Willie Nelson Album: “Sings Kristofferson”

Description :

Long before alternative country, even before "outlaw country," Kris Kristofferson was defining the outer limits of country music with his frank, boozy, often risque songs and rough-hewn singing. In 1979, Nelson recorded a collection of Kristofferson's best compositions, appropriately titled WILLIE NELSON SINGS KRISTOFFERSON. The set kicks off with a funky take on "Me and Bobbie McGee," then slides effortlessly through eight more classics including "Help Me Make Me Through the Night," "Sunday Morning Comin' Down," "For the Good Times," and one of gospel's great songs of self-recrimination, "Why Me." <p>Recorded at the peak of Nelson's fame, this disc is vintage Willie and Family, loose but never sloppy. It almost sounds as if the band is playing the songs for the first time, but that they know each other so well and are such expert players that the whole thing falls together naturally and effortlessly. Nelson obviously loves this material, and it shows both in his singing and his guitar playing, which is particularly inspired here. In the 1980s Willie and Kristofferson formed a country supergroup with Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash, recording and touring as The Highwaymen.

I love the content of this CD, but I must say the remastering job is the pits. It starts off okay, but about halfway through it starts to sound muffled. My favorite song, "Loving Her Was Easier", has no high frequency content at all. I've heard this album on LP, and sad to say, the LP sounded better. And be forewarned: "Loving Her Was Easier" also sounds lousy on the 3-disc set "Revolutions of Time." It sounds as if they just lifted it from this CD. Shame on you, Legacy!

Throughout his career Willie has had great success doing both his own material as well as interpreting the cream of other songwriters efforts. And no doubt about it, when Willie does a song the interpretation may be many things, but it will certainly be unique. Such is the case here. He takes the absolute best songs of Kristofferson's catalog (through 1979) and makes them his own. Just listen to the intro to the first track. Is there any doubt at all who is the artist here? Is it one of Willie's best efforts? In the context of his prolific body of work, probably not. Is it the best single artist collection of Kristofferson's writing in one place? Probably. Sure, Ray Price's is the definative "For The Good Times". Ditto for Johnny Cash's "Sunday Morning...", and who could ever forget Janis' version of "Me & Bobby McGee"? Artists from Sinatra to Al Green to Lawrence Welk to Dizzy Gillespie to 450+ others at last count have covered Kris' songs, mostly drawing from the same nine songs presented here. But these versions make them sound like they were written just for Willie and his sparse band. It would have been nice to also include "One Day At A Time" (co-written with Marijohn Wilkin) or one of the Kristofferson-Silverstein collaborations. The best of those, "Once More With Feeling" had already been re-released several times in compilations by RCA after Willie jumped to Columbia, so it's understandable why it didn't appear here.

Obviously recorded/mastered on analog equipment before Jimmy Bowen forced modern (for then) production values down Nashville's bean-counters' throats, the audio suffers a bit. Drums sound horrible with no high end, but vocals and most other instruments are ok. "Trigger" has a mellow sound because Willie wants it that way, or he wouldn't use nylon strings. The electric guitar sound falls victim to dated effects pedals on some, but not all, tracks. Columbia could probably do better now, but this album was issued on CD before the digital remix/remaster craze of the early-mid 90's when the technology really took off. Based on the quality/condition of the original analog masters, and lack of demand for an upgrade, this may be as good as we can hope for. And it's better than most of what came out of Nashville in 1979.