There are several things that make Willie Nelson a legend: his songs, his voice, his dueting expertise, his beat up acoustic guitar Trigger and his band. Not many singer-songwriters have surrounded themselves with such a long-lasting stellar ensemble of musicians as Nelson. For many, many years Paul English, Bobbie Nelson, Bee Spears, Mickey Raphael and Jody Payne were the core of Family, helping flesh Nelson’s songs into star-high hits. Sadly, English, Spears and Payne have passed on but their trademark musical distinctions live on in the catalog of albums the Austin, Texas, rascal has released.
Nelson’s current release, First Rose Of Spring, is his – believe it or not – 70th album. With two co-penned tunes, “Blue Star” and “Love Just Laughed,” alongside compositions by Chris Stapleton (“Our Song”) and Toby Keith (“Don’t Let The Old Man In”), a Johnny Paycheck staple (“I’m The Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised”), a haunting title track by Randy Houser, Allen Shamblin and Mark Beeson and an old French ballad (“Yesterday When I Was Young”) that resonates long after the last note has died away, Nelson has created a masterpiece of growing older.
Suffice to say, that lingering note belongs to harmonica player Mickey Raphael. Joining Nelson in the early 1970’s, the Dallas native has made for himself a remarkable career from such a small instrument. A little more complicated than one might ascertain, the harmonica can make or break a song with just one note, and Raphael has mastered it well. When he’s not blowing beside Nelson, he can often be found with Chris Stapleton. He’s recorded and/or toured with other such legends as Emmylou Harris, Leon Russell, Wynton Marsalis, Ray Charles and Motley Crue. His solo record, Hand To Mouth, came out in 2000.
Nelson’s soundman told me one time that Raphael had been with Willie since he was a kid. Not quite but just barely out of his teens. Sitting in at folk-type clubs, Raphael picked up a position in the band of BW Stevenson before meeting Nelson one night in 1973. After that, his harmonica has been a stalwart component of the Willie Nelson Band, through albums, worldwide tours, movies, TV show appearances, music festivals, Farm Aid and Nelson’s annual 4th of July Picnic, which this year was done virtually.
Glide caught up with Raphael to talk about his career with Nelson, his early days, his influences and how he ended up on metal record by Motley Crue.
How have you been occupying yourself during the quarantine?
Well, I’ve actually been sleeping in my bed, which is fabulous. I’ve been having to learn how to cook. I’m a cyclist so I get out on my bike sometimes. I’ve got a studio in my house, a little home studio, so I’ve been working on a couple of movie scores and Willie’s got a couple of albums that we’ve been kind of working on. We’re kind of on hold cause we all can’t get in the studio because of Covid but I can still record my parts here. So I’ve been in the studio a couple days a week and just really enjoying being home.
That’s probably a rarity for you
It is. It’s why I’m not really having a hard time with this stuff, other than it’s hard not being able to go see friends. My mom lives in Dallas and I’d like to go see her and I can’t. But it’s nice to have some early nights and, like I said, to get some real good sleep and some good workouts in and just enjoy my house.
You have made so many records with Willie now. So when he calls and says let’s go in the studio, how much do you know about those songs ahead of time?
Well, usually I don’t. Like right now we’re working on a Sinatra record so our manager, who is very musical, Mark Rothbaum is his name, and Willie and me and our producer just kind of went over our favorite Sinatra songs. So after digging through all that stuff, I get a song list, at least on the Sinatra project, and then they’ll cut the tracks and then they’ll take them to Willie and Willie will sing and then I’ll put my harmonica on. Since we’re all not together and they cut tracks in LA, we all kind of did it separately. Usually our tracks are cut here and then the producer takes the music down to Willie in Austin and he sings. That’s one way to do it.
