Happy birthday, Willie Nelson!

The legendary performer turned 76 years young April 30th. But just because he’s getting older, that doesn’t mean he’s slowing down at all — in fact, it seems like Willie is working harder than ever.

Last month the singer-songwriter released Naked Willie, a collection of songs written and recorded between 1965 and 1974. The recordings are dubbed Naked because they spotlight Nelson’s vocals, guitar, drums, bass and piano … and that’s it.

In making the album, producer Mickey Raphael took special care in stripping the original RCA recordings of backing vocals and orchestral arrangements that, at times, “conflict(ed) with the actual mood or message or meaning of the composition itself.”

Nelson has been touring in support of the record with Billy Bob Thornton. Recently, Thornton chatted with Raphael on the tour bus about working with Willie … and they decided to turn the talks into a podcast series.

You can download the first three episodes of the series exclusively. In them, you’ll hear snippets from Naked Willie and get a sense of Thornton’s enthusiasm for the Nashville scene. (Despite what often makes headlines, he really does have an impressive musical knowledge.)

Check ‘em out, then send Willie a belated birthday card!

http://blogs.usatoday.com/popcandy/2009/04/exclusive-billy-bob-thornton-talks-about-willie-nelson.html

WILLIE NELSON ON RCA, 1966-1970

17 NASHVILLE PRODUCTION TRACKS STRIPPED TO THEIR BARE-BONES ESSENCE – FREE OF LUSH ORCHESTRATIONS AND BACKING VOCALISTS

In the mid-1960s, at the dawn of Willie Nelson’s career as a country music recording artist on his first major label, RCA Records, Nashville’s assembly line studio production system was fast-moving.  It was an efficient machine that fed a never-ending supply of new albums and singles into the radio, jukebox and retail marketplace.  The production stream kept country music apace of its more dominant city cousin, Top 40, which regularly allowed Nashville hits a hallowed place on the charts.  But the price of Music City’s homogenized country music output took its toll on many an artist, and just as significantly, on the artistry that was pouring out of its most prolific songwriters.

The dozen or so original studio LPs that Willie recorded for RCA in Nashville between 1965 and 1974 were typical of the ‘Nashville Sound’: great songs – but more often than not, sweetened with lushly orchestrated arrange­ments and backing vocalists that could – and many times did – conflict with the actual mood or message or meaning of the composition itself.  Willie and his longtime sidekick, harmonica player Mickey Raphael wondered what those RCA sides would sound like, if they could retrieve the original multi-track tapes and get back to their unmasked essence, hear them naked.

Their collaboration goes public with NAKED WILLIE, a 17-track collection of songs written and recorded  by an aspiring young songwriter named Willie Nelson for RCA Records in Nashville, between 1966 and 1970.  NAKED WILLIE lays bare his original vision of those songs for the first time, with Willie’s vocals at the core, and bare-bones ‘A-Team’ guitars, piano, bass, and drums mixed as they were originally heard in the studio.  With liner notes written by CMT’s Chet Flippo, NAKED WILLIE will be available at all physical and digital retail outlets starting March 17^th through RCA/Legacy, a division of SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT

The majority of the songs on NAKED WILLIE originated as tracks on some of the albums he recorded for RCA: 1967’s The Party’s Over And Other Great Willie Nelson Songs (“The Ghost,” “The Party’s Over”); 1969’s My Own Peculiar Way (“I Just Dropped By,” “I Let My Mind Wander,” “The Local Memory”); 1970’s Laying My Burdens Down (“Where Do You Stand?” “When We Live Again,” “Laying My Burdens Down”); and 1971’s Willie Nelson & Family (“What Can You Do To Me Now?” “I’m A Memory,” and his version of Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down”).

The other six songs on NAKED WILLIE range from the rare non-LP single “Bring Me Sunshine” (recorded in 1968, one of only three songs on the CD not written by Willie, along with “Johnny One Time” and “Sunday Morning Coming Down”) to several tracks that stayed unissued in the vast Willie Nelson archive for decades.  For example, “Jimmy’s Road” (1968) showed up on the infamous The IRS Tapes: Who'll Buy My Memories? released in 1992; while 1968’s “Johnny One Time” and 1970’s “If You Could See What’s Going Through My Mind” appeared on Nashville was the Roughest, the Bear Family box set of 1998.

