Featured Release: Willie Nelson, Naked Willie
RCA Nashville/Legacy 88697 20111 2
Format: CD

Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment

Willie Nelson is an icon of American music whose distinctive persona and unique, eclectic musical style have brought him admiration and popularity. His high regard among musicians and his versatility are reflected in the recordings he has made with a diverse range of musicians, including Bob Dylan, Sinead O’Connor, and Al Green. Last year’s CD with Wynton Marsalis, Two Men with the Blues, showed how comfortable Nelson is in a jazz setting -- not surprising, given the Western Swing influences in his music -- and gave Marsalis a chance to play in a more loose, relaxed fashion.

Nelson won musical and commercial independence in 1975 with Red Headed Stranger, a surprise hit that his record label, Columbia, was reluctant to release because of its spare accompaniment. His two preceding albums, for Atlantic, had been similarly straightforward, but his work for RCA from 1962 through the early ’70s was often encumbered with strings and syrupy backing vocals that were at odds with the pure country roots of Nelson’s songs and jazzy vocal phrasing. The idea for Naked Willie, a collection of 17 Nelson tracks originally released by RCA from 1966 through 1970, came from Nelson’s longtime harmonica player, Mickey Raphael, who liked the performances but wondered what they "might have sounded like had Willie produced his own recording sessions for RCA."

Raphael, listed in the credits as having "un-produced" Naked Willie, went into a studio with recording engineer Tony Castle to remove the haze that RCA’s Nashville producers, such as Chet Atkins and Felton Jarvis, had imposed on Nelson. The basic tracks featured some of the city’s best musicians, including Chip Young, Jerry Reed, Charlie McCoy, Norbert Putnam, David Briggs, and Grady Martin. "Following Me Around," recorded in 1967, was marred by heavy reverb on Nelson’s voice, and a sappy, cheesy arrangement for strings and horns. Atkins and coproducer Danny Davis threw a heavy layer of strings and elevator-music background vocals over "I Just Dropped By," burying the sincerity of Nelson’s voice. Removing the "sweetening" from these and other tracks lets the listener focus on the integrity of Nelson’s voice and the sympathetic accompaniment.

Some of the tracks on Naked Willie, such as "Bring Me Sunshine" and "The Ghost," vary little from the originals, aside from a toning-down of some of the studio effects. RCA’s Nashville engineers were always top shelf, so Naked Willie sounds great, the singer’s voice beautifully centered and out front, the backing instruments subtly placed behind him in the soundstage. Mickey Raphael’s gift isn’t just to his friend Willie. It’s also to the fine musicians who accompanied him -- finally, we can hear them clearly. Naked Willie demonstrates how honest and heartfelt Willie Nelson’s work has always been, even when his record company didn’t know it.

. . . Joseph Taylor