- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- The Best of Willie covers Willie Nelson’s often troubled years at RCA Victor Records from 1965 to 1972 that nearly drove him from the music business.
Willie Nelson – The Best of Willie (1982): Obviously, the long and varied career of someone like Willie Nelson cannot be boiled down to a single album, and The Best of Willie represents only the greatest songs that he recorded for RCA Victor Records. Willie Nelson has been one of the most beloved entertainers for decades and has only seemed to grow in popularity despite his “outlaw” ways. Nelson sported his trademark long braids for around 40 years before finally cutting them off in 2010, and he has been arrested numerous times for drug possession that once kept him from attending the Grammys. Now that marijuana is legal in many parts of the country, Willie Nelson has started his own brand of pot called Willie’s Reserve. AARP The Magazine launched its “American Icon” series with a June/July 2018 cover story on their first Icon, Willie Nelson.
I have recently been playing my way through the albums which I inherited from my parents that are mostly classical music and country music, with several stray rock albums that probably belonged to one or another of us kids. I was delighted to find among those albums an original copy of Willie Nelson’s debut album that was released almost 60 years ago, . . . And Then I Wrote (1962). This album includes Willie Nelson’s renditions of many of his early songs that were often hits for other musicians, most famously “Crazy” for Patsy Cline, but also “Hello Walls” for Faron Young and “Funny How Time Slips Away” for Billy Walker; other examples not on . . . And Then I Wrote are “Night Life” for Ray Price and “Pretty Paper” for Roy Orbison. After briefly retiring from the music scene in 1972 due to the poor sales of his albums for RCA Victor Records, Willie Nelson moved to Austin, Texas and joined its burgeoning hippie music scene. While there, his album Shotgun Willie (1973) basically established the outlaw country subgenre in country music. A compilation album featuring Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser called Wanted: The Outlaws (1976) became the first Platinum-certified country album, with sales of over one million copies. But that is not all Willie Nelson did while in Austin. In 1973, he launched Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic, a concert music festival that has been held more or less annually, and normally in Austin, through 2019. Red Headed Stranger (1975) is a concept album having spare arrangements and featuring Willie Nelson’s first #1 hit song “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”. Matched only by the completely different “Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young in 1989, Willie Nelson’s stirring slow-paced reading of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” in 1977 is the greatest musical performance that I have ever seen on Saturday Night Live. In 1978, Willie Nelson released Stardust, a universally acclaimed album of his favorite pop standards that remained on the Billboard country album charts for 10 years, eventually being certified quintuple-Platinum. One of the songs on that album, “Georgia on My Mind” earned the Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance. Willie Nelson’s 1982 single, “Always on My Mind”, reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100; and his duet with Julio Iglesias, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”, was a worldwide hit two years later. In all, Willie Nelson has released 95 studio albums, and 25 of his singles have reached #1 on one or more music charts. His albums and singles have been popular in many parts of the world, particularly in Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Europe. Not to be confused with The Best of Willie Nelson that came out on Capitol Records in the same year, The Best of Willie covers Willie Nelson’s often troubled years while he was signed with RCA Victor Records from 1965 to 1972 that nearly drove him from the music business. He had no artistic freedom while at RCA, and that proved to be essential to the flowering of Willie Nelson’s career in the years that followed. While Willie Nelson had no major hits during those years, his singles consistently landed in the country Top 25, and three of his RCA albums made the country Top 10. One notable release in this period was Yesterday’s Wine (1971), considered to be one of the first concept albums in country music and featuring the songs “Yesterday’s Wine”, “Me and Paul”, and one of his early compositions “Family Bible” (not included on The Best of Willie) that he had sold the rights to years earlier. Willie Nelson considers Yesterday’s Wine to be one of his best albums, but indifferent promotion by RCA of this album and others led to poor sales. The Best of Willie also includes a version of a bona fide Willie Nelson classic “Night Life”, plus “Everybody’s Talkin’ ” – written by Fred Neil, with the version by Nilsson being featured in the film Midnight Cowboy (1969) and winning a Grammy Award – “Mountain Dew” (also known as “Good Old Mountain Dew” and previously a hit for Grandpa Jones among others), and Mickey Newbury’s “Sweet Memories”. The final song on Side 1 and all of Side 2 are songs that were written or co-written by Willie Nelson; besides those already mentioned, the best is probably “Bloody Mary Morning”.