Project 1001: Stardust by Willie Nelson
Project 1001: Stardust by Willie Nelson
An album of pop standards sung by a national treasure? Yes, please! One of my favorite things is artists covering songs from outside their own genre and putting their stamp on it. Willie certainly does that here. My favorites are “Georgia on My Mind”, “Sunny Side of the Street” and “Unchained Melody”. On “Melody” Willie sings with restraint and calmness while sacrificing none of the emotion of the original. Just brilliant. Nelson fuses musical forms creating something unique and wonderful. But the entire album is incredible. I encourage you to listen to the whole thing. My rating:
From the Rolling Stone review:
In one sense, Stardust is a memory album: “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” “Georgia on My Mind” and the rest were songs Nelson grew up playing in dives and dance halls across Texas. He and his band haven’t reworked them much since then. You can still hear a hint of polka and the clippety-clop of singing cowboys in the bass line of “Blue Skies,” and the black-tie-and-champagne bounce of “Someone to Watch Over Me” has been smoothed to a whiskey (straight up) fox trot. A harmonica does the duty of a horn section, and in between the verses Nelson picks out the melody on his guitar. The notes are as sweet and easy as the smiles of the women eyeing the bandstand over their partners’ shoulders.1
From the L.A. Times review:
It’s a fine slice of Americana, a warmly refreshing merger of earthy rural vocals and sophisticated urban songs. This type of country-city meeting isn’t new, but rarely has it worked as well…The performances are spare, sincere, soft and warm…2
Pitchfork reviewed the legacy edition issued in 2008:
It's difficult to fathom today, but Stardust-- a collection of standards-- was a risky left turn for an artist of Willie Nelson's power and magnitude.
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.
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.3
In 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Kenneth Burns wrote:
But if Red Headed Stranger confirmed that Nelson was one of the great country artists of his day, Stardust sealed his reputation as one of the best and most distinctive American singers of any day. Often imitated, even mocked, but seldom matched, Nelson’s singing was already rather more jazzy than that of his colleagues in Nashville, and Stardust let him take on the idiom of jazz singing directly.
Nelson broke new commercial ground with Stardust, which stayed on the U.S. Billboard album charts for two years and, improbably enough, with tunes by pop songsters like Hoagy Carmichael and Irving Berlin on the country charts. If The Red Headed Stranger made Nelson a country legend, Stardust made him a household name. A movie career followed, as well as more country hits, and Nelson later continued his genre experiments with forays into blues and gospel. But a quarter century later, Nelson was still interpreting and reinterpreting tunes from Stardust at his concerts, which affirms that with Willie Nelson, there is no country or pop, just Willie Nelson songs.4
Enjoy and listen without prejudice. Cheers!
Prime Playlist: 189. Stardust by Willie Nelson
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For details about this project, read this: Project 1001 Albums
Charts
• Peak on Billboard 200 album chart: #305
• Singles on Billboard Hot 100 chart: “Georgia on My Mind” #846
• RIAA certification: 5x Platinum | April 20, 20027
Released on April 1, 1978. Here’s what else was happening:
Pop Culture
• Number one song: “Night Fever” by The Bee Gees8
• Number one album: Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack9
• Number one movie: The Fury by Brian De Palma10
• Most watched TV programs: Lavern & Shirley, Happy Days, Three’s Company, Charlie’s Angels, All in the Family, Little House on the Prairie, 60 Minutes, M*A*S*H, One Day at a Time, Alice, Soap11
• NYT bestseller, fiction: Bloodline by Sidney Sheldon12
• NYT bestseller, non-fiction: The Complete Book of Running by James F. Fixx13
Some other albums released that month
• For You by Prince
• Hermit of Mink Hollow by Todd Rundgren
• The Last Waltz by The Band
• Heavy Horses by Jethro Tull
• Almighty Fire by Aretha Franklin
• I Would Like to See You Again by Johnny Cash
• Grease: The Original Soundtrack from the Motion Picture by Various Artists
• Long Live Rock 'n' Roll by Rainbow
• Tasty by Patti LaBelle
• Come Get It! by Rick James
• Bad Boy by Ringo Starr
• Heaven Tonight by Cheap Trick
• Showdown by The Isley Brothers
• The Man-Machine by Kraftwerk
• Adventure by Television
• You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can't Tuna Fish by REO Speedwagon
• Boys in the Trees by Carly Simon
• Cats Under the Stars by Jerry Garcia Band
• Future Bound by Tavares
Sport
• Mar 27 40th NCAA Men's Basketball Championship: Kentucky beats Duke, 94-88; Wildcats 5th title; forward Jack Givens scores 41 points14
• Apr 1 New York Islanders right wing Mike Bossy becomes first NHL rookie to score 50 goals in a season.
• Apr 9 In separate NBA games Denver's David Thompson scores 73 points & San Antonio's George Gervin scores 63 points (33 in 1 quarter). Gerving wins scoring title15
Notable Births
• Mar 23 Perez Hilton, American television personality and blogger, born in Miami, Florida.
• Mar 29 Michael Kaczurak, American jazz and standards singer and stage actor, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• Apr 5 Stephen Jackson, American basketball player.16
Historical Events
• Apr 3 50th Academy Awards: "Annie Hall", Richard Dreyfuss & Diane Keaton win.
• Apr 7 Guttenberg bible sells for $2,000,000 in New York City.
• Apr 7 US President Jimmy Carter defers production of neutron bomb.17
Notable Deaths
• Mar 13 John Cazale, American stage and screen character actor (The Godfather; Dog Day Afternoon; The Deer Hunter), dies of lung and bone cancer at 42.
• Mar 23 Bill Kenny, American singer, dies at 63.
• Apr 8 Ford C Frick, American Baseball HOF executive (NL President 1934-51; MLB Commissioner 1951-65), dies at 83.18
Burns, Kenneth, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Fifth printing, ed. by Robert Dimmery p. 419.
Ibid.
Ibid.