With Red Headed Stranger, we went in the studio and we didn’t know what he was doing. He just said, “I want to go in the studio.” And he just had a stack of napkins and rumpled paper and pulled them out and he starts playing these songs and we’re all set up in the studio and we kind of just played them as we’re hearing them for the first time. That’s why Red Headed Stranger is so simple and so basic and not over-produced; cause we’re really hearing the songs, maybe played them one or two times, making that record. That happens a lot. Of course, the more produced records that he is putting out now are a little more involved. But usually I won’t hear the song till I get into the studio.
After all these years, that’s probably not nerve-wracking anymore
No but that’s what I do. That’s my job, really. When I play with somebody else, if Kenny Chesney or Chris Stapleton calls me to play on a record, I go in there and I don’t know the song before I get to the studio, nor does anybody else, the musicians, the studio cats. We just hear the song for the first time and have to play it perfectly every time, you know. I mean, we can fix stuff and we can do it several times. Last night I was working on a harmonica solo for a Sinatra song called “Wee Small Hours” and I really wanted to nail it and I loved it. I couldn’t do this in the studio with a band sitting there but I could play the solo twenty/thirty times till I got it how I liked it. But a lot of times my first pass is the best.
Do you have a particular Sinatra song that is going on the record that was your choice?
Yes, “That’s Life.” It wasn’t solely my choice but I knew Kelly Gordon who wrote the song. He was a friend of mine so I said, “We’ve got to do that song” and everybody said it’s already on the list. So I can’t take credit for that, that was unanimous.
Has Willie ever brought in a real bare bones song into the studio that he wanted you guys to help him finish?
Not really, no, because he writes them all himself. We may not have had a musical arrangement for some of the songs but by the time we’re in there to record, they’re written. I mean, the arrangements kind of morph as we’re playing. He doesn’t tell me what to play, just when to play. So whatever I play is my own creation.
Is that all instinctual once you hear the song?
Yeah, it’s totally instinctual unless for somebody else, like if I work with Chris Stapleton, he may have an idea what he wants me to do. So he may tell me specifically what he wants me to play and then after we do that a couple times then he may say, “Okay, forget what I said and just play whatever you want.”
Is there a song on First Rose Of Spring that kind of surprised you that was a song selection that he picked out or brought in?
I don’t know because he doesn’t pick all the songs. What will happen is, people will play songs for him, or the producer will amass a group of songs, and Willie will okay them or not. He didn’t find them but I guess he did okay them. And he wrote a good amount of songs on the record too, or co-wrote with Buddy Cannon, his producer. Although, I was surprised he did “I’m The Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised,” which was the Johnny Paycheck song. We were playing that live so that’s kind of fun to play.
What can you tell us about the Chris Stapleton song, “Our Song”?
I play with Chris Stapleton when I’m not with Willie. I can’t remember where we were but we were in the dressing room and Chris says, “I got this song that I wrote for Willie but I haven’t found the time to show it to him or play it for him.” So I said, “Well, just record it and play it now.” And he recorded it on his cell phone, just he and the guitar, and then I emailed it to Willie and he listened to it and liked it and decided to do it.
There’s a Toby Keith song on there, “Don’t Let The Old Man In.”
That’s my favorite! That’s the one I really love. I like them all but “Don’t Let The Old Man In” is really great. It’s very poignant and it’s age appropriate for us all, really, and lyrically, it’s so sensitive. It’s just a wonderful song. It just shows Toby’s great songwriting talent and Willie’s delivery was amazing.
Do you ever have any input on the production/technical side?
I have on several. There is an album called Naked Willie that I produced where I took some classic old recordings of Willie’s from the sixties that had lots of background vocals and strings and was just really over-produced, I thought. I took the recordings and I took off all the sweetening, all the strings and background voices, and it was just Willie and a five-piece studio band, which is kind of how he records now. I remixed the whole record so it would sound just like he’d cut it last week. I produced that record and then the Highwaymen box set I remixed. It’s a record and a DVD that you can actually see on PBS.
Do you like the production side, being the more authority person?
