Disco de Willie Nelson: “The Essential Willie Nelson [Limited]”

Willie Nelson did not make any real impact as a singer until the mid seventies (and it was the eighties before Britain took him seriously) but this compilation attempts to cover the whole of his career to date. Inevitably, this means that a lot of great songs are omitted but if this is your first Willie Nelson album and you want to explore further, you will find plenty to choose from.

The set opens with Willie's versions of the four songs that established Willie as a songwriter in the sixties, these being Night life, Hello walls, Crazy and Funny how time slips away. Six further tracks cover the sixties and early seventies, a period during which Willie recorded plenty of interesting music but with only limited success.

In 1975, Willie recorded a cover of Blue eyes crying in the rain, an old Roy Acuff song, which became a major country and pop hit in America. Other hits followed including a lot of duets -so many that you could fill a boxed set with them. Just a few are included here, among them being Good hearted woman, Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys (both with Waylon Jennings), Faded love (with Ray Price - and Crystal Gayle singing backup harmony), To all the girls I've loved before (with Julio Iglesias) and Seven Spanish angels (with Ray Charles). Willie's classic solo country hits (some covers, some originals) are represented by If you've got the money I've got the time, Uncloudy day, Help me make it through the night, My heroes have always been cowboys, On the road again, Always on my mind, City of New Orleans and a few others.

Another aspect of Willie's career was the series of albums he recorded featuring songs from the Great American Songbook. The first and most famous of these albums was Stardust. It is the only songbook album from which tracks are taken and is represented here by Blue skies, Georgia on my mind and All of me. A very different double CD of Willie's music titled All the songs I've loved before was released in Britain and Australia, which was dominated by this aspect of Willie's music and which I've already reviewed.

If you only want one collection of music by Willie Nelson, this is a good one to choose.

A Quality collection from a true legend. This collection covers all the bases and record labels that this legend has recorded for. This collection is a tad bit skimpy on the Liberty and RCA material, but it would take a 3 or 4 cd set to include all the good material. It would have been nice to include "Yesterday's Wine or "Mr. Record Man" or from the Columbia years, Willie's version of "Let it Be Me". No collection is perfect and this is the best Willie collection out there. This collection is filled with Number 1 hits and covers 5 decades, WOW This collection deserves 10 stars, it is that good!!! All the classics and quality duet material is included in this collection

If you are reading this you probably already know that Willie is one of the most creative, powerful, and diverse performers of all time. In this review, I'm not going to rate the albums, just offer some insights into the CD's and DVD's that I have purchased - and I'm glad I've purchased them all.

"The Essential Willie Nelson" is essential. Be that as it may, Willie's individual CD's are so strong and the songs are so interrelated, often in a story or a tight thematic format, that they almost make the "essential" Willie Nelson unessential - but it is such a great collection of songs, that you can't get as easily any other way. Definitely worth the buy.

"The Red Headed Stranger" is one of the greatest albums of all time. It is pure genius. If you get the 70th birthday edition, you get a remastered track and extra songs. There are no less than six "A" level songs on this CD, nothing short of amazing. Plus, you get fourteen minutes of great story telling. As a story teller, Willie is only rivaled by Native American artist Robert Mirabal ("Indians Indians", "Taos Tales", "Music From A Painted Cave", "Mirabal", etc.).

"Willie and Family Live", done around 1975, is a great live album. It has lots of energy. A highlight for me was Willie Nelson, Emmy Lou Harris, and Johnny Paycheck singing "Amazing Grace" together. It also contains the fourteen minute story of the Red Headed Stranger, including "Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain". This live performance of Willie's first #1 hit is the best I have heard on any album. There is a little extra "oomph" on every song in the CD. Again, make sure you get the 70th birthday edition, it has extra goodies.

If you like the early super hits that Willie wrote for everyone else, like "Crazy", "Night Life", and "Funny How Time Slips Away", then you need to also get the "Milk Cow Blues" CD. Willie performs these and more Blues standards, usually in a duet format, with outstanding artists such as B.B. King - Rolling Stone Magazine's choice as the 3rd greatest guitarist of all time. Hearing BB and Willie strum and sing together on "Night Life" and "The Thrill is Gone" is indeed a thrill. Willie performs this album with a first class Blues band and it is a first class Blues album.

Willie's latest album, "It Will Always Be" is once again a solid piece of work. Duets with Norah Jones and Lucinda Williams help make it special, but the best part of this album is the haunting duet of Willie and Paula Nelson on the song "It Will Always Be". This is a song that hits you in the gut, and it rivals Bruce Springstein's "Streets of Philadelphia" in terms of its raw emotion. A number of people, including me, cried the first time they heard it: "I'm tied of this and I'm running out of time; feels like dyin', feels like cryin'; and I'm running out of time." Say it ain't so, Willie!! A second good song was written by another member of the Nelson clan. The title song is very beautiful. The tribute to the land Willie loves, "Texas", is too short but very meaningful. If this was Willie's last CD, he went out as "The Midnight Rider", a great song for the leader of the outlaw movement: "They ain't gonna catch me, I ain't go let `em catch the Midnight Rider."

