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Last week, my parents came to Austin to visit for the weekend. They were extremely excited to leave the bitter cold in Chicago and come down to one of their favorite cities (even though it would only be just a bit warmer than back home). They have been coming to visit once a semester for the past three years and each time they come and spend some time in Austin, they love it more and more. We have done all kinds of tourist-y things in Austin, but one thing we had not done was educate ourselves on some good ‘ole country music.

My mom and I visiting the Willie Nelson statue

And so, this time when they visited I made sure to tell them, as well as show them, all about Willie Nelson. We all agreed that Willie Nelson had to have been a big deal in the music industry to deserve a statue in the middle of the downtown area of the state capital and the live music city of world.  We paid the statue a visit, and then became more curious about him as an artist as well as a person.

And so, we gave ourselves a little bit of a history lesson. My parents had no idea that Willie Nelson had moved from Nashville to Austin where he became a key figure in the “Outlaw Country” scene (I had already learned this fun fact, so hah!). He made his transition from the clean-shaven songwriter in Nashville, to the long-hair-don’t-care outlaw that started here in Austin, and is how he remains today.  The city of Austin played a huge role in his transformation, and in turn he had a large impact on the city of Austin.  Another interesting fact we learned was that Willie Nelson was raised by his grandparents, who had studied at a music school in Chicago. It gave us a little more of a connection to Willie, and that was exciting.

After our history lesson was over, we proceeded to listen to some of Willie’s songs. One song that we happened to like was “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”  It was a song I had never heard before but quickly took a liking to for it’s mellow tone and somber message of love and sadness.

My mother and father always knew that Austin had a huge live music scene, but I do not think they realized just how large of a scene it is and how far back that went. Thanks to our quick trip with Willie, my parents and I got to see a whole new side of Austin and the variety of things it has to offer.

After listening to troubadour by George Strait and hearing Jesse James’s name I was curious too how many country songs talk about him in their lyrics and why. Some of the people that sang about Jesse James included Johnny Cash a well known country artists and also Woody Guthrie. A lot of older traditional country songs talk about him and I was kind of curious as to why. After listening to a few songs I start to see a pattern to Jesse’s story, which he was known for being the fastest gunslinger in the west, bank/coach robber, outlaw, and a murderer.

After hearing those songs I wanted to see whether the stories had any truth too them. I found some information about his story and parts of the stories are truth but some of them were just rumors and myths. So I did some more digging and found out that he was from Missouri where he lived on a slave farm with his mother Zerelda James, his father Robert James, and his brother Frank James. I read on about his outlandish lifestyle as an outlaw. It all started when he joined the confederate guerrillas lead by Bill Anderson known for terrorizing his enemies with scalping and other inhumane tortures.

Shortly after Jesse joined the guerrillas the civil war had been won by the union, so eventually they had to surrender too but of course as we know the story for Jesses James continues. He goes on to rob banks, coaches and trains. Eventually he becomes the greatest known outlaw, muderer, and robber. As I had said previously a lot of older country songs talk about Jesse James and I believe for one is because he was such legendary southern outlaw so it would have been stories that most of those country singers would have heard about as a child, which we all know, or at least I do, and who wouldn’t have wanted to be an outlaw like Jesse James? I believe it inspired their wild side and the song was a way for them to escape reality and show that they were just like him and they could be free and wild-spirited.

So in conclusion I think that Jesse James plays a big role in older country for the simple reason his stories were told by so many songs and still to this day he is talked about in songs, movies, even an music artist’s stage name is Jessie James so that their fans can resonate them with Jesse’s wild side. Time and time again you will hear Jesse James story being told through country songs because he is what you would have called the real southerner.

And if you want to learn a little more about Jesse James here is a short interesting documentary about his life where I got most of facts about Jesse James.