Willie Nelson is a national treasure. But the guy is also so prolific that it can sometimes be a little hard to keep up with all the music that comes out bearing his name.
This has been particularly true in the past year as the icon's 75th birthday spawned numerous retrospectives and compilations, including the 30th Anniversary Legacy edition of Stardust and the four-disc career retrospective One Hell Of A Ride.
Naked Willie is yet another of these compilations, but this one has a unique twist. In much the same manner that the "naked" version of the Beatles Let It Be deconstructed Phil Spector's over-production of that album, Naked Willie strips away the more overdone aspects of some of the best songs from Nelson's years in the sixties and early seventies on the RCA label.
The result is an album where Nelson's often overlooked work during those years is able to be viewed in a new, far more refreshing light. Whereas the results of the Beatles Let It Be...Naked experiment are somewhat debatable — a judgment no doubt influenced by decades of growing up with those songs as we already knew and loved them — there is no such room for debate with Naked Willie. Nelson and longtime harmonica player Mickey Raphael have simply done one hell of a job "de-producing" these songs.
And by "de-producing," we mean stripping away all of the strings, horns, and generally overproduced nonsense that constituted what was then known as the "Nashville Sound."
Country music in the sixties was too often characterized by these types of recordings. The producers would crank out the records with all of the efficiency — but none of the soul — of a hit-making Tin Pan Alley style machine. From Johnny Cash on down, virtually no country artist was immune to the Nashville treatment. At least not if they wanted to enjoy a successful career.
The main problem, particularly in the case of a great songwriter like Willie Nelson, was that the resulting records were often virtually indistinguishable from one another. Not only did the song itself often get hopelessly lost in all those layers of orchestration — it would also often lose its own sense of meaning or identity.
The first thing you notice on Naked Willie is how much clearer and cleaner these new versions sound. On the original "Following Me Around," for example, the Mexican mariachi-sounding horn was pleasant sounding enough, even if it was in a corny sort of way. But when it's removed from the equation on Naked Willie everything else sounds so much fuller. Willie's voice takes on a much deeper timbre, and the guitar and piano are also that much crisper sounding.
Article comments
1 - Mat Brewster
I hadn't heard about this, but it sounds very cool. Willie always works best when it is just him and his songs with very little getting in the way.
2 - Larry
Wow...glad I found this site. I haven't read everything of course..but it sure is a treat to see a music review that doesn't begin with "I've always hated "insert band here"..and then have to read a tainted review. I shall return. :)