Saturday, August 31, 2024

US Festival '83, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 6-4-1983 - Day 4, Part 3: Willie Nelson

The third album I can present from Day Four (Country Day) of the 1982 US Festival is a set by Willie Nelson.

Nelson is such a famous figure that I assume he needs no introduction. So I'll just describe a bit where his career was at the time of this festival. In short, he was doing very well. Remarkably, even though this was only the sixth month in the year of 1983, he'd already released THREE new studio albums since the start of the year! One was an album with just himself, another was a duet album with Waylon Jennings, and a third was a duet album with Merle Haggard. All of them made at least the Top Five in the country charts. The album with Haggard included the song "Pancho and Lefty" (written by Townes Van Zandt), which hit Number One in the singles chart, and would go on to be considered one of the greatest country songs of all time. Rolling Stone Magazine also listed it as one of the top 500 greatest songs of all time, period.

Since Nelson had done a duet album with Jennings earlier in the year, and Jennings played at the festival earlier in the day, it made sense that they would duet together. But apparently Nelson thought that Jennings wouldn't show, because he performed the song "Good Hearted Woman" by himself. Then, just one song after that, Jennings showed up on stage. So they did another song together, "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys," then did a duet version of "Good Hearted Woman."

Also, near the end of the set, Nelson played his signature tune "On the Road Again," and then immediately played the whole thing a second time.

Technically, this set has been officially released as the album "Live at the US Festival, 1983." But it's such a rare album that I couldn't find it anywhere. Instead, I found a YouTube video and converted that into mp3s. The sound quality is excellent.

With this album, I'm finally done posting all I have from the 1983 US Festival. Nelson was the final act on the final day.

This album is an hour and 22 minutes long.

032 Whiskey River (Willie Nelson)
033 Stay All Night [Stay a Little Longer] (Willie Nelson)
034 Funny How Time Slips Away (Willie Nelson)
035 Crazy (Willie Nelson)
036 Night Life (Willie Nelson)
037 talk (Willie Nelson)
038 If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time [Instrumental Version] (Willie Nelson)
039 talk (Willie Nelson)
040 If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time (Willie Nelson)
041 Good Hearted Woman (Willie Nelson)
042 talk (Willie Nelson)
043 Sweet Memories (Willie Nelson)
044 Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys (Willie Nelson & Waylon Jennings)
045 talk (Willie Nelson & Waylon Jennings)
046 Good Hearted Woman (Willie Nelson & Waylon Jennings)
047 Why Do I Have to Choose (Willie Nelson)
048 Help Me Make It through the Night (Willie Nelson)
049 Bloody Mary Morning (Willie Nelson)
050 Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain (Willie Nelson)
051 Instrumental (Willie Nelson)
052 Blue Skies (Willie Nelson)
053 Georgia on My Mind (Willie Nelson)
054 All of Me (Willie Nelson)
055 Stardust (Willie Nelson)
056 My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (Willie Nelson)
057 I Can Get Off on You (Willie Nelson)
058 Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground (Willie Nelson)
059 On the Road Again (Willie Nelson)
060 On the Road Again [Second Version] (Willie Nelson)
061 Always on My Mind (Willie Nelson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/17046257/VA-1983USFstvlDay0403WlliNlsn_atse.zip.html

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HUmFfB3y

Similarly to the situations with the other two albums for Country Day, I had to resort to making a screenshot from a YouTube video for the cover art. 

7 comments:

  1. Thank You Paul for all that you've shared. Simply stunning. Love the BBC stuff and the different festivals. Keep up the great work, my friend. Cheers from Hobart, Australia.

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  2. What a mammoth undertaking these festivals are. Thanks for putting them together and making them available. I'm one of those folks who'd never heard of this one.

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  3. Paul. I'm sure it was just an unintentional omission, but it needs saying that Pancho & Lefty is not a song by either Nelson or Haggard, but was written by Townes Van Zandt. Having said that, where on earth do you find all this amazing material?

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    Replies
    1. Good point. I just added a Townes mention to the text. As to where I get the stuff, I search SoulseekQT and popular bootleg sites (like Dime a Dozen and Trader's Den), mostly.

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  4. Hello Do you Have the set of Los Lobos in Day 03(1983.05.30) and sets of Alabama, Emmilou Harris, Ricky Scaggs, Riders in The Sky in Day 04 (1983.06.04)?
    Thanks Sincerely
    Frédéric

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    Replies
    1. I do not. And I haven't seen any sign that they're publicly available anywhere. But if you have any of them, please pass them on.

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  5. The official album of this is on Spotify. Here is the link
    https://open.spotify.com/album/6QhJSo4FpObIBi2ulmRfiH

    ReplyDelete