Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Night Life
2. Hello Walls
3. Crazy
4. Funny How Time Slips Away
5. I Never Cared for You
6. The Party's Over
7. Good Times
8. Me And Paul
9. Shotgun Willie
10. Bloody Mary Morning
11. Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain
12. Good Hearted Woman (with Waylon Jennings)
13. If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time
14. Uncloudy Day
15. Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys (with Waylon Jennings)
16. Georgia on My Mind
17. Blue Skies
18. All of Me
19. Heartbreak Hotel (with Leon Russell)
20. Help Me Make It Through the Night
21. Whiskey River (live)
22. Stay a Little Longer (live)

Disc 2:

1. My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys
2. Faded Love (with Ray Price)
3. On the Road Again
4. Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground
5. Always on My Mind
6. Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning
7. Pancho & Lefty (with Merle Haggard)
8. To All the Girls I've Loved Before (with Julio Iglesias)
9. City of New Orleans
10. Seven Spanish Angels (with Ray Charles)
11. Forgiving You Was Easy
12. Highwayman
13. Living in the Promiseland
14. Nothing I Can Do About It Now
15. Graceland
16. Everywhere I Go (with Emmylou Harris)
17. Slow Dancing (U2 featuring Willie Nelson, Mickey Raphael on harmonica)
18. Mendocino County Line (with Lee Ann Womack)
19. One Time Too Many (with Steven Tyler and Aerosmith) (previously unreleased)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1055 in Music
• Released on: 2003-04-01
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .26 pounds

Amazon.com
With 41 tracks drawn from nine record labels, the two-disc Essential Willie Nelson is impressive in its breadth. Disc one is simply superb; it begins with 1961's "Night Life," recorded for the obscure Bellaire label, and moves on to several of Nelson's early 1960s Liberty recordings, an overlooked gem recorded for Monument in 1964 ("I Never Cared for You"), a cherry-picked selection of his RCA and Atlantic sides, and finally his mid-1970s hits for Columbia (where he found his greatest chart success, beginning, in 1975, with the No. 1 single "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain"). Disc two, however, is hit-or-miss. Classics like "On the Road Again," "Pancho & Lefty," and "Nothing I Can Do About It Now" are offset by such lesser material as "To All The Girls I've Loved Before" (recorded with Latin pop star Julio Iglesias), the phoned-in "City of New Orleans," and the sounds-better-on-paper "Highwayman" collaboration with Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Waylon Jennings. (Just because they all made it to No. 1 doesn't make them "essential.") Nelson's two best albums of the 1990s, Across the Borderline and Teatro, are represented by a paltry two songs. The disc ends with collaborations with U2, Lee Ann Womack, and Steven Tyler and Aerosmith (the previously unreleased "One Time Too Many"). None is particularly worthy of a best-of collection. Still, while it doesn't quite live up to its billing, the Essential Willie Nelson offers an excellent career overview of one of country music's true legends. --David Hill

Customer Reviews

If you only have one compilation of Willie...
this is the one to have. Let's face it, all compilations have their weaknesses, but the 2 disc "The Essential Willie Nelson" (2003) is the first to cover all the labels Willie has recorded for and all the big hits in one set! Disc one kicks off with 7 early 60s recordings including "Night life", "Hello Walls", and "Crazy" (which Willie wrote & Patsy Cline made famous). Track 8, "Me and Paul" starts Willie's 70s recordings including "Blue eyes crying in the rain" and of course his classic duets with Waylon: "Good Hearted Woman" & "Mama's don't let your babies...". 3 songs are included from the 1978 album "Stardust": "Blue Skies", "Georgia on my mind", & "All of Me" and disc one closes with two live tracks: "Whiskey River" & "Stay a little longer" both from the '78 album "Willie & Family Live".

Disc 2 continues with late 70s and early 80s hits like "My Heroes have always been Cowboys", "Always on my mind", and of course "On the road again". More classic duets follow with "Pancho & Lefty" (a personal favorite) with Merle Haggard, "To all the girls..." with Julio Iglesias, and "Seven Spanish Angels" with Ray Charles. The 1984 gem "Highwayman" featuring Kristofferson, Waylon, and Cash is also here. The second disc is wrapped up with more duets: "Slow Dancing" with U2 (which surprisingly works because Bono is either MIA or extremely toned down), "Mendocino County Line" with Lee Ann Womack, and "One Time too Many" with Aerosmith. One review stated that these last three songs left a "sour taste" considering that they are part of an "essential" collection. I have to agree, but only greatly in terms of the Aerosmith song. It starts off well enough with acoustic guitar and Willie and Steven Tyler trading verses, but when the rest of Aerosmith kicks in and Tyler does his thing, Willie is drowned out and that's not cool on a Willie Nelson compilation. If one wants to hear Aerosmith, there are many ways to do so. So with the minor exception of the final track of the set, this compilation is indispensable. A great way to get Willie's biggest hits on one reasonably priced set!

