimes with no accompaniment but Willie's guitar. The result is that you are forced to focus on the songs, and you begin to see what makes them truly great. In other words, it doesn't take Patsy Cline's beautiful voice surrounded by Owen Bradley's production values to see (or hear) that "Crazy" is a great, great song.

This is an important discovery of the early stages of one of America's greatest songwriters.

Some of these demos have come out on assorted reissues over the years, but Sugar Hill's 2003 collection Crazy: The Demo Sessions is the first comprehensive collection of the publishing demo's that Willie Nelson cut for Pamper Music.
Some of his earliest recordings have been criticized for awkward, string-laden country-pop arrangements - and in some cases is certainly valid. This album serves as a counterpoint to those polished recordings, since these publishing demos are spare and unadorned, all recorded in one take. The first eight songs are Nelson alone with a guitar and occasionally a harmony vocalist, and these songs sound like precursors to Red Headed Stranger in their intimate directness. The remaining seven feature Nelson backed by a band, which follows his lead and turns in loose, warm performances that follow his trademark delivery. (There are also three other unlisted songs added as an unlisted bonus on the 16th track 'I'm Still Here'.)
What makes this such a wonderful, even essential release, is that these performances are as good as anything Nelson ever cut, and are endlessly listenable not for historical reasons, but for pure musical enjoyment.
I love this Album and although it's probably only for dedicated Willie Nelson fans there's plenty of us out there.

Crazy - The Demo Session is a rare find. About half the CD is Willy with his guitar. The Crazy cut was purportedly the one used to "sell" the song to Patsy Cline. I found the fidelity and quality very good and there is an added bonus of three additional cuts not listed on the CD. I could tell you what they are, but then it wouldn't be a secret. I cannot imagine any fan of Willy Nelson's early music not being thrilled with this CD.

I love these songs on this set. They are just bare and let you see Willie on his own without any added frill. The "Gotta Get Drunk" song gets me rocking and the others are just great versions of his tunes. Check it out!