Lanky and grizzled, Willie Nelson is the original country "outlaw," a highly successful songwriter who ditched Nashville for the dim lights of Austin, so that he could make his own records the way he wanted to. This page highlights his best-of collections and links to other Willie-related websites... Other records are reviewed on the pages below:



Willie Nelson: The 1960 & '70s | 1980s | 1990s & '00s | Best-Ofs & Links

Best-Ofs

Willie Nelson "Greatest Hits (And Some That Will Be)" (Columbia, 1981)
For many years, Willie's standard-issue best-of package during his post-Stardust mega-stardom years. It's good stuff, with a few new tunes added in for good measure.


Willie Nelson "The Essential Willie Nelson" (BMG/RCA, 1995)


Willie Nelson "Revolutions Of Time -- The Journey: 1975-1993" (Sony, 1995)
A 3-CD box set that ably covers Willie's years on Columbia and CBS...


Willie Nelson "RCA Country Legends" (BMG/RCA, 2002)


Willie Nelson "The Essential Willie Nelson" (Sony Legacy, 2003)
A nice 2-CD set, covering Willie's work on Columbia and other Sony imprints... You can quibble about the song selection (do we really need to hear "Stay All Night" again?) but the calibre of the material is all first-rate. A few semi-rarities and a new unreleased track (a duet with Steven Tyler) may make this tempting to those who already have all the best Willie albums; for newcomers, this is a pretty perfect introduction. Recommended!


Willie Nelson "The Ghost" (Masked Weasel, 2006)
His history as a hard-working craftsman, plugging away in the bowels of Nashville is well-known, and this 3-CD set of early recordings, demos and such from the early 1960s, before he broke away from Music City's orbit, is an illuminating look at Willie's early years. Especially interesting are the lazy blues jams, showing just how far back his genre-busting inclinations go... There are also some tracks from the early '70s, some songs that are well-known and others that are not, and some overlap with other Willie discs. But this set has a nice cohesion to it, exploring the ragged underbelly of Willie's work, and stands quite nicely on its own. Also available as individual discs -- definitely worth checking out!



Links

  • Willie's website has tour info and merch galore, along with a daily tour blog, called the Pedernales Poo Poo... When I poked around it had some funky technical glitches, but I'm sure that's just par for the course in Willie-land. I guess he has a lot of fans in Germany, too, because the site is mirrored auf Deutsch.

  • Rolling Stone has an excellent biographical essay on Willie and his outlaw scene...

  • Thanks to Live By Request for posting their groovy Willie discography page. This was really helpful, particularly for tracking down some of the older, out-of-print albums.






Hick Music Index

Top photo credit: Rahav Segev, courtesy of Lost Highway Records.

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