“At the time these original recordings were made,” writes former Rolling Stone editor Flippo, a lifelong chronicler of country music, “Willie didn’t know that this kind of stripped-down personal sound was possible – on a released country record.  Or that it was feasible.  Nor did any other artist in Nashville, circa 1960-1970 or thereabouts.”

1961 is cited as Willie’s breakthrough year – when three of his compositions hit the Country charts and became American standards, “Hello Walls” (by Faron Young), “Funny How Time Slips Away” (Billy Walker), and “Crazy” (Patsy Cline).  After two LPs for the independent Liberty label in ’62-’63, Willie was signed by Chet Atkins to RCA Victor, for whom he recorded nearly a dozen original albums, starting in 1965, produced by Chet, Danny Davis, and/or Felton Jarvis.  But as Flippo notes, “Willie has never really talked about the frustrations he felt at having his best songs become hits for others while he himself, as a recording artist, was not being necessarily afforded total – and serious – attention.”  This did not change until Willie’s arrival at Columbia in 1975, when ‘artist approval’ – ‘final cut’ – was actually written into his contract for the first time.  His landmark self-produced Red Headed Stranger was the result.

Raphael has said that he ‘un-produced’ NAKED WILLIE, an expression that is bound for wider usage.  In contrast to the Beatles’ Let It Be…Naked (2003) which stripped that classic LP back to its essential tracks in a similar way, NAKED WILLIE explores a range of tracks recorded over the course of nearly five years, released on several LPs during that period (or shelved for years afterward).

In many cases, the comparison of original tracks to the NAKED WILLIE version is revelatory.  As Flippo writes, “One of Nelson’s most important songs, ‘The Party’s Over,’ in its first incarnation is cloaked by heavy strings and a chorus.  The song’s inherent sense of tragedy is masked.  On ‘Following Me Around,’ Willie’s vocal on the original is literally chased around by a perky and persistent trumpet.  How much more distracting could it be?  Try listening through the huge background chorus and unwieldy the arrangement that attempts to reduce ‘Laying My Burdens Down’ to a wacky musical comedy romp.”

By the end of the ’60s and beginning of the ’70s, artists of Willie’s caliber and temperament were beginning to stream into Nashville – coinciding with rock and folk’s “singer-songwriter” explosion at Top 40.  Many of them held kinship to country music and were flooding into Nashville to record there.  The studios had backed themselves into a corner, however, and were hard-pressed to change the system, which is still going strong today, albeit with some adjustments.

“Recording on Music Row meant assembly line recording,” Flippo notes. “Three three-hour sessions a day, maybe four, and out the door.”  Nevertheless, Willie was in great company: “the A-Team all the way,” says Flippo: “Stellar pickers such as Grady Martin and Chip Young and Jerry Reed on guitar, Roy Huskey Jr. or Norbert Putnam on bass, Buddy Harman or Jerry Carrigan drumming, David Briggs or Pig Robbins on piano,  Jimmy Day or Buddy Emmons on steel guitar.”  NAKED WILLIE, is every way, also serves as a tribute to their talents and versatility.

There are many chapters in Willie Nelson’s life and times: his formative years in the 1950s as a U.S. serviceman, radio dj, and fledgling songwriter and recording artist in Texas and Washington state; his move to Nashville with his family in 1960; his RCA years from 1965 to 1972; his historic 18-year association with Columbia, starting with Red Headed Stranger in 1975; and his adventures through the 1990s and ’00s leading full circle to his 75^th birthday celebration in 2008.  That event was celebrated in 2008 with the release of One Hell Of A Ride (Columbia/Legacy), the 100-song, 4-CD box set that encompassed his career on a dozen different record labels from 1954 to 2007.

NAKED WILLIE – several of whose songs he has begun performing again in concert over the past few years – opens up a new chapter for this legendary character, as it revisits his early days in a whole new light.  As Flippo sums up, “This is, finally, Willie Nelson on his own terms.  The songs just as the way they (and he) came into this world.  Naked.”

Naked Willie is available now at Amazon and iTunes.

