The artist Willie Nelson called “the greatest musician, singer, writer, and entertainer”
Over his 90 years on Earth, Willie Nelson has seen a talented musician or two. The country legend and recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee has been an elder statesman of music for just about as long as popular music was kickstarted in the 1950s. Nelson has played with rock, soul, and even hip-hop artists. But who is the person that impressed Nelson the most?
That would be pianist, Leon Russell. “The greatest musician, singer, writer, and entertainer that I have ever seen or heard is Leon Russell,” Nelson shared in his 2012 book Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die: Musings from the Road. “We are still great friends and have a double album of songs that we recorded, called Together Again, coming out next year.” The album was subsequently shelved, but Nelson had nothing but kind things to say about Russell.
“I first saw Leon in Albuquerque, New Mexico,” Nelson writes. “There were twenty thousand people on their feet yelling and screaming for the whole show. He and I stayed up all night the night before the show drinking and smoking. At sunrise we went onstage and started playing. It was the greatest sight I had ever seen.”
“There were thousands of people walking toward the venue through a cow pasture, carrying everything from beer coolers to sleeping bags. They came to stay a while,” Nelson added. “There were hippies and rednecks, young and old coming together for the first time to hear the same thing. The magic was the music. It touched all kinds of people, and the world has not been the same since.”
“I remember he had the crowd in such a frenzy that at one moment he stopped and said, ‘Remember where you are right now, and remember that right now you would believe anything I would say. So be careful who you would let lead you to this place,'” Nelson remembered. “Then he threw his cowboy hat into the audience, and the crowd went crazy, which is when I stole the idea of throwing hats into the audience.”
“I booked Leon for the first Fourth of July picnic in Dripping Springs, Texas. I thought if it worked in Alburquerque and it worked in Woodstock, it could work here; it did,” Nelson concluded. “Thank you, Leon, and thank you, Woodstock, for showing me how to do it.”
Check out Willie Nelson and Leon Russell playing ‘Jambalaya’ in 1974 down below.