Stardust

He got his first guitar at age six. At 10, his first performance was playing at a dance. Since then, music had become the central part of his life. Awestruck by big band, country (Texas-Style), and especially by the music of Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson himself rose to become an icon.

Close friend Leon Russell puts it best: “With hair as long as the generosity, and talent as big as the heart, there is also a compassion that appears to be endless. Willie is a giant among men, who lives inside a quiet, down-to-earth understanding.”

Those who may have been yearning for the longest time to hear the man’s music in audiophile splendor can now savor with gusto his mellow, easy-going voice at the comfort of their music rooms with the sudden increase in supply of one of his best-selling albums “Stardust.” The new generation of analog-crazy music lovers have a lot to do with this.

You can choose the music format that best suits your system: 45-rpm vinyl, the original 33.3 rpm, its CD or even a Super Audio CD version. Here, Willie’s music and not your system will lead you to nirvana. The album is as timeless as the man who made it happen. In fact nobody expected that Willie, in 1978, would ever record a collection of tunes he grew up with that are so sublime.

Who would? Willie, after all, was the acknowledged vanguard of the 1970s country music’s outlaw movement — a genre that was largely linked with reckless, subversive behavior (remember Whiskey Rivers, cocaine binges, and slow suicide through excess?).

It was a genre created for music’s sake. Artists who wanted to extend the limits of country suddenly found an audience that wanted to hear them try, and talents such as Willie continue to immensely enjoy epiphanies that reverberate to this day.

With the album “Willie Nelson: The Complete Atlantic Sessions,” the movement gained stardom.  But it had nothing to do with music passages about booze or coke.  Rather, Willie hit songwriting peaks and took chances that were unheard of or were unequaled in Nashville at the time.

Before shutting down its country label, Atlantic Records gave Willie a free hand in producing the 1973 and 1974 albums “Shotgun Willie” and “Phases and Stages.” These were the only studio albums Willie recorded for Atlantic, but they were nonetheless central to Willie’s career. It was Atlantic’s legendary guru Jerry Wexler who sent Willie off-leash as he created music so far outside of Nashville’s standards that people began calling it “progressive country.”

Thus, “Stardust” was viewed by many as Willie’s mellowing. With his “just-ahead-of-the-beat” vocal delivery, Willie’s take on classic songs, such as Georgia On My Mind, was simply like no other.

Listeners will be mesmerized by Irving Berlin’s Blue Skies as Willie showcases how well he plucks his acoustic guitar. Many artists have recorded their takes on Unchained Melody and Stardust, but Willie’s versions are compelling with their soft elegance.

I dare say that the 26-year-old “Stardust” may well be a better standard to use than Rod Stewart’s “American Songbook” in measuring the “The Great American Songbook,” that period between the 1930s and 1950s when American popular music songwriting reached its glorious peak.

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