Released: 2003
Tracks: Night Life; Hello Walls; Crazy; Funny How Time Slips Away; I Never Cared for You; The Party’s Over; Good Times; Me and Paul; Shotgun Willie; Bloody Mary Morning; Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain; Good Hearted Woman; If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time; Uncloudy Day; Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys; Georgia on My Mind; Blue Skies; All of Me; Heartbreak Hotel; Help Me Make it Through the Night; Whiskey River; Stay a Little Longer; My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys; Faded Love; On the Road Again; Angel Flying to Close the Sun; Always on My Mind; Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning; Pancho and Lefty; To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before; City of New Orleans; Seven Spanish Angels; Forgiving You Was Easy; Highwayman; Living in the Promiseland; Nothing I Can Do About It Now; Graceland; Everywhere I Go; Slow Dancing; Mendocino County Line; One Time Too Many
Best track: On the Road Again
Tracks to skip: Heartbreak Hotel, Help Me Make it Through the Night, Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning, To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before, City of New Orleans, Seven Spanish Angels, Living In the Promiseland, Nothing I Can Do About it Now, Everywhere I Go, Mendocino County Line, One Time Too Many
My recent stretch of reviews has been interesting, and if you look closely you’ll see that I’ve been working through stuff in alphabetical order. I always have odd ways of picking stuff to review. Obviously I skipped from
Yo-Yo Ma to
Pink Floyd. I had this Willie Nelson down, but it was just easier to put on a 40-minute Floyd CD as opposed to taking close to 3 hours of a day and delving into this double CD set. It’s not torture or anything (well, the second disc is, but I’ll get to that in a bit) and I really love the first disc, but sitting through the whole thing at once is difficult. So, I noticed that since I had the time to do it tonight, I’d go full-throttle and knock this thing out. I gotta do the “intro” first…
I grew up in Texas and have lived 27 of my almost 32 years there. I’ve heard plenty of country music in my life so it’s pretty well established what I like of it and what I don’t. Generally, I don’t care for country. I think most of it (the popular stuff) is soulless crud. What you hear on Country Top 40 radio is definitely some of the worst music out there. Of course, you could put ALL “Top 40” in that same boat. I’m pretty particular about the country I like, so when I hear something that I like, I tend to latch on to it. I really, really dig Willie Nelson’s music. He’s one of the few that really speaks to me. I don’t even know where it started, but growing up it was easy to tell the difference between Willie Nelson and the crap that was played on the radio all the time. Here’s a guy who, holy crap, writes his own songs and, holy crap, can play the hell out of the guitar. Unheard of! I think that even if I didn’t like the man’s music, I’d still respect him since he’s such a great guitarist. I like his music, so yay, bonus for me.
This 2 disc set is rightfully called The Essential. It covers a wide range of his output (from 1961 to 2001) and it touches on all of the important tracks in his career. It’s awesome that you get so many of the great 60’s and 70’s songs, but then you also get the 80’s and 90’s stuff that isn’t so hot. There are quite a few single-disc compilations out there and they’re definitely great, but you get more good songs with this one. I enjoy his 60’s material. He’s just starting out and the songs are kind of basic, but still, some great songs came out of that period. Stuff like Crazy (Patsy Cline is great, but I actually prefer Willie’s version), Night Life & Funny How Time Slips Away are all great songs. On the whole his early stuff slowly gets the ball rolling. Things really start to move, however, when we hit Bloody Mary Morning. For the most part, that stretch of songs from the 70’s until about 1982 is just awesome. I’m not going to type all of those songs, but just look up there ^ and notice the songs going from Bloody Mary Morning until Always on My Mind. Great, great songs. Disc 1 of the set (clearly the superior disc) ends with a great 1-2 punch of Whisky River>Stay a Little Longer. Oh yeah, the 3 representatives from his Stardust album are also phenomenal: Georgia on My Mind, Blue Skies, and All of Me. Hell yeah, I say. His version of Georgia on My Mind is so awesome.
Like I said, for the most part, disc 1 is solid. The only ones I don’t care to hear (and usually skip) are Heartbreak Hotel & Help Me Make it Through the Night. Heartbreak Hotel is decent. I end up skipping it since I’m just not very fond of the song anyway. Nothing really bad in the performance, it’s just that I’m not enthralled with the song so any performance of it has me reaching for the fwd button. Help Me Make it Through the Night is a bit too warbly in the vocals, but it has a good guitar solo in it. Still, I usually skip it. Those are the only negative spots (and they’re not horrible negative spots) on disc 1.
Disc 2 continues on with the later 70’s material and ends up with…ugh, the recent stuff. Most of disc 2 is filled with duets. Merle Haggard, Julio Iglesias, Ray Charles, Waylon/Johnny/Kris, Emmylou Harris, U2, Lee Ann Womack, Aerosmith. There’s some good there, but there’s also some suck. Anyway, let’s talk about the good stuff first. The beginning of the disc continues on with his best material: My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (gorgeous song), On the Road Again (amazing), Always on My Mind (stunning). Those 3 songs, man, I just really love them. I listed On the Road Again as the “best track” from this collection and it probably is my favorite song of his. It’s absolutely a perfect song and it has such a wonderful spirit about it. It’s getting out there and playing music and doing what we’re best at. I never, ever get tired of jamming to this song. There are so many other good songs on here though, any number of them could be the “best track” (Crazy, Georgia on My Mind, Whiskey River, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys, Always on My Mind…to name a few).
For me the holes start to show even near the beginning of disc 2. Faded Love is decent. Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground is also only decent. Willie’s vocals are again a bit too warbly, but like Help Me Make it Through the Night it has a gorgeous guitar solo in it (in case I haven’t said it enough, Willie’s a kick ass guitarist). The end of the really good material on this disc is Always on My Mind. A few more skippers abound (To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before? So bad it’s laughable). The music for Highwayman is a bit cheesy, but the song’s good and I like hearing Willie, Waylon, Kristofferson & Johnny Cash together. There’s something pretty cool about that lineup. Except for a good version of Paul Simon’s Graceland, the rest of this disc is pretty bad. There might be a few songs I tolerate, but mostly they’re bad. I mean, the previously unreleased track Willie did with Aerosmith, One Time Too Many is absolutely horrible. Steven Tyler and Willie Nelson DO NOT sound good together.
So there you go…the first disc and the first few of the 2nd disc are great and except for a few scattered ones, everything else on disc 2 is pretty much skippable. For me. I’m sure some people out there will find that material to be right up their alley. I’m sure some people actually like his duet with Julio Iglesias. I’m not one. The thing is, the scope of this collection means that most everyone will have something to enjoy here. Maybe there are “better” Willie Nelson comps out there. Go do some research. I like this one though. Taken on the whole, the good and the bad, the good definitely comes out ahead. I mean, Willie’s a great songwriter. I’m sure there are a ton of great songs he’s done the past 2 decades that are better than some of the tracks here. No biggie though. There’s plenty of great songs to make this “Essential”.
Rating: 85
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