S5 E7: John Leventhal on “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain”

One by Willie

John Spong

Music, Music Commentary

4.8 • 833 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2024

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, six-time Grammy-winning producer, songwriter, and virtuoso guitarist John Leventhal—see Shawn Colvin’s A Few Small Repairs; his wife, Rosanne Cash’s The River and the Thread—discusses the song that first hipped him to the genius of Willie, 1975’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” He describes it with a producer’s ultimate praise, calling it a record that seems to exist outside of any era, before getting into his session work with the Hall of Fame band that backed Willie on 1993’s Across the Borderline, plus the reasons he thinks of Willie as a cross between legendary Nashville guitarist Grady Martin and Pablo Picasso...and his late father-in-law, Johnny Cash, as a cross between Elvis and Abe Lincoln.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Texas Monthly.
0:07.0	Hey there, I'm John Spong with Texas Monthly Magazine, and this is One by Willie, a podcast in which I talk each week to one notable Willie Nelson fan about one Willie song that they really love.
0:23.6	This week, six-time Grammy winner John Leaventhal, a virtuoso guitarist and one of the leading Americana record producers,
0:32.0	talks about the 1975 song that broke Willie's career wide open, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. Now, casual music
0:39.8	listeners will probably know John Best from two iconic 90s pop hits that he had a huge hand in,
0:46.2	Mark Cone's Walking in Memphis, and Sean Colvin's son he came home, as well as his collaborations
0:52.1	with his wife, Roseanne Cash, like her landmark albums
0:55.7	The Wheel and the River and the Thread. But with us, he's going to focus on Blue Eyes, the song
1:00.6	he says first clued him into the genius of Willie, before describing what it was like to be a young
1:05.6	picker working with Hall of Fame session players on Willie's pivotalivotal 1993 album across the borderline,
1:12.5	and then explaining why he thinks of Willie is a cross between Grady Martin and Pablo Picasso
1:17.1	and his late father-in-law Johnny Cash is a cross between Elvis and Abe Lincoln.
1:23.4	So let's do it.
1:25.6	Hey, it's art.
1:50.0	Yeah. So let's do it. It's hard. Where we start? Where we start is, what's we start is what's so cool about blue eyes crying in the rain? Well, you know, when I was approached about doing this, of course it's like choosing my favorite of any artist that I've been moved by is always challenging because I tend I'm not really wired
2:02.3	to have favorites. It's just, it's kind of all in the stew. But I realized, and for a minute I was going to
2:10.3	pick three days because I just kind of, I just kind of love that song. And, you know, it's just a great, you know, Texas, Ray Price Shuffle.
2:20.0	But it's got a cool twist on it, both musically and lyrically.
2:24.5	But then when I really, I went one step deeper, I realized that the Red-Haded Stranger record
2:31.6	and this track in particular is really if I look back is what
2:36.4	introduced me to Willie. Okay. And so it had in some ways the most direct and visceral
2:43.1	impact on me because there was a lot of things going on about it. It was like, correct
	...

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