Stardust

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Willie Nelson has never been one to do the safe or expected, and this Booker T. Jones-produced album of pop standards from the ’30s and ’40s certainly fits the profile. It’s also one of the better albums of Nelson’s career, allowing Willie to dip his fragile, quivering tenor all around the beat in songs like “All of Me” and “Unchained Melody.” Jones’s organ, piano, and string arrangements are low-key and swinging (except on the almost wooden “On the Sunny Side of the Street”), and Nelson’s vocals on “Georgia on My Mind” and “Moonlight in Vermont” are filled with a dignified and slightly jazzy country soul. –David Cantwell

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Personnel: Willie Nelson (vocals, guitar); Jody Payne (guitar); Mickey Raphael (harmonica); Bobbie Nelson (piano); Booker T. Jones (organ); Bee Spears, Chris Ethridge (bass); Paul English, Rex Ludwig (drums).Producer: Booker T. Jones.Reissue producer: Al Quaglieri.Includes liner notes by Mickey Raphael, Booker T. Jones and Willie Nelson.Digitally remastered by Chris Athens (Sterling Sound, New York, New York).This is part of Legacy’s American Milestones series.15 years before Tony Bennett made the Great American Songbook safe for the MTV generation, there was Willie Nelson’s STARDUST, one of the greatest “crossover” albums in history. The concept was simple: Willie singing a select group of familiar standards by composers such as Carmichael, Berlin, Weill, Ellington, the Gershwins, all in his familiar and inimitable style. Yet the result is not a quite a country treatment of these tunes. For one thing, the great R&B organist Booker T. Jones produced the session in addition to performing with Nelson’s superb band featuring the estimable Mickey Raphael on harmonica. One of the enduring pleasures of STARDUST is the interplay between hushed organ, keening harmonica and Nelson’s own stately gut-string guitar as well as his beautifully measured, plaintive singing.