Willie by Willie Nelson

Author:Willie Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cooper Square Press
Published: 2000-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

The Chorus

BIF COLLIE

If there’s any man I’d like to have run off with my wife, it would be Willie Nelson. The reason I say that is, Willie already did it. He sneaked Shirley right out from under my eyes. Just like you hear in the songs on the jukebox, I was the last one to know. I might have caught on earlier, except I was too much in love with Shirley to be suspecting anything.

Also, I have to admit Willie didn’t pull no gun on Shirley to make her leave with him.

It was a pretty ironic situation all around. Shirley was the first girl I ever really fell in love with, but not the first one I married. My first wife was the ex-wife of Floyd Tillman, who was Willie’s idol at one time. I don’t truly remember meeting Willie until 1960—after I was married to Shirley—but our paths had kept crisscrossing until we finally collided in a room at the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville.

The year I brought Shirley to Nashville with me for the annual disc jockey convention, Harlan Howard and Hank Cochran showed up at our room with Willie and some more songwriters. They picked and sang and carried on. Little did I know there were seeds being planted in the hotel room between Willie and Shirley. I heard later that Willie and Hank had a bet to see which one could make Shirley first.

Shirley and I went back to California after the convention. It seemed like no time at all before Willie came to California for a recording session. Joe Allison phoned and asked if Shirley would like to do a duet with Willie Nelson. This may be the first duet he ever did. The story I got was Willie offered Joe a piece of one of his songs if Joe could put him and Shirley in the studio together.

And I went out and promoted their records. One of ’em was called “Willingly.”

I came home one day and there was a note from Shirley on the kitchen table saying she had to go to buy a dress to wear on Allison’s Country America Saturday Night TV show.

Well, that must have been some hell of a dress, because she wrote the note in 1962 and she ain’t back yet.

Days kept going past, and I didn’t know where Shirley was. I had no idea if she was dead or alive. Shirley had talked about suicide before.

After three weeks of worrying, I heard she was living in Nashville.

Then Shirley started calling me out of the clear blue sky. It was weird. She’d say, “I just got out of the emergency room again. I’m having emotional problems.” I thought, well, sweetheart, so am I.

People knew Shirley was with Willie by now. They weren’t married yet. I guess he was still married to Martha. But people would phone and say, “Don’t you know that SOB stole your wife? Why do you keep playing his records on your radio show?”

I’d say, “Hell, it’s my job to play the best music, and Willie is one of the best no matter whose wife he’s with.

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