"Steve, I've got you beat on Willie-listening...I've been a fan of his since I was six years old, and that's now a half-century ago. I even remember him when he really looked like the pictures in the CD's accompanying small booklet...no beard, no pigtail, just one damned well-used face."

You've got everybody beat on Willie-listening. Other than one obscure, local single in the late 1950's, Willie's career began in the early 1960's, and that's about a decade off from a half-century.