Going back to brilliant basics

Willie Nelson's early recordings were often ruined by misguided producers. But now, an album of early demos reveals a whole new side to the singer-songwriter's genius, says Andy Gill

The most rewarding aspect of the current roots-music boom has been the resurgence of interest in seminal country-music figures such as Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams, with repackaged compilations of back-catalogue material allowing fans to track their artistic development as never before. One of the more remarkable of these is the recently released anthology of Willie Nelson's earliest recordings, made for a Nashville publishing company at the start of the 1960s. Crazy: The Demo Sessions offers a fascinating portrait of a towering talent on the verge of recognition – though it would be another dozen years, and about the same number of albums, before that talent would be heard in its natural, unspoilt setting, without the corny window-dressing of strings, horns and backing vocalists favoured by Sixties producers.

Roughly half of the album's 18 tracks feature Willie on his own. On the rest, he was backed by a tight little band of guitarists Pete Wade and Ray Edenton, pianist Hargus "Pig" Robbins, bassist Bob Moore, drummer Willie Ackerman and pedal steel guitarist Jimmy Day, ensuring that quality remained high despite a demanding schedule that would often see as many as 15 songs recorded in one three-hour session.

"In my mind, I was recording masters, you know," says Nelson. "I wasn't trying to cut demos, I was just trying to get the best sound that I could with the musicians that we had there. And we had some good ones."

The demos were unearthed by Steve Fishell, for many years the pedal steel guitarist in Emmylou Harris's Hot Band, but more recently the driving force behind the roots-music label Sugar Hill. Hunting material for his new label a couple of years ago, Fishell combed through the song catalogue of Sony/ATV/Tree Publishing in Nashville, and was intrigued to find a dozen Willie Nelson songs on the list. "I called Mark Rothbaum, Willie's manager, and he admitted they didn't know what was in Sony/ATV/Tree's vaults, and would I like to go through them? Would I!" Fishell was eventually given three DAT tapes containing around 100 tracks, many of which had never appeared on record before.

"It was obvious they were all demos," says Fishell. "These were stripped-down, evocative and compelling, the type of thing you don't hear often. I was familiar with Willie's masters from the early Sixties, and it's interesting to compare these demos with his early albums on Liberty and RCA from that period, when his Nashville producers guided him towards the prevailing 'countrypolitan' sound of the era. They didn't know what to make of Willie – they were so taken aback by his offhand phrasing, and his singing behind the beat; it was so uncharacteristic of the times that they just poured on the strings. "When I heard these demos, I realised how much determination Willie had. He had it all together when he came to Nashville, and it took 15 years for the world to catch up. It's extraordinary that he didn't cash in his chips and go home."

Back in Texas, Willie had played in rowdy honky-tonk bars andreleased a few singles with no great success. But he also managed to sell a couple of songs, "Family Bible" and "Nite Life", for a few hundred dollars, and decided to head to Nashville to seek fame and fortune as a songwriter. Once there, he began hanging out at a bar called Tootsie's Orchid Lounge.

"It was the place where all the pickers met," explains Willie. "The Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium was across the alley, so it was a natural hang-out." Stars from the Opry shows often nipped over to Tootsie's for a snifter between sets, and the bar developed a reputation as a good place for new singers to get discovered.

Hank Cochran, another songwriter trying to establish himself in the industry, recognised Willie's talent. He took him along to Pamper Publishing, with whom he had signed on as a staff songwriter at $50 (£32) a week, with a further $50 raise in the pipeline. Hank urged the company head, Hal Smith, to sign Nelson too, but Pamper pleaded poverty. "So Hank said, 'Give Willie my raise'," says Willie. "So they gave me his $50-a-week raise that he was gonna get." This generosity was the foundation of a firm friendship that endures to this day.

Pamper's cramped writers' offices inspired Nelson's first success, "Hello Walls", which he wrote there in just 10 minutes. It was recorded by Faron Young, to whom the penurious songwriter offered the rights for $500 (£316). To his credit, Young refused, loaning Willie the $500 instead. Soon after, the song lodged itself at No 1 on the country chart for nine straight weeks, ensuring that Nelson's first royalty cheque was for $20,000 (£12,600). When it arrived, he drove to Tootsie's, found Faron at the bar, and kissed him on the mouth.

The demo for "Hello Walls" isn't on this new compilation, but the original versions of several of Nelson's most famous songs are, including "Half A Man", "The Local Memory", "I Gotta Get Drunk" and the immortal "Crazy". Now indelibly associated with Patsy Cline, "Crazy" was apparently only recorded by her at the behest of the producer Owen Bradley. Patsy's reluctance may have been the result of her first exposure to the song, which was pitched to her by her husband Charlie Dick in the middle of the night following a boozing session with Willie – who sensibly stayed outside in the car while Charlie confronted his wife.

"Yeah, I didn't wanna go in," affirms Willie. "I'd never met Patsy, but I knew what my wife would have said if we'd come sailin' in drunk at one o'clock in the morning and said, 'Hey, here's a songwriter, we've got a song for ya!' Later, I came to find out she understood Charlie, so it wasn't the first time he'd come in at one o'clock, I guess!"