ROLL ME UP AND SMOKE ME WHEN I DIE
Musings
from the Road from Willie Nelson
A book review by JC
Sullivan (adult reading)
“I didn’t get popular until I got
ugly!” Willie Nelson summed up his music success in those words
some years ago. This past Christmas I purchased this book for my
wife Karen as she is a Willie fan. I just knew it would be a good
read. I realized he wasn’t bor wit a silver spoon in his mouth. I
expected to hear about his hard times. What I wasn’t prepared for
was the humor in the book and the belly laughs they produced while I
lay in bed doing my midnight readings.
Did you hear about the nervous bank
robber? “Stick up your ass or I’ll blow your hands to hell!”
Willie took off a year off from touring and
bought a ranch in Ridgetop, Tennessee. While there he decided to
raise hogs. He’d raised them nearly all his life beginning in High
School where he did so for show, food, money, or whatever.”
Willie also decided to learn to rope
calves, something he’d never done before. “I bought a book called
Calf Roping by Toots Mansfield. He had a calf-roping school…He
had a lot of young calf ropers to whom he taught the finer skills of
roping, so I was sure I could learn from his book….Unfortunately,
my roping horse, Preacher, had not read the book.”
A forward penned by Texas DJ Kinky
Friedman pretty much hits the nail when describing where Willie’s songwriting and musical talent come from. “Great art is rarely produced by someone who
sits down to paint his masterpiece. The guy who sets out to write
the great American novel never does it; the great work is invariably
written by the guy who was just trying to pay the rent.”
Now, I’m not even halfway through the
book and have surprised myself writing this review. Willie is a hoot!
“If it ain’t broke, break it!”
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