WILLIE NELSON's STARDUST:

30th ANNIVERSARY LEGACY EDITION

30^th ANNIVERSARY OF LANDMARK 1978 ALBUM DEVOTED TO GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK – WITH 1 HITS, GRAMMY-WINNING "

Expanded to two CDs – disc two collects 16 more standards from 1976 to 1990, including "What A Wonderful World," "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter," "Mona Lisa," "Ole Buttermilk Sky," "That Lucky Old Sun," "Angel Eyes" with Ray Charles, and three with Leon Russell – "Tenderly,"

"Stormy Weather," and "One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)"

"Booker's arranging skills enabled him to devise creative orchestrations enhancing both singer and song as Willie, himself a fine lyrical craftsman, performed these ten ageless tunes in his usual style.  Sinatra once explained the keystone of his approach to nearly every song he interpreted: respect both the lyric and composer.  Never once did Willie forget that rule."

– from the liner notes written by Rich Kienzle

The Great American Songbook has been the playground for innumerable song stylists over the decades -- Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Tormé, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, and even Ray Charles and Rod Stewart, to name a few,   have dedicated rich volumes of work to the repertoire. 

Stirring up a totally different kind of socio-cultural impact was Willie Nelson's 1978 masterpiece, Stardust, a 5-times RIAA platinum notch in his discography, which spent an all-time high 551 weeks on the Billboard Country chart – that's over 10½ years, the most of any album in Country music history – and 117 weeks on the pop side.  In the process, Stardust – the biggest-selling album of Willie's career – spun off a Grammy Award-winning 1 Country single, the remake of Hoagy Carmichael's "Georgia On My Mind," and its 1 followup, Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies." 

In honor of the 30^th anniversary of Stardust's release in April 1978 – and as part of Legacy's ongoing album release campaign in celebration of Willie's 75^th birthday on April 30, 2008,  – an event that was commemorated that month with the long-awaited publica­tion of the biography Willie Nelson: An Epic Life (Little, Brown & Co.) written by Joe Nick Patoski – the newly-remastered deluxe double-CD package STARDUST: LEGACY EDITION will arrive in stores July 1^st on Columbia/Legacy, a division of SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAIN­MENT.

The July 1^st release of STARDUST: LEGACY EDITION also coincides with an annual Texas tradition, Willie Nelson's Family Picnic.  This year, two all-star events have been scheduled, starring Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Los Lonely Boys, Asleep At The Wheel, David Allan Coe, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Billy Joe Shaver, and many others: Friday, July 4^th at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Selma, just outside of San Antonio; and Saturday, July 5^th at the Showgrounds at Sam Houston Race Park in Houston.  For info, go to: http://www.livenation.com.

The new double-CD configuration of STARDUST: LEGACY EDITION includes the original 10-song program on disc one, a dazzling collection of standards book-ended by the Hoagy Carmichael title tune, "Stardust," and the Gershwins' tender closing number, "Someone To Watch Over Me."  Nestled in between (in addition to the aforementioned "Georgia On My Mind" and "Blue Skies") are gems from the pens of Duke Ellington ("Don't Get Around Much Anymore"), Kurt Weill ("September Song"), and the team of Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh ("On The Sunny Side Of The Street"), plus the familiar music and lyrics of "All Of Me," "Unchained Melody," and "Moonlight In Vermont."

In 1978, at the height of the Disco frenzy, New Wave and Punk rock fever, and Nashville Underground's Outlaw Country movement – Willie Nelson's newest project drew skepticism from the powers-that-be even before he began the 10 days of recording sessions with his band and producer Booker T. Jones (of Booker T & the MG's).  A program of standards provoked hard arguments – despite Willie's success as a multi-platinum earner over the past three years, since Outlaw Country took hold in 1975, with him at the helm and Red Headed Stranger as the new blueprint for self-empowerment. 

As Columbia Nashville's own head of marketing voiced his objections, Willie's simple response – "Why be predictable?" – was recounted by Patoski in the biography.  The statement is echoed in the liner notes written by Rich Kienzle for STARDUST: LEGACY EDITION.  Kienzle has written notes for nearly 300 country music albums, including nearly two dozen titles on Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, along with previous volumes in Legacy's Essential Series on Earl Scruggs, Roy Acuff, Marty Robbins, George Jones, Ronnie Milsap, Ray Price, and Jim Reeves, as well as Legacy's four-CD box set Legends Of Country Music: Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys. 

As Kienzle points out, Country artists before Willie had devoted entire LPs to pop songs and standards (Ferlin Husky, Eddy Arnold, Faron Young, Marty Robbins and Jim Reeves among them), and Patsy Cline frequently dipped into the repertoire, too.  Even Willie, as far back as 1963, had recorded the Sinatra-associated "Am I Blue" on Liberty Records.  But Stardust's timing, and especially its studio chemistry resonated with unprecedented impact.

