No Place For Me b/w Lumberjack
scum stats: estimated 300 copies pressed, supposedly 3-5 known in collections
Gotta say I was pretty wowed to find out that Willie Nelson's first record came out of Vancouver, Washington. Not Texas? Not Nashville? I'd known that Loretta Lynn's career had started in the Pacific Northwest, but I thought that was an anomaly, not something that had any parallels.
Kinda goes without saying that this single is hard to find. Rumor has it that the disc wasn't even available for purchase back when it was made in 1957. Supposedly people had to write in to the radio station KVAN where Willie was a DJ at the time (Vancouver which is right across the river from Portland, Oregon) and say how much they loved the record and then a copy would be mailed to them.
Damn...doesn't that just sound crazy thinking about? It certainly doesn't happen like that any more.
The a-side "No Place For Me" feels like a pretty solid, of-the-era country tune, Willie's voice rich and sonorous and strengthened by reverb, buoyed by picky guitar and with some fiddle buried deep in the mix. Before you know it, the damn thing is over in less time than it takes for me to microwave popcorn. That feels a little bit strange, could be good or bad depending on your mood or the day I suppose.
The flip is written by another DJ at KVAN at the time, Leon Payne, supposedly written about a local timber faller named Ray Norris. The stop-and-go, gas-and-brakes chug of this song feels pretty remarkable and noteworthy. The verse vocals presented largely without any accompaniment, the heavy-breathing intro and outro...just feels like there's something beyond the "old hat" vibe that most independent, Starday-pressend country singles from this time. Almost bordering on spoken jazz, Ken Nordine vibes. Heady stuff for '57, at least for me looking back 65 years later.
While it might be absolutely NO indication of what Willie would do come the rest of his career, man, first records with tales like this behind them just get me excited. Good times and good vibes.
