Audiobiography

Description

For over 35 years, Bobbie Nelson--sister of Willie--has sat at the piano in her brother's concerts, the modest female counterpart to the hairy-legged, craggy-faced men who cart the Texas honky-tonk sound across America. Her playing melds into the ensemble that makes up Willie's rough-hewn style, even as it also stands out in its assertiveness. At 76, the elder Nelson is just now releasing her first solo album, one that employs far more subtlety than she's able to demonstrate in the Family Band. And she's packed plenty of other surprises under the lid, rendering her brother's standard, "Crazy," as a cocktail-hour homage, for example, and imbuing the classic "Laura" with all the grand, old-style romance of yesteryear. If a Spanish number, "Sabor a Mi," seems a bit beyond her emotionally, she rolls out the boogie-woogie and ragtime of her youth with ease and aplomb, turning transcendent with such sporting-house staples as "12th Street Rag" and "Pinetop's Boogie." Always an instrumentalist, she never attempts vocal accompaniment, and calls upon her famous sibling to bookend the album with two of his recent original songs. Both find him in a romantic mood, the latter, "'Til Tomorrow," making its debut here. But it's "Back to Earth," which also appears on Songbird and Last of the Breed, that resonates long after the album is over, Bobbie's understated playing giving solace to her brother's woeful declaration of a shattered love affair. --Alanna Nash