You don’t really need it with Willie cause he kind of makes all the decisions but with the Naked Willie project I did, he didn’t even know I was doing it. It was between me and our management and the record label. When I finally played it for him and he listened to it, he goes, “What’d you do? That’s what I thought it was originally.” And what happened was, he cut the tracks and then he leaves the studio and the producer, who was Chet Atkins back in the day, puts all that other stuff on there. So Willie had no input into his records. Basically what I did was un-produce. I took everything, I cleaned up all the tracks and made it sound really simple instead of heavily orchestrated.
But yeah, I like the production side of it. I’m working on some film scores now. I just finished a documentary about Jim Allison, who was a cancer researcher at MD Anderson, and he developed a drug that activates the body’s immune system to fight cancer and he got the Nobel Prize for Medicine last year. Then I’m working on one called Twelve Mighty Orphans, which is with Robert Duvall and Luke Wilson and Martin Sheen. I have a partner that I work with, he lives in Portland, and he’s the main composer on the film. So he’ll send me like some tracks of maybe guitar and piano, just a couple of instruments, and then I’ll write a melody to it.
You started playing harmonica when you were a teenager. What were you like before music?
Very shy, wasn’t into sports. I was not a good athlete, I hated sports.
But you’re all like legs and arms. You should have been a track star.
Yeah, well, I was probably too lazy for that (laughs). I hated my school days and one day they came to our gym class and said, “We’ll let you out of PE, we need a volunteer.” And my hand went up real quick. And it was because they needed somebody to play the tuba in the marching band. They really just needed somebody to carry the damn thing. And I did, I was playing. I wish I still did. You know, I love Preservation Hall and the whole thing is based around the tuba.
I read that you tried guitar but it didn’t work for you. What were you struggling with?
I just wasn’t very good and I was too frustrated. I probably didn’t practice enough and I wanted to learn it immediately. Some things feel comfortable and you click with and I just didn’t excel at it. Then I picked up the harmonica, or eventually I had a harmonica that I would play with, and that was something that came a little easier to me. And that was after the tuba.
You’ve said you were like a folky-blues type player. Where were you playing in those earliest days and who were you playing with?
I would sit in with other people but it was a total coffeehouse situation at like colleges and stuff. I had a guy I played with named Mike Ames and we played a club in Dallas called The Cellar, which was a rock club. We would play from 8:30-9:00 an acoustic set and then I think we had the graveyard shift from 4:00-4:30 or something like that. It was pretty weird. Then there was another folk club in Dallas called the Rubaiyat, where people like Jerry Jeff Walker and Guy Clark and Michael Murphy would kind of play and I would go see them cause I was a big fan of this music and I would go sit in with people there. But I started playing with a guy named BW Stevenson, who was a singer-songwriter and he was on RCA. I did his first two or three records with him. He was a Dallas boy who got some success and we toured all over the country in a van. That’s kind of how I got my start, just playing in the folk circuit.
Did you have an ambition back then?
Yeah, I wanted to play harmonica and I didn’t care with who. I mean, I loved Michael Murphy and Jerry Jeff and I liked that music scene. There were some great clubs in Austin and with BW because of his record, we played clubs where we’d open for Seals & Crofts, and even for some rock bands like the Allman Brothers. They needed like a half hour/forty-five minute opening act sometimes so we’d do some big halls. I don’t think Duane was in the band then. Gregg was still in the band. This might have been 1972.
The night you met Willie, what did you think of him that night?
You know, I’d had one record of his but I really wasn’t that familiar with him until I met him and heard him play songs he’d written, like “Nightlife” and “Funny How Time Slips Away.” But I was impressed. I thought he was really cool and he said, “If you ever hear we’re playing anywhere, come sit in.” So I just followed up and found out where he was playing and went and played.
Did you think he was someone you could work with long term or were you thinking it would just be a gig or two?
I didn’t know. He was a pretty big deal in Texas and I loved the music so I didn’t know if it would be long term but I wasn’t looking into anything else. I was happy to be there, cause he was making records too. We were traveling, it was before he had a bus, but we were traveling a lot and the gigs were fun or interesting and he was pretty big in Texas.
