Review: National treasure Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic in Camden with Bob Dylan, Mavis Staples, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

Willie, or won’t he?

That was the question Thursday in Camden as Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic arrived for a historic date at the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion with a once-in-a-lifetime lineup of opening acts that included Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and Mavis Staples.

Would Willie be able to headline his own Independence Day party, the latest iteration of a tradition that began in Dripping Springs, Texas, in 1973, that was making its first East Coast appearance just across the river from where America was signed into being 248 years ago?

He would and he did, thank goodness. But until the moment the Red Headed Stranger walked on stage alongside his son Lukas Nelson just before 10 p.m. on Thursday, that happy outcome was in doubt.

Nelson’s “Outlaw Music Festival” tour kicked off two weeks ago, and until it arrived in Camden — with Staples, country pop star Maren Morris, and duo Bowen & Young added to the Outlaw bill of Dylan, Plant, Krauss, and hotshot guitarist Celisse — the star of the show had missed all eight previous dates due to an undisclosed illness.

Because Nelson is 91, his absence has been cause for concern, which continued after he was cleared by doctors to play in Massachusetts two days before the Picnic, but still didn’t perform.

But make it on stage he did, sitting between Lukas and guitarist Waylon Payne on his right, in the seat usually occupied by his younger son Micah, who stood in that same spot in May when he played Camden with Neil Young.

As is customary, Nelson began with Johnny Bush’s “Whiskey River,” then tossed his cowboy hat aside before briskly moving into a sprightly “Stay All Night” and “Bloody Mary Morning.” Then he took a moment to sincerely thank the audience for coming out. “I’ve been gone for a while,” he said. “It’s good to be back.”

There the national treasure was in the flesh, in a red bandanna and black T-shirt emblazoned with the word Legalize, his trusty Trigger attached to the red, white, and blue guitar cord that matched the American flag backdrop behind him.

His timing — on tasty Django Reinhardt-style guitar work, and as a sui generis vocalist on Ray Charles’ “Georgia on My Mind” and his own “On the Road Again” — was impeccable as always. His very presence was reassuring.

Still, it was a worrying evening, and a poignant one as well. The vestiges of whatever respiratory ailment Nelson has been suffering from were clearly still there. He seemed short of breath at times, understandably so as a nonagenarian on an 80-degree night thick with humidity.

He joked about his own mortality in songs that had a little more edge this time around: “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” and “Still Not Dead,” in which he sang: “The news said I was gone, to my dismay / Don’t bury me, I’ve got a show to play.”

The most moving moments came on duets. With Lukas — who paid homage to Stevie Ray Vaughan with a blistering cover of Larry Davis’ “Texas Flood” — Nelson paired off on a tender cover of Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe.” “Stay with me, let’s just breathe,” they sang together. “Hold me ‘til I die, meet you on the other side.”

Equally powerful was a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” Payne — the son of the late Jody Payne, a longtime Nelson cohort member — took the lead and both Nelsons joined in, with Willie gaining strength from the support of his Family Band.

Another high point was “The Border,” the riveting Rodney Crowell-penned title track about a MexicanAmerican border guard from Nelson’s new album (His 75th!). The show ended with the band joined by Morris, Celisse, and others as it looked to the hereafter on sacred standards “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” and “I’ll Fly Away” and then the instrumental finale of Hank Williams’ “I Saw the Light,” as Nelson waved goodbye and exited the stage.

Great show, Willie. See you next year.

Earlier in the afternoon, rising star Celisse shouted out buried-in-Philadelphia electric guitar pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe, declaring herself to be “a glorious, Black, Queer, plus-sized woman” and played an extended version of Bill Withers’ “Use Me” while flanked by signs that loudly proclaimed “Celisse Loves You.”

And oh yeah: some other legends played on Thursday, too. All in all, it was a great day for the gerontocracy on the anniversary of the birth of American democracy.

Dylan preceded Nelson with a 75-minute set that was inscrutable as always. Playing with a revamped band that included all-time great drummer Jim Keltner, the Bard — at 83, a youngster by Thursday’s standards — has moved on from the Rough & Rowdy Ways album that dominated his set list on recent Philly stops at the Met and Fillmore.

Instead, this was freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Standing behind a baby grand piano in an open-necked tan shirt, his set included a smattering of his best-known songs. He opened with “Highway 61 Revisited” and later powered through “Ballad of a Thin Man.”

» READ MORE: Review: Bob Dylan, ‘Rough and Rowdy’ and full of grace in Fishtown

But the set was notable for its out-of-left-field covers: a sweetly melancholy take on the Fleetwood’s 1959 hit “Mr. Blue,” a winningly rough and rowdy ramble through Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie” and Dave Dudley’s “Six Days On The Road,” and the Grateful Dead’s mysterious love song “Stella Blue.”

“Simple Twist of Fate,” with Nelson’s harmonica player Mickey Raphael guesting, was sung with an alternate set of lyrics. The title track to 1990′s lowly regarded Under the Red Sky was excavated with positive results. With multi-instrumentalist Donnie Herron gone from the band, Dylan had more room to move, with his sly, scarred voice front and center. Stay strange, Bob.

Plant and Krauss were fabulous. The transatlantic duo kept the Led Zeppelin-loving crowd happy with “Rock and Roll,” delivered with solos by guitarist JD McPherson and fiddler Stuart Duncan, and spooky takes on “Gallows Pole,” “The Battle of Evermore,” and “When the Levee Breaks.”

But what really makes the combo of the crystalline voiced Krauss and leonine Plant — a babe in the woods, at only 75! — magical is that they meld Appalachian mountain music, Celtic folk, and swampy Louisiana rhythm and blues into their own kind of alchemy.

It’s gorgeous stuff, and Plant got emotional talking about the turn his career has taken since he first collaborated with Krauss on Raising Sand in 2007. He thanked the musicians on stage for having “saved my life, if you like,” and called Krauss “my dear accomplice.”

She gently mocked him, expressing empathy for the plight of an Englishman who finds himself in the middle of a celebration of American independence and a man now eating “hamburgers and fries” instead of “Bird’s custard and mushy peas.”

The hour-long set by Mavis Staples — who turns 85 this week — was a blast, including curve balls like a cover of Talking Heads’ “Slippery People” and a wonderful Howlin’ Wolf imitation. She got down and dirty on Parliament-Funkadelic’s “Can You Get to That.” Nobody sings as good as Staples, whose earthy, gospel-powered, playful, and dare I say sexy — yes, sexy! — voice remains undiminished midway through her eighth decade.

When she declared “I’m just another soldier in the army of love” — on what is one of the Staple Singers’ best-loved songs that dates back to her family’s crucial role in the civil rights movement — who could resist her call to march for justice?

Morris, who followed Staples on stage, impressed with her polished country-pop, particularly in the music-lover’s anthem “My Church.” The Texas native was the most currently mainstream act on the bill, and was an outlier generationally and in the slickness of sound, but she held her own on stage. And as a veteran of many Nelson Picnics growing up, she was suitably in awe of the legends she was surrounded by.