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Willie Nelson was born in Abbott, Texas on April 29, 1933. In 2012 a statute of Willie was unveiled in Austin, but instead of choosing his birthday, organizers chose the appropriate date of April 20 at 4:20 p.m. for the man who released an album that features a song with Snoop Dogg called, “Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die.” Today we consider another one of his great collaborations, this one with Ray Charles singing “Seven Spanish Angels.”

The songwriters wrote the song in a style reminiscent of Marty Robbins’s “El Paso.”  But since Robbins had passed away, reportedly they turned to Willie Nelson.  And, in at least one version of the story, after Nelson made a demo of “Seven Spanish Angels,” producer Billy Sherill suggested they also enlist Ray Charles in a duet. (But see video below for a slightly different version of events.)

The duet was released as a single in November 1984 and originally appeared on Nelson’s album, Half Nelson (1985) and on Charles’s album, Friendship (1984). Although Charles had several successful country recordings including his great album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, this song was his most successful single.

I was surprised to learn that this song was so successful for Charles, as it is not the first country recording I think of when I think of Charles. But it is an excellent one.

In the video below, contrary to the Wikipedia story that Nelson’s producer enlisted Ray Charles after Nelson already had made a recording of the song, Nelson says here that Charles brought the song to him.  Nelson adds that “it is going to be a phonograph record pretty soon.”

The Song’s Story and Who Are the Seven Spanish Angels?

Like Willie Nelson’s great recording of Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho & Lefty” with Merle Haggard, “Seven Spanish Angels,” written by Troy Seals and Eddie Setser, recounts the story of an outlaw in Mexico. Instead of being about two men, though “Seven Spanish Angels” tells the story of an outlaw and his girlfriend. But the song takes a more tragic turn than the death of the outlaw.

After the outlaw is killed in a gunfight with a posse, the woman exclaims, “Father, please forgive me; I can’t make it without my man.” Then she picked up his rifle, knowing it is empty, and points it at the men who then shoot and kill her.
The Seven Spanish Angels in the song “pray for the lovers in the valley of the guns.” When the smoke cleared, “seven Spanish angels took another angel home.”

The line about “another angel” at the end always made me wonder, does that mean the Seven Spanish Angels left the woman’s boyfriend behind? But there is another way to read the chorus because it repeats throughout the song, including after the first verse.

He looked down into her brown eyes,
And said “Say a prayer for me;”
She threw her arms around him,
Whispered “God will keep us free;”
They could hear the riders comin’,
He said “This is my last fight;
If they take me back to Texas,
They won’t take me back alive.”

The outlaw does not clearly die in the first verse but it is followed by the chorus, which includes the line “And seven Spanish Angels / Took another angel home.” So the chorus at that point tells us the outlaw died and the seven Spanish Angels took him “home.”  Then, after the verse about the girlfriend dying, the chorus, which is repeated, is just referring to the angels taking her “home.”

Such a reading is also consistent with a verse written for the song that was omitted in the Nelson-Charles version:  “Now the people in the valley swear/ That when the moon’s just right,/ They see the Texan and his woman/ Ride across the clouds at night.” That verse tells us the lovers are still together after death. But the producer of the recording, Billy Sherrill apparently opted to omit that verse as it made the song too long.

And so, due to time constraints, we did not get to see the lovers happy again.  Although maybe it was enough to know they had gone off with the seven Spanish Angels.

But who are the seven Spanish Angels?  Some have said they signify “not just celestial figures, but also a collective yearning for salvation and solace.” Others have focused on the number seven and used the Bible to conclude they are a “reference to the seven angels from the Book of Revelation, whom bear witness to the end times.” Still others have reasoned that since angels have no nationality, the “Spanish” in the description means the seven Spanish Angels is a “reference to the members of the posse sent in pursuit of the couple.”

But the ambiguity of the meaning of “Seven Spanish Angels” may be intentional and there is no one definitive meaning. Reportedly, songwriter Eddie Setser came up with the title before writing the song.  Thus, it was maybe the sound of the mysterious title that first attracted them to creating the story.  And there are other ambiguities in the song, as we are left wondering why the man was being pursued to be taken back to Texas. We assume he is an outlaw, but we do not even know that for sure.

The only certainty we end up with is that love is eternal.  And that is not a bad message for a song.

And that is the story behind the song.  What do you think happened at the end of “Seven Spanish Angels”? Leave your two cents in the comments.

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