Maps of Music

Tougher Than Leather (1983)

Where the lyrics of Tougher Than Leather take you, and where it was really made.

Willie Nelson wrote the title song while recovering from a 1981 lung collapse, then built the whole concept around it.

Key places

Recorded at Pedernales Recording Studio, Spicewood (1983)

Recording site Pedernales Studio — The album was recorded at Pedernales Recording Studio in Spicewood, Texas. The pin sits at the Spicewood city centre, so the studio building itself is not pinpointed. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• Tougher Than Leather: 28th studio album by country singer Willie Nelson
• Released 1983 on Columbia Records
• Concept album about reincarnation
• First album of original songs since Red Headed Stranger in 1975, after many compilations, duets and soundtracks
• Thirteen tracks, including several short interludes

Background

• Nelson had a lung collapse in 1981 and spent time in hospital, where he thought about his own mortality
• He wrote the title song first, then built the story around it
• Story: a gunfighter shoots a young man and is haunted by the dead man's girlfriend, then dies of guilt
• The gunfighter is reborn in present-day San Antonio and meets the reborn girlfriend; they become a couple
• Their love is brief: he is convicted of a bank robbery he did not commit and executed
• Summer of Roses comes from his 1971 album Yesterday's Wine
• The Convict and the Rose is a cover; The Beer Barrel Polka is a traditional song
• All songs except The Beer Barrel Polka and Little Old Fashioned Karma are slow in tempo

Recording

• Recorded at Pedernales Recording Studio in Spicewood, Texas
• Produced by Willie Nelson and Bee Spears
• Musicians: Jody Payne and Grady Martin (guitar), Bee Spears (bass), Paul English (drums), Bobbie Nelson (piano), Johnny Gimble (fiddle, mandolin), Mickey Raphael (harmonica)

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · de.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Formation

• Born Willie Hugh Nelson on April 29, 1933, in Abbott, Texas.
• Wrote his first song at age seven and joined his first band, Bohemian Polka, as a guitarist at age nine.
• Attended Baylor University for two years before dropping out to pursue music.
• Moved to Nashville in 1960 and joined Ray Price's band as a bassist.

Career

• Songs such as "Crazy" (Patsy Cline), "Funny How Time Slips Away" and "Pretty Paper" became hits for other artists.
• Debut album ...And Then I Wrote was released in 1962; joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1965.
• Helped lead the outlaw country movement after moving to Austin, Texas in 1972.
• Red Headed Stranger (1975) was a critically acclaimed concept album; the single "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" became his first number one hit.
• Co-founded Farm Aid in 1985 with Neil Young and John Mellencamp.
• Acted in over 30 films, including The Electric Horseman (1979).
• Received a Grammy Award for Best Country Solo Performance for "Ride Me Back Home" (2019).
• Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1993 and received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• Crispin Sartwell of Record panned the album, calling it "country music in name only."
• Sartwell said the record was built on high-handed philosophical preaching, unlike Nelson's earlier honest ballads about concrete situations
• He also criticized the music as utterly bland and homogeneous
• Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic gave the album a mixed review
• Erlewine called the touring band's performance robust, but said many songs were mediocre and the album does not hold together thematically

Records

• Billboard 200: number 39, a weak result compared with Nelson's earlier success according to the German Wikipedia article
• Top Country Albums (US): number 4
• Single Little Old Fashioned Karma: number 10 on the Top Country Singles chart, the album's only single
• The single had to compete with the Nelson and Merle Haggard duet Pancho and Lefty, released six weeks later

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · de.wikipedia.org · es.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• Summer of Roses came from Nelson's 1971 album Yesterday's Wine rather than being written for this record
• The Convict and the Rose is a cover, and The Beer Barrel Polka is a traditional tune arranged by Bobbie Nelson
• Pancho and Lefty, written by Townes Van Zandt, came out six weeks after the single and competed with it
• The album's story is a concept about reincarnation, not a set of separate songs about one theme

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · de.wikipedia.org

Maps of Ages ↗ (mapsofages.com)

Privacy · Contact