The promoters had carved an amphitheater out of a bluff, off-road in the middle of nowhere. A documentary film crew, manned a hot air balloon that hovered in front of and just above the stage. Nick Ray, director of “Rebel Without A Cause” and “Johnny Guitar” in the 1950’s had been engaged to direct the film. Given the sketchy financial circumstances and Ray’s penchant at that point in his career for abusing mind altering substances, the film was never completed. 

The unfolding of the event itself was surreal. What crowd there was represented an odd mixture of urban cowboy posers, spleef-toking, Armadillo World Headquarters hippies, and beer-soaked, back country rednecks: outlaw country music and abusing alcohol and recreational drugs the only things anyone had in common. There was no visible security. Nothing ran on time. No one seemed to know what was going on.

Jerry Jeff Walker was scheduled to headline at 8pm with Willie Nelson to follow. Hours passed between sets. Walker didn’t appear on stage till midnight. He was clearly not happy, at the very least inebriated, and played, a short set, facing his band with his back to an increasingly boisterous crowd, the aforementioned hot air balloon bobbing up and down above their heads, frequently dipping down to block their view. Members of the audience, slowly growing hostile, in turn, began to heckle the film crew and stage hands, tossing empty beer cans and bottles at them as the evening progressed. In this environment, Willie and his band set up shortly after midnight and began to play, without apology, as if they were performing in front of a packed stadium of enthusiastic fans instead of a ragtag crowd of pissed off misfits too drunk and high to have left early. 

It was an extraordinary performance, one the audience hadn’t deserved and one the band and its leader weren’t, under the circumstances, beholden to give.

When it was over, everyone in attendance knew they had seen something special. Only later did it occur to me that I had witnessed a work of art performed for no reason other than to make a masterpiece out of an otherwise failed spectacle, one that no one would remember later. It was a performance that not only displayed the depth and breadth of Willie Nelson’s talent but also took the measure of the man himself and found him to be generous of spirit.

By now, the occasion of the concert has descended so far into obscurity that I could find only one reference to it in an online article in which Ray Benson, leader of the Texas swing band “Asleep at the Wheel”, recalled that “It was supposed to be a big festival — but nobody came.” 

Over the years, all of my negatives covering the event have been lost but one, only recently discovered. It’s one that I had captured that night with a borrowed 300mm telephoto lens, taken 50 years ago, just as his reputation began to transcend country music and he became a national treasure. Nelson has recently celebrated his 90th birthday and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.