Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 217

MUSIC By STEVE MILLBURG Timea Staff Writer It was a Texas-size barbecue, even though it took place in Omaha, Neb. Gracing the grounds of the biggest mansion in town were a couple of gigantic tents, a buffet line almost as long as the curved driveway, and a few hundred Beautiful People, who had paid $300 apiece to attend. Into their midst walked a small man with a deeply lined face, wearing blue jeans, a black T-shirt and a long, graying ponytail. Instantly, he was besieged by autograph-seeking clusters of medium-young women in dresses that probably cost more than his tour bus. Their grinning husbands tried to maneuver close enough to slap his back and shake his hand.

The object of their affections was Willie Nelson, who had just played a benefit concert for the Girls Club and Boys' Clubs of Omaha. Later, talking to a reporter, he was charming and cooperative. But he seemed truly at ease only when he sang a few numbers with a local country band, whose members looked as if they had died and gone to heaven. That such a gathering of the upwardly mobile would go all gushy over a country singer who campaigns to save the family farm and supported Jesse Jackson for president might seem a trifle bizarre. But even nouveau riche trend-slaves can long to live their lives without worrying what other people think.

And nobody better personifies doing things the way you darn well please than Willie Nelson. Everybody knows the basics. Born April 29, 1933, in Abbott, Texas. Started playing guitar at age 6. Joined his first band at 10.

Kicked around for years as a musician and radio disc jockey. Came to Nashville, in 1960 and started writing hit songs for other people: Crazy (Patsy Cline), Hello Walls (Faron Young), Funny How Time Slips Away (Billy Walker). Battled the Nashville establishment, which thought he sang funny and wanted to drown his own recordings in strings. Moved in disgust back to Texas in 1970. Found himself the leader of something called "outlaw country." Started recording his songs his way.

Became a superstar. Lived happily ever after. It's not that simple, of course. "Outlaw country" was never more than a marketing label, as became evident in 1978 when he released Stardust, an album of old pop standards. Last August, it became the first album to be listed on Billboardmagazine's country charts for 10 years straight.

Ironically, as Nelson has said, "There's not a country song on it." Doubly ironically, he had to fight to get his record company to release the album in the first place. Now, he told an interviewer from Newsday, the record company keeps pushing him to record more old pop songs instead of his own new material. Nelson is not a country singer trying to cross over to pop, like Dolly Parton, or a pop singer easing comfortably into country, like Kenny Rogers. He is a stylist at home in almost any genre of music, a singer whose acknowledged influences include both the old honky-tonker Lefty Frizzell and the old bobby-soxer Frank Sinatra. He is also quite a guitarist.

His solos on his vintage Martin guitar, with the old-fashioned gut strings and the big hole worn through the wood by years of picking, are as eccentrically phrased and consistently delightful as his singing. That guitar figures in one of the most-told Willie Nelson stories: When his house near Nashville burned in 1970, he ran into the flames'and "salvaged his Martin 0' Honesty has played a major part in Willie Nelson's appeal. guitar and a pound of marijuana." That quote is from his record-company biography. The man is compulsively honest, which is another source of his appeal. Willie: An Autobiography, published last fall, details some Iess-than-flattering episodes and includes brief chapters of commentary by friends, associates, even ex-wives.

One of those chapters corrects another legendary Nelson story. His first wife, Martha Jewel Mathews, says that when he came home drunk one night, she did not sew him up in a bed sheet before pounding him with a broom handle. "The truth is," she says, "I tied him up with the kids' jump ropes before I beat the hell out of him." AT A GLftKCE An Evening with Willie Nelson and Family, 8 tonight and Saturday, Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater: $25, $30. Free post-show party tonight. Willie Nelson is a stylist at home in almost any genre of music, a singer whose acknowledged influences include both the old honky-tonker Lefty Frizzell and the old bobby-soxer Frank Sinatra.

21 FRIDAY, MAY 12,1989 ST. PETERSBURG TIMES.