The immediate result was that the album refocused attention on, and kindled a new widespread affection for a body of music that told the nation's story.  For his part, Willie followed Stardust with dozens of forays into the Great American Songbook, on albums that have stretched into the '90s and beyond.  Sixteen of those performances are collected on disc two of STARDUST: LEGACY EDITION. 

With the exception of "That Lucky Old Sun" (via Frankie Laine, Armstrong and Sinatra), from Willie's 1976 album The Sound In Your Mind, all the other tracks on disc two date intentionally from post-Stardust albums.  These range from One For The Road, the double-LP that Willie recorded with Leon Russell in 1979 (three tracks: "Tenderly," Harold Arlen's "Stormy Weather," and Johnny Mercer & Harold Arlen's "One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)"), up through 1990's Born For Trouble (a remake of Kitty Kallen's 1954 hit, "Little Things Mean A Lot").

Disc two is book-ended by Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" (from Willie's 1988 LP of the same title) as the opener, and "Angel Eyes" (immortalized by Sinatra on his torchy 1958 LP, Only The Lonely) as the closer.  The latter features Ray Charles on vocals, from Willie's 1984 "concept" LP Angel Eyes with left-handed jazz guitarist Jackie King, also the source for the remake of the Ink Spots' "The Gypsy."

In between are well-chosen examples of Willie's way with ballads, chestnuts, evergreens, and just plain standards: "Basin Street Blues" (dating to Jack Teagarden in 1931), Johnny Mercer & Harold Arlen's "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive," Hoagy Carmichael's "Ole Buttermilk Sky," Johnnie Ray's "Cry," and another World War II Sinatra favorite, "You'll Never Know."  Three gems all originally appeared on Willie's 1981 platinum LP, Somewhere Over The Rainbow: "I'm Confessin' (That I Love You)," "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter," and "Mona Lisa."

In praise of Willie Nelson, Kienzle concludes: "Millions today consider him a peer of Charles, Sinatra, Tony Bennett and the others whose explorations of the Great American Songbook assured that it remains relevant in the 21^st Century.  For him, Stardust made all of that possible."

STARDUST: LEGACY EDITION by WILLIE NELSON (Columbia/Legacy 88697 29087 2, originally released April 1978, as Columbia 35305) 

Disc One – Selections: 1. Stardust • 2. Georgia On My Mind (1^st single, Country 1, Hot 100 84) • 3. Blue Skies (2^nd single, Country 1) • 4. All Of Me (3^rd single, Country 3) • 5. Unchained Melody • 6. September Song • 7. On The Sunny Side Of The Street • 8. Moonlight In Vermont • 9. Don't Get Around Much Anymore • 10. Someone To Watch Over Me.

Disc  Two – Selections: 1. What A Wonderful World (H) • 2. Basin Street Blues (G) • 3. I'm Confessin' (That I Love You) (C) • 4. I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter (C, Country 26) • 5. The Gypsy (F) • 6. Mona Lisa (C, Country 11) • 7. Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive (G) • 8. Ole Buttermilk Sky (G) • 9. That Lucky Old Sun (A) • 10. Little Things Mean A Lot (I) • 11. Cry (E) • 12. You'll Never Know (D) • 13. Tenderly (B, with Leon Russell – all instruments) • 14. Stormy Weather (B, with Leon Russell – all instruments) • 15. One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) (B, with Leon Russell – all instruments) • 16. Angel Eyes (F, with Ray Charles – vocals).

Track from album:

(A) – The Sound In Your Mind (Columbia 34092, released 1976)

(B) – One For The Road (Columbia 36064, released 1979)

(C) – Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Columbia 36883, released 1981)

(D) – Without A Song (Columbia 39110, released 1983)

(E) – City Of New Orleans (Columbia 39145, released 1984)

(F) – Angel Eyes (Columbia 39363, released 1984)

(G) – The Promiseland (Columbia 40327, released 1986)

(H) – What A Wonderful World (Columbia 44331, released 1988)

(I) – Born For Trouble (Columbia 45492, released 1990)

Pre-Order the Stardust 30th Anniversary CD now at Amazon

All this month, you’ll be able to preview the new One Hell of a Ride Box Set at Clear Channel Online.  Each week, a new disc from the four disc box set will be available On Demand.  Simply go to:  http://www.kvet.com/cc-common/mfeatures/willienelson3OD/