When I was in my period of heavy C&W music acquisition, there was one low budget cassette compilation I bought that ended up leaving a lasting impression on me. It is deeply buried in a box somewhere so I can't show it to you, but it had utilitarian packaging - green type on a white background, no pics - and an odd mix of songs of uneven quality and relevance. A few of those songs turned out to be pretty important to me. I was familiar with the song Sittin' And Thinkin' from the Elvis Costello album Almost Blue, but here I was introduced to the sublime original version by Charlie Rich, there was Jerry Lee Lewis' What Made Milwaukee Famous (Made A Loser Out Of Me), and the subject of this blog, Willie Nelson performing his song Night Life. Beyond that, everything else must have been pretty forgettable because...well....I don`t remember it. Man, I loved Night Life, and a few years later when I heard Ray Price`s version I was blown away by it too.
Always wanted to learn it, but being a Willie Nelson composition, this isn`t a straight ahead 3 chord country song. It`s packed with coloured chords and interesting modulations. That means if you try and find it on the internet there's a lot of versions, some of them sounding righter than others. Found a version I liked, worked on it for a while, didn't seem to sit quite right, so I turned to accordion / guitar / musical saw hero Aaron Watson for guidance. We watched a version of Willie performing it (see below) smunched that together with what I was already doing, shook it, gave it a twist, and well.....here's my interpretation of the classic Night Life. Thanks Willie, Ray, and Aaron.
Night Life - Willie Nelson
When the evening sun goes down
you will find me out hanging 'round
The night life
ain't no good life
But it's my life
Many people just like me
dreaming of old used-to-be
The night life
ain't no good life
But it's my life
Listen to the blues they're playin'
Listen what the blues are sayin'
Mine is just another scene
from the world of broken dreams
The night life
ain't no good life
But it's my life
Here is a really stellar version of a young Willie Nelson perfoming Night Life at The Opry
And here's Ray Price doing the version most people are familiar with. This video includes the spoken intro from the original album the song came out on.
