Here's a story for you. I like it for lots of reasons, not least that it's a great illustration of how ability, perseverance, timing, coincidence, and sheer bloody luck have to come together to get the work out there.

Prologue: You've almost certainly heard of Willie Nelson. If you're a regular listener of public radio's AfroPop Worldwide with Georges Collinet, you've probably heard of Ned Sublette, who often co-hosts when the subject is Cuban music, about which he knows plenty and has written a book. I wouldn't have Ned's CD Cowboy Rumba if Ned's wife, Constance Ash, a writer and fantasy novelist, hadn't sent me a copy. Several years later I'm still driving to it, working to it, reading e-mail to it . . .

So, the story: In 1981, Texas-born singer-songwriter Ned Sublette wrote a song called "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly," whose chorus goes like this:

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other
What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels for his brother
Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out. 

Sublette recalls: "It was the era of the urban cowboy plague, when the country charts were full of cowboys this and cowboys that songs.  Inspired, I wrote this song, imagining Willie Nelson singing it."

Nelson didn't sing it, but Sublette did: it was frequently requested at his gigs, he made a couple of recordings of it, another group covered it. "I tried to place it in Brokeback Mountain," he notes, "but the word I got was that it was too funny for a tear-jerkin' movie."

Here comes the woo-woo coincidence harmonic convergence part. Around 1988 a friend and fellow musician of Sublette's passed a track of the song along to Willie Nelson. It wound up in a drawer with a bunch of other demos.

Two years ago David Anderson, Willie Nelson's friend and for some 30 years his tour manager, came out to his boss.

Last March, in the process of recording several songs for iTunes, Nelson found "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly" in a drawer. He recorded it. Anderson says it was Nelson's way of telling a longtime friend that everything was OK.

Later in 2005, Brokeback Mountain, a movie about two cowboys who are secretly very fond of each other, was released. It's a hit. It's been nominated for a bunch of Oscars.

On Valentine's Day 2006 Willie Nelson -- who sings "He Was a Friend of Mine" on the Brokeback soundtrack -- premiered "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly" on the Howard Stern show. In a prepared statement Nelson said, "This song's been in the closet for 20 years." It's now available at iTunes (URL below).

Says Sublette: "It's pretty amazing to hear Willie sing this song.  Not just because it has the word 'queer' in it.  Not even because it's the first time I've heard Willie Nelson sing the word 'fuck.'  But because of his interpretive power.  Since I originally imagined Willie singing it, I feel kind of like I already heard it, way back when.  But Willie as an interpreter is always surprising, and I learned a hundred things about my own song hearing him give it back to me."

Now the song has a video, and there's going to be a ringtone. (I just learned what those are.) The iTunes version can be downloaded from
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=121720398

Info from Ned Sublette's statement released on February 14, 2006 -- thanks, Constance! -- and from Mario Tarradell's February 14 story "Willie opens closet with 'Cowboys'" in the Dallas Morning News (www.dallasnews.com).