The standards album has suffered a lot of abuse during this decade, as aging singers use it as a shorthand for artistic revitalization and as a shortcut to career revival. Nothing communicates serious intent quite as earnestly or as cheaply as recording a 75-year-old song, as Rod Stewart, George Michael, Cyndi Lauper, and others who used to be much cooler have discovered. As a result, even the word "standards" provokes an admittedly healthy skepticism in many listeners, but it wasn't always so. Thirty years ago, Willie Nelson took a typically left turn and followed up a string of successful albums (starting with 1975's career-making Red Headed Stranger) with a covers album of songs made famous by decidedly non-country musicians like Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Louis Armstrong. It's difficult to understand today how unusual this sort of album was, going against the grain of the contemporary country business. Label execs initially balked, but Stardust become one of the best-selling country albums of all time, spending nearly a decade on the country charts.
Stranger is touted as country's first concept album and one of the foundations of outlaw country, which gives it a sheen of originality in a genre nominally interested in tradition more than innovation. But Stardust sounds like the riskier album and is by far the more rewarding collection, which is to take nothing away from Stranger. What makes the record so thrilling and very often beautiful-- and what separates him from today's ham-handed vocalists-- is Nelson's facility as an interpreter. It's not enough for him just to sing "Georgia on My Mind" or Kurt Weill's "September Song" or even to translate these songs into a country setting. With his tender, textured voice and intuitively around-the-beat phrasing, Nelson gives these songs fresh readings, with just the touch of sentimentality and nostalgia they demand. The cliché "makes them his own" certainly applies here: He sings them as they've never been sung before or since, which is quite a feat considering their age and popularity.
Hardened from endless touring into a tough, tight roadhouse revue, Nelson's band gives a surprisingly supple performance on each song, which reinforces the album's sweetly ruminative mood. Producer Booker T. Jones, of Stax fame, facilitates every aspect of the band's sound, showcasing the performers' range while ensuring the arrangements play to the lyrics and vocals without overwhelming them. The organ and restrained rhythm section hint at the soul records Jones made a decade before, while Bobbie Nelson's piano, perhaps mimicking her brother's vocal style, adds gospel and jazz flourishes to "On the Sunny Side of the Street" and Mickey Raphael's harmonica, one of country's most distinctive instruments, moans lonesome on "Moonlight in Vermont". Nelson and his band blur the distinctions between all of the stylistic elements to create a sound that is best described as simply "American." As such, Stardust has the force of a statement album, yet it's unlikely anyone ever intended it as such. Its casual demeanor may ultimately be the record's most winning trait.
Stardust, however, was not an anomaly in Nelson's career. Previously, he had regularly tackled standards and non-country tracks, and he has continued the practice up to the present. Rather than weigh down this 2xCD Legacy Edition with lesser-quality alternate versions or sessions outtakes, compiler Gregg Geller has collected Nelson's versions of other chestnuts from previous and subsequent albums like Angel Eyes in 1984 and The Promiseland in 1986 (both of which, stunningly, are out of print). The range of material on this second disc, if not the quality or overall cohesiveness, surpasses even that of Stardust, with Nelson returning to Carmichael ("Ole Buttermilk Sky") but also tackling the Dixieland jazz of "Basin Street Blues" and the smoky lounge of "The Gypsy". That these songs are all previously released and most of them readily available doesn't diminish their impact here. This reissue, besides being absorbing as music, almost has the feel of an essay on Nelson's interpretive abilities.
It's not being billed as such, but this Legacy Edition marks the album's 30th anniversary. While country music has changed dramatically since then, Nelson continues to tour like crazy, record nearly constantly, and generally follow his own muse wherever it takes him. In the past few years he has collaborated with artists as diverse as Ryan Adams and Kenny Chesney (surely Timbaland is in line). He rarely writes new material anymore, but continues to reinterpret his own and others' past hits. Generally the songs he chooses are so durable and his style so personal that they allow and even reward countless variations. As such, even more than the sustained narrative of The Red Headed Stranger, Stardust set both the template for Nelson's career and the standard. Few artists have treat the American Songbook so affectionately and so cavalierly.