Being a harp player, is that similar to a guitar player in the sense that you know when to play and when not to play?
Yeah, a lot of people don’t know that. The most important thing about playing is knowing when not to play. And you’ve got to learn that. Some people just don’t know when to shut up, you know (laughs). Somebody asked if I gave lessons or anything but I can’t tell you how to play but I can teach you when not to play. And that’s really important. You stay away from the vocals. When the singer is singing, you don’t want to take away from him and that’s where a lot of musicians that are young and still not seasoned will play and drown out the singer. You’ve got to learn to listen to the others in the band. That’s a really important thing to do. If you’re going to make it, you’ve got to have that skill. And that comes with time and maturity. When I was young I was playing way too much. I had Grady Martin, who was like one of the greatest studio guitar players ever on the planet, tell me one time, “Man, smoke a cigarette. Take that thing out of your mouth, you play too much.” Thank God he told me and brought it to my attention.
Jake Clemons has told me that you’ve really got to be on your toes during a show because Springsteen will call out a song out of the blue, out of nowhere and you’ve got to be ready. Is that how Willie is or was?
We have no setlist but he starts every song so by the time he starts it, I know what song it is. And we’re not so set in the arrangements so we can play or not play. Sometimes Willie will look at you and it might be my turn for a solo but if he’s got his back to me and he’s looking at Bobbie, the piano player, his sister, I’ll kind of lay back and see if she’s going to take the solo. But the way the show is now, the songs we’ve been playing so much and the arrangements are the same but the notes I play are different every time.
Paul English passed away a few months ago [February 12, 2020]. I was wondering if you could tell us a little about him?
Paul was great. He was there when I went to work and he was always the band leader and our protector and defender. You know, he always had everybody’s back. He always watched out for everybody. At the beginning, we played some rough places in Texas that I couldn’t even walk into by myself. I had real long hair and we’d always walk in with Paul. Of course, he was heavily armed (laughs) but he had this air of authority. With Willie, he’s like a third arm of Willie. He knows what Willie is going to do before he does it.
You have played with more people than I can count and I wanted to ask you about a couple of them and what it was like playing with them, starting with BB King.
You know, I was just in the studio with him. I played on a song but it’s so minute what I played, he wouldn’t know me if I set myself on fire and sat in his lap (laughs). But I’d seen him so many times.
Guy Clark
Guy Clark I knew before Willie and I would play with him and play on records. He was such a great writer.
Emmylou Harris
She’s great too. I moved back to LA because of her. I was playing on her records and maybe every other month I’d go out to record and she was living in this house in Beverly Hills. There was a mobile recording studio truck parked outside and they’d run all the cables and the mics in the house and record in the house. Emmy and her husband Brian [Ahern], who was the producer, they moved out and I moved in. I lived in that house for a while but that was where Willie cut Stardust, just in this big sprawling Beverly Hills ranch-style house with Willie set up in the living room and I was actually in the shower in one of the bathrooms.
I want to go back to when you started playing harmonica. What surprised you the most about that instrument and what it could do?
What surprised me the most is when I finally started figuring out that there is a method to the madness, a way to get around the notes and play. It’s just such a personal instrument and it’s not something you can look at like the guitar where you can look down at your fingers and watch the notes. It’s something that you play by feel and you have to hear the notes. You have no idea where you are, what note you’re playing, until you hear it. So you kind of have to have command of the instrument.
Is there a secret to making it sound like different genres?
No, as you get more experienced on it you can control the tone. I just play a lot so I don’t know how I learned other than just listening and practicing all the time. There is so much on YouTube or online, so many great harmonica teachers out there, and we didn’t have that at all when I was growing up. You would just listen to old blues records and stuff and try to just cop the licks of the masters; and then put it into your own words too. It’s just a very expressive instrument. It can make you feel happy or sad.
