On a very hot and exceedingly humid September Sunday night in 1977, I lay sweating in an un-air-conditioned dorm room in Beebe Arkansas listening to a radio station from Little Rock as it was about play an album released by Willie Nelson. Though I had been a fan of outlaw country music (Jerry Jeff Walker) for years, I had no desire to listen to something called “The Red Headed Stranger”. When the DJ introduced the album, I was not interested at all. Had there been another station that I could tune in with my crappy little clock-radio with it’s cracked speaker, I would have. I just had no desire to listen to an album by Willie Nelson. I had heard that he sang through his nose. As fate would have it, I had no other choice.
I was in Beebe doing my year of exile, trying to get my head on straight. I didn’t yet have any idea where my life was going. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, with the operative word being ‘thought’. At this point in my life, thinking wasn’t my strong suite. For the first few weeks, the bare bones dorm room felt more like a prison cell than a college dorm. Though I didn’t yet realize it, Beebe was much more of a refuge than an exile and the people I met there remain dear to my heart to this day.
Stuck in a sweltering dorm room without a puff of a breeze and held hostage by the single station I could pick up with an old clock radio, against my will I listened to Willie Nelson for the very first time. Reluctantly at first, I listened and I heard. I heard every song, and every word of every song. The very first piano notes of ‘The Time of the Preacher’ crackling out of that blown speaker drew me in. They peaked my curiosity. The darkness and humid heat of that drab little dorm room retreated from my consciousness as the music limping out of that crippled speaker slowly drew me in. I listened and embraced each song. As Willie picked and sang his way through the album, I saw the stories he told. His finger picking in the songs he sang was like Tabasco sauce on gumbo. It was all the difference. He picked the strings like a honey bee dancing from flower to flower. Your ear begins to appreciate his heart felt delivery of the lyrics and your mind gets some time to understand what the song is all about. By the time he got to ‘Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain’, much to the dismay of my dorm neighbors, I was singing along.
I heard ‘Blue Eye’s Cryin’ in the Rain’ this morning. It took me back to that dorm room. I’m sure they have torn down that old dorm by now. It was crappy by 1977 standards, and today would probably violate the Geneva Conventions for POWs. It wasn’t quite Guantanamo Bay, but it wasn’t far off. It occurred to me that without the heat and the humidity of the dorm room and the isolation brought on by access to a single radio station, I would not have paused to hear the album and the artist. I didn’t find myself in Beebe by accident, but I did find a part of me in Beebe I had never known before.
Take a minute to find yourself today. Enjoy the music. One day, today will be all that we will have left. So take a minute today and smile. Even if it offends your neighbors, sing along.
Go ahead. Offend you neighbors!
There are many songs that remind me of years gone by. In 1970 stationed in Guantanamo Bay I listened to music every night by putting a stack of albums on my turntable and letting them play as I went to sleep. This was a year after missing out of going to Woodstock and I listened to all different genre of music and still do. Thank you for your stories and the time you take to share them!!