Willie Read Online Free Page B

papers. It was already getting hot. I found myself sweating on stage, and not only because of the heat. I had begun to realize that a crowd of 80,000 was a crazy prediction for a blazing 100-plus-degree day outhere on this shadeless prairie at Carl’s Corner. You would have to be a lunatic to fight the traffic of the predicted mob to Carl’s Corner on such a blistering day, no matter that we had loaded the show with Kris Kristofferson, Roger Miller, Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, Billy Joe Shaver, Don Cherry, Stevie Ray Vaughn and the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Rattlesnake Annie, Bruce Hornsby, Jackie King, Joe Ely, Joe Walsh, Eric Johnson, and had a hell of a show scheduled.
    I heard a mellow, husky voice crooning behind me. The voice was singing gibberish—“the old church . . . the bells . . . the yellow house on the corner . . . oh I am fucked . . .”
    Don Cherry was pacing back and forth at the rear of the stage, rubbing his hands together. Besides being a good, stylish singer, Don is a scratch golfer who used to play on the pro tour—two qualities that I admire above most others.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” I said.
    Don stared at me with blue eyes that showed intense concern, like maybe a contact lens had gone crooked.
    â€œOh, shit, Will,” he said.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?”
    â€œDo you know the lyrics to ‘Green Green Grass of Home’?”
    I thought about it for a moment. I could hear the melody in my head, but the words didn’t come.
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œI’ve been driving up and down the highway for two hours trying to remember that fucking song. I must have sung it five thousand times in nightclubs. I could walk on stage in Vegas right now, and ‘Green Green Grass of Home’ would burst out of my throat, I couldn’t stop it. But now it’s gone. I can’t remember the fucking words.”
    â€œSing something else,” I said.
    â€œAre you crazy? That’s what I open with.”
    I left Don huddling onstage with Bee Spears, Mickey Raphael, Grady Martin, and Poodie Locke—stalwarts of my band and crew—all of them singing at the same time, working on the words to “Green Green Grass of Home.”
    At 10 A.M . my band and I kicked off the show to a couple of hundred folks camped below the stage with folding chairs, umbrellas, and coolers. I recognized many of them, people I had seen at my outdoor shows in Texas for twenty years, aging hippies like me with earrings and tattoos and hair under the women’s armpits. Theydanced and waved their hands. A big Viking woman in a green undershirt pulled out two breasts the size of volleyballs and bounced them in her palms while her biker old man screamed with toothless joy.
    I introduced Don Cherry at 10:30 in the morning. Looking cool, loaded with big-time nightclub aplomb, Don snapped his fingers and swung into “Green Green Grass of Home.” He sang that song as good as anybody could sing it, like he was headlining the song to a sellout crowd at a star hotel on the Strip in Las Vegas.
    The aging hippies listened with a sort of bemused curiosity. When Don gave it his show-biz finish, they sat and looked at him like he was a Hottentot. The crowd—if you could call it that—clapped politely and began to yell “Let’s boogie!”
    Instead Don sang them a patriotic song about what this country means to him and every true American within hearing. This time the people cheered and whistled when he finished with his arms outlifted and his head held high. Pro that he is, Don bowed and fled the stage while they were still whistling—we call it getting out of Dodge.
    â€œFuck it,” he said as he passed me on the steps. “Which way is the airport?”
    By the middle of the afternoon the temperature was 103. The wind had started blowing hard enough to flap the banners on the stage so they