There is a beautiful tune on your solo record, Hand To Mouth, called “The Search.”
Thanks. That was one take. In fact, we wrote that on the spot. We turned the tape machine on and to my partner at the time, who was playing keyboards, I said, “Just follow me.” And we were just sitting across from each other in the studio and that’s just total stream of consciousness. That was not planned at all.
I understand you have multiple harmonicas that you play during a show. It’s not just one harmonica that you use.
No, cause they’re tuned differently. Each one is tuned to a particular key so when the key changes I’ll need to play a different harmonica. “Whiskey River” is in the key of G, “Nightlife” is in the key of C. There’s twelve keys so I have a minimum of twelve harmonicas up there. You have to be prepared for every key. There’s no rule for what keys we’re going to do the song in, just whatever is comfortable for Willie. I mean, each night it’s the same key but I have to be prepared.
Who was the first real rock star you ever met?
Maybe Leon Russell, who was like at the time the biggest rock star on the planet. He was a big fan of Willie’s and he and Willie were friends so he would come around Austin and sit in with us and play sometimes. Then he actually toured with us for a year. I think he was going through a divorce and wanted to kind of just disappear so he played piano in the band for a good year and then toured with us. He was great. I would ride his bus sometimes and we would talk but he’s kind of shy and didn’t talk a lot.
What was the first song you obsessed over as a kid?
Oh, I think it was probably the Beach Boys, probably because they were the biggest thing at the time and I just loved the Beach Boys, I loved the music, I loved their harmonies and I liked the songs. I wanted to be a surfer, which it’s hard to surf in Dallas. Surf is not up in Dallas (laughs).
What song do you remember as taking the longest to get right or to finish in the studio?
I don’t know, cause I’m pretty quick and spontaneous. The Sinatra records, the harmonica is a little more sophisticated on it, it’s not just playing blues licks. Some of it is seriously arranged. One of my favorite solos of all time is “Here, There & Everywhere” with Emmylou. It changes key and I had to play several different harmonicas and Brian Ahern, who was her producer, was such a perfectionist. I’d given up a long time ago on that solo but we worked with it for a long time. I did it live in the studio but never performed it live.
Honeysuckle Rose, the movie: Was that fun or were you stressing about your part, cause you had a little more to do than the other guys in the band.
Yeah, I was. I didn’t feel very comfortable being an actor. But we were just kind of playing ourselves so that was a fun time, actually. But it wasn’t like I wanted to pursue acting after that.
Bee Spears was such a trip in that movie. Is that how he really was?
Oh, he was crazier in real life!
Speaking of crazy, how did you end up playing on Motley Crue’s “Smokin’ In The Boy’s Room”?
I was living in California and I had already worked on a Blue Oyster Cult record [Mirrors] and their producer called me, Tom Werman was his name, and he was doing Motley Crue and there was this harmonica part and Vince was trying to play it and I think the band just wasn’t happy with his performance or something, cause it was kind of a more involved solo. Tom knew me and knew my work, so they asked me to come in and play the solo. I was really working with Tommy Lee and Tom Werman. Tommy Lee was hands on and he was with me in the studio when we were recording. And Tommy was just one of the sweetest guys I’d ever met.
You need to do something crazy like he did where he went upside down in his drum set
Yeah, just shoot me out of a canon or something (laughs)
When you hear a harmonica playing, what do you hear?
I hear if they can play or not (laughs). It depends on who is playing. If it’s somebody like Toots Thielemans or Little Walter or Paul Butterfield, who is my favorite, or Kim Wilson, what I hear when I hear those guys, I think, God, I’ve been able to fake it for so long I hope I don’t get found out.
What did you love about Butterfield?