*It should be noted that 14 of the 20 tracks from the 1981 compilation "Greatest Hits & some that will be" are included here not to mention 22 of the 30 tracks on 1999's "The Very Best of Willie" as well. So if you have either of these, 2003's "Essential" may not be essential. However, if you don't have any Willie compilations yet, this is the one to go with.

Also recommended:
RCA Legends: Waylon Jennings (2 disc, 40 track excellent compilation)

Forty years of great music
Willie Nelson did not make any real impact as a singer until the mid seventies (and it was the eighties before Britain took him seriously) but this compilation attempts to cover the whole of his career to date. Inevitably, this means that a lot of great songs are omitted but if this is your first Willie Nelson album and you want to explore further, you will find plenty to choose from.

The set opens with Willie's versions of the four songs that established Willie as a songwriter in the sixties, these being Night life, Hello walls, Crazy and Funny how time slips away. Six further tracks cover the sixties and early seventies, a period during which Willie recorded plenty of interesting music but with only limited success.

In 1975, Willie recorded a cover of Blue eyes crying in the rain, an old Roy Acuff song, which became a major country and pop hit in America. Other hits followed including a lot of duets -so many that you could fill a boxed set with them. Just a few are included here, among them being Good hearted woman, Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys (both with Waylon Jennings), Faded love (with Ray Price - and Crystal Gayle singing backup harmony), To all the girls I've loved before (with Julio Iglesias) and Seven Spanish angels (with Ray Charles). Willie's classic solo country hits (some covers, some originals) are represented by If you've got the money I've got the time, Uncloudy day, Help me make it through the night, My heroes have always been cowboys, On the road again, Always on my mind, City of New Orleans and a few others.

Another aspect of Willie's career was the series of albums he recorded featuring songs from the Great American Songbook. The first and most famous of these albums was Stardust. It is the only songbook album from which tracks are taken and is represented here by Blue skies, Georgia on my mind and All of me. A very different double CD of Willie's music titled All the songs I've loved before was released in Britain and Australia, which was dominated by this aspect of Willie's music and which I've already reviewed.

If you only want one collection of music by Willie Nelson, this is a good one to choose.

American Treasure
While Willie's 3 disc box-set Revolutions of Time is ultimately a more thorough and "essential" collection, this set definitely hits all of the high (and one or two low) points in Willie's career. Just about every mainstream hit from the late 70s and early 80s is here. While some of this might sound dated and overproduced ("Always On My Mind" would be perfect if it weren't for those backup singers), these songs are as much a part of pop music as any rock and roll collection. In my opinion, Willie is only nominally a country artist anymore, and much more a pop singer, so don't use your dislike of country music as an excuse to ignore Willie.

This set, unlike the 3 CD box-set, includes songs from various points in his career- his rendition of "Crazy" and "Hello Walls" are here. While they are more in the mold of traditional late 60s Nashville country (even more overproduced than the early 80s stuff), it's wonderful to hear Willie sing some of his songs that others turned into massive hits. A few of his duets are here, including two with Waylon, the wonderful and haunting "Pancho and Lefty" with Merle, the Highwayman title song, "Faded Love" with Ray Price, and my favorite, "Seven Spanish Angels" with Ray Charles. Again, the box-set includes an entire disc of duets, so this offers only a sample. What a fine sample it is, though.

Willie's late 70s to mid 80s material speaks for itself- a few songs from "Stardust" and his live album, "On the Road Again" (one of my all time favorite songs from any artist), "City of New Orleans"- all essential classics. The collections begins to trail off with his 90s and early 2000 material, and this stuff is hardly Willie's finest- the U2 song is ponderous and pretentious, and some of the duets from this period are just silly- Aerosmith? Willie's rendition of Paul Simon's "Graceland" is the best from this era, and holds up well against the fine original.

I tend to like singers with less traditional voices- Bruce, Dylan, Willie, Lyle Lovett, Jimmie Dale Gilmore. The most frequent complaint you'll hear about these people is that their voices are unpleasant. I just find that to be outright wrong- Willie's reedy, sweet voice is a thing of beauty, and the uniqueness that he brings to both his own songs and his covers is part of his appeal. He's a timeless artist who is both a fine songwriter and an even better interpreter of songs both standards and obscurities. He joins the ranks of a handful of true American musical greats- Louis Armstrong, Elvis, Frank, Dylan, Johnny Cash and Bruce Springsteen. I'm an enormous fan of The Boss, and placing Willie alongside him is my highest form of compliment.