The read
This is Willie at seventy-three, telling a story about the songwriter Cindy Walker, in the voice of a man who has spent fifty years singing just behind the beat. The measurements find the drawl’s foundation genuine: chest resonance optimal at seventy-three percent, average pitch optimal with the median down near 93 hertz, and pitch steadiness optimal — after all those road miles, the centre of the voice still holds its line. The surprise is the width: melodic range swinging through seventeen semitones, well past the band — an octave and a half of tune inside a ninety-second answer. He barely pauses; the phrasing that lags the beat in song just keeps rolling in speech, wide and unhurried and certain of where it’s going.