Free Willie Nelson by Joe Nick Patoski Page A

and all duties required—signing on in the morning, playing records, reading the news, entertaining the folks at home, keeping logs, selling advertising time, recording commercials and announcements, whatever was called for. The Parkers quickly determined that signing on the station at sunrise was Willie’s weak hand. “My parents would get up and wait to hear the signal come on,” said Charlotte Ramsey, the Parkers’ daughter. Too often they were greeted by silence. Willie was a slow riser, usually because he’d been out the night before singing and playing. The Parkers liked him so much they moved him to a later shift.
    Pleasanton was close enough for Willie to listen to Aaron Allan on WOAI, the 50,000-watt station in San Antonio that carried the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights, Charlie Walker on KMAC, Stan Cox on KONO, and the on-air talents who performed live, like Red River Dave, the Singing Cowboy, on WOAI, Big Bill Lister on KABC, and Adolph Hofner on KTSA. Charlie Walker was a role model. An engaging, charismatic radio host whose folksy speaking manner was said to have been influenced by his habit of dipping snuff, Walker was also a performer who recorded for Decca, eventually recording the Texas two-step classic “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down.” Charlie Walker worked radio, ballrooms, and recording studios with equal panache. He befriended Willie and they used their microphones to tease one another on the air.
    Willie wanted to be like him and like Aaron Allan—a performer, not just a disc jockey playing the performer’s song. “I can write better songs than the ones I’m playing on the radio,” he would complain to Manuel Davila, who hosted the conjunto radio show in Spanish, which aired for two hours before Willie came back on the air to sign off the station at sunset. “Then do it,” Davila would tell him.
    Taking advantage of the electronic equipment around him, he made a recording of two of his songs in his spare time and sent the tape to Charlie Fitch, the owner of Sarg Records in Luling, who’d put out the recordings he did with Dave Isbell and the Mission City Playboys. Willie recorded on an old tape that Dr. Parker had used to record stock reports on, and in an eager, convincing voice made his pitch:
    “Hello, Sarg, you probably don’t remember me. My name’s Willie Nelson. I cut a session with Dave Isbell down at ACA in Houston the Sarg Record label was going to release. I talked to you about a recording contract and I was supposed to send a tape over but I never got around to it till now. I work down here at KBOP in Pleasanton, Texas. I got a few minutes, I thought I’d put down a couple on tape and let you listen and see what you thought about it.”
    He’d been singing both songs since he was a kid. “When I’ve Sang My Last Hillbilly Song” was sung in a voice that almost mimicked Lefty Frizzell as he whined, “I hope and I pray you’ll forgive me and remember...”
    “The Storm Has Just Begun” was equally heartfelt, evoking sorrow in the line “when those teardrops start to flow, I realize the storm has just begun.”
    When he finished singing, Willie signed off.
    “Well, there they are. See what you think about them. If you like them, let me know about them, will you? I work down here every day. I’m off Saturday. And if you don’t like them, well, let me know that too. It won’t hurt my feelings a bit. Thank you a lot, Sarg.”
    His voice was followed by Dr. Parker’s voice reading the stock report: “... Seventeen and three-quarters, we have some food lockers selling . . .”
    Charlie Fitch did not respond.
    W ILLIE Hugh Nelson wasn’t making progress. Johnny Bush and the Hillbilly Playboys weren’t getting many bookings. Johnny Bush allowed how he really liked Willie’s guitar playing more than he liked his singing, a comment Willie never forgot. “Willie didn’t really give a rat’s ass what I thought, or so I believed at the time,” Johnny said. “But