Everything. He’s my favorite. His phrasing, his tone, and I got to spend a lot of time with him too. He was an interesting guy; a bunch of different guys (laughs). He was very troubled at the end, had some serious issues, and died way too young. But he was very supportive of me where he really wasn’t supportive of other harmonica players. But we’d spent a lot of time together in New York when I’d be up there playing or visiting and he’d come sit in. He played on Hand To Mouth. In fact, the song “Hand To Mouth,” he came by the studio when we were recording that and I just set up a mic and he and I just played off of each other. It’s the very last song, just kind of a little harmonica jam. I listen to him every night before I go on just to kind of get in the mood.
What about Charlie Musselwhite?
I love Charlie. He’s a good friend of mine and yes, we’ve got to put him in there too on the list of guys. He’s very sweet. He’s been very supportive of me. He’s like a teacher to me. I listen to him and I listen to what he’s doing. I call him up every once in a while and say, “Hey, what were you doing on this particular song?” or “What harmonica were you playing?” or “How did you get this?”
Have you gotten up on stage with the Rolling Stones?
I have not. They just don’t let people come up onstage. But I’ve had dinner with Jagger before. And Keith sat in with us one time. We were playing at Foxwoods Casino and he sat in with us on the gospel portion of the set, “Circle Be Unbroken” and Hank Williams’ “I Saw The Light.” Then after the show I went back to my dressing room to call my girlfriend at the time and Keith walks in just to kind of get away from the crowd. He walks in, I’m on the phone, and he sits down and he’s just real quiet. Now, I don’t know him, other than seeing him onstage or to say hi, you know what I mean. It’s not like we had any conversations. But he just came to my dressing room to get away and I said, “Keith, hey man, will you say hi to my girlfriend on the phone?” And he goes, “Sure.” So I hand him the phone, and I didn’t tell her what I was doing, so he starts chatting her up and she had no idea who it was till he gave me the phone back (laughs).
Did you get a picture with him?
No, you don’t do that. But he’s very nice and very smart. Actually, the new Stones song is pretty cool but I like the old stuff like “Spider & The Fly” or “Hitch Hike,” the first couple records they did. I love that stuff, all the way up to Sticky Fingers, I guess, or Black & Blue. In fact, I was looking for a place to buy that on vinyl.
Have you ever played shows solo, just you?
Nope. I jokingly asked Willie one time, “When do I get to stand in the middle?” And he said, “Anytime you want. Anytime you think you can.” (laughs) Nobody wants to hear just a harmonica play and I really don’t have a song repertoire that I play. I’ve never really done that.
Can you sing?
Nope, not at all. Well, the Country Music Hall Of Fame has a series called Nashville Cats where they highlight the career of a different studio cat and they did me. They interviewed me for an hour or so and it was a lot of fun. I had to put a band together and play like three or four songs and I got the rhythm section, bass and drums, from My Morning Jacket and my guitar player was Duane Eddy. I was just in the studio with Carl Broemel for his new record. And I did something with Tom Morello. One of the songs, “Every Step That I Take,” on his last record he did acoustically with this Chicago rapper [Whethan] and that was a real treat for me.
Now you need to go play with Slash
Yeah, that would be fun
It’s interesting that you don’t stay in your comfort zone or genre
Yeah, that would be too limiting, you know what I mean. I have to be a jack of all trades, a master of none.
Who was the most out-there person you played with?
Wynton Marsalis was really a lot of work. Being with these great jazz musicians, I really couldn’t sleepwalk through it. But I was in my comfort zone because we were doing the songs of Ray Charles or some blues songs.
Jazz is like 99% improvisation and that’s what you do
Yeah, but it’s blues jazz. It’s not like Miles Davis. But I did spend time with Miles. In fact, there’s a picture of us on my website, which is www.mickeyraphael.com. He had come to see us in Vegas and spent two weeks hanging out with us and every night he’d sit on my side of the stage. One time he came over and picked up a harmonica and just started playing it and somebody walked by with a camera and snapped a picture of us cheek-to-cheek playing harmonica after the show, backstage. It was a thrill.
Portrait by Jack Spencer; live photos by Mary Andrews & Amy Harris
One Response
Great interview!