"Spirit" and "Teatro" are brother/sister CDs. Both have a strong thematic core, although they are not stories. "Spirit" is one of those rare CD's when every note seems important. For most, you'll listen to it less than the other CD's, but love it equally as much. For a few, you'll play it by the hours. It is essentially a story of coping with lost love, redefining your relationship with yourself and with God, and finding love again. The music and the whole CD are moderately paced, with a strong, steady spiritual tone to it. It has a light Latin sound, essential to Willie's roots. Pictures of Willie on this album look like he came from an ancient Holy Land.

"Teatro" is the mirror of "Spirit". Again, it is a story of coping with lost love, but the story goes south, ending in murder and psychological ruin. Teatro means "theater" in Spanish and this is good to keep in mind in listening to the CD. It is just a play folks! The CD is very hard-hitting, because Willie's music is very hard-hitting and very close to the heart. The music tends to have a lively beat, with strong Latin overtones. Its haunting nature is reinforced by Emmy Lou Harris, who accompanies Willie on most of the songs. The back picture on the back of the CD case is one of the best pictures of Willie ever taken.

The "My Life" DVD is well worth the buy. The story ends before the 90's, but there is a brief update. I knew about Willie and Farm Aid, but I didn't know about the scope of his philanthropy and the diversity of populations targeted in his giving until this DVD. I was also amazed to learn that he paid his $16 million IRS debt off in one year, selling $17 million worth of songs as info-mercials to radio stations. That's a lot of love, translated into a lot of power.

A number of people criticize the "Live In Amsterdam" DVD and some of the criticisms are merited. But hey, the DVD has a large collection of great songs. Some criticisms are not fair. You perform differently and 70 than you do at 40, it is a biological rule. Willie's shows have always moved quickly from one song to the other, so the pace of the concert is nothing new. The love from the audience is shown at the end when Willie is signing autograph after autograph. The bottom line is this, if you like Willie, if you would like to watch him live occasionally instead of just hearing him through the box, and if you want those images of him at 70, then you should buy this DVD. You'll find it worthwhile.

In the final analysis, the raw power of Willie's work, formed by singing in the cotton fields with Black and Mexican laborers, and his keen insight into what people really want in music, formed not through record company analysis but through live performances on the ground, make Willie Nelson one of the most creative, powerful, and loved performers of all time.

Waylon Jennings may be recognized for having first bucked the Nashville system, but Willie Nelson proved himself the true iconoclast. Both of these venerable outlaws shook off the chains of the country music industry to create brilliant musical legacies, but as this 41-track collection so aptly shows, Nelson's run was even more idiosyncratic than his compadre's. Nelson's music and lifestyle merged into a single entity, with his touring providing the grist of a troubadour's life.

In celebration of Nelson's 70th birthday, Columbia has gathered two full CDs from over forty years and nine different labels, and spiced it with a pair of bonus tracks -- a rare B-side recorded with Irish rock band, U2, and a previously unreleased duet with Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. The set opens with Nelson's first single, on the Bellaire label, "Night Life," and closes with his Grammy winning duet with Lee Ann Womack, "Mendocino County Line." In between are samplings from his liaisons with RCA, Atlantic, Island, Lost Highway, and over two dozen tracks from his years at Columbia, including a staggering seventeen #1 singles.

In addition to his solo work, Nelson's regular collaborators, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson are all represented, as are one-time partners like Leon Russell, Ray Charles and Julio Iglesias. Throughout this collection one can hear Nelson's distinctive vocal phrasing (e.g, Nelson's recording of "Georgia on My Mind" is equally as memorable as Ray Charles' iconic rendition) and unique acoustic guitar, in service of his legendary compositions.

As Nelson broke free of the Nashville orthodoxy, his work focussed more on albums than singles, and his post-RCA albums (e.g., "Phases & Stages," "Red Headed Stranger," etc.), though well represented here, are necessarily shortchanged by the anthology form. Still, this is a nicely picked collection whose chronological sequencing plays surprisingly well, given the range of sources from which the tracks were pulled. As an overview, this provides the listener an invitation to explore Nelson's album catalog more deeply, aided by reissues forthcoming in the Spring and Summer of 2003.

Some of the space that might have fleshed out Nelson's important albums is taken up with seemingly inconsequential tracks (e.g., neither bonus track, nor his duet with Lee Ann Womack, could really be labeled "essential"). Nelson's very first single, ("Lumberjack" b/w "No Place for Me?" recorded as an independent release) would have made a more spectacular bonus. Nits aside, however, this is a very good introduction to one of country music's most talented and original artists.

4-1/2 stars, if allowed fractional ratings.

well there seem to be an awful lot of them released within the last few years. I like this compilation because it has a good mix of Willie's best starting in the early days with favorites like "Crazy" through the more pop-oriented "To All the Girls I Loved Before". I'd recommend this set for anyone who wants to feel the depth of influence that Willie has made on music on a whole.