Stardust [Extra tracks, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered]

Willie Nelson | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 19, 1999)
• Original Release Date: 1978
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Extra tracks, Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0000296J3
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (151 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,932 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #23 in Music > Country > Outlaw Country
  • #57 in Music > Country > Classic Country > General AAS

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Willie Nelson has never been one to do the safe or expected, and this Booker T. Jones-produced album of pop standards from the '30s and '40s certainly fits the profile. It's also one of the better albums of Nelson's career, allowing Willie to dip his fragile, quivering tenor all around the beat in songs like "All of Me" and "Unchained Melody." Jones's organ, piano, and string arrangements are low-key and swinging (except on the almost wooden "On the Sunny Side of the Street"), and Nelson's vocals on "Georgia on My Mind" and "Moonlight in Vermont" are filled with a dignified and slightly jazzy country soul. The 1999 reissue adds a pair of bonus cuts to the mix, including the lullaby-like "Scarlet Ribbons" and the somewhat out-of-place "I Can See Clearly Now." --David Cantwell

Product Description

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: NELSON,WILLIE
Title: STARDUST
Street Release Date: 10/19/1999
Domestic
Genre: COUNTRY

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Willie Nelson Shines Bright on STARDUST February 21, 2000

By Bill Matheny

Format:Audio CD

Over the last few years we've been bombarded with one unnecessary CD that remakes American standards after another. Ughh! I can only think of two artists who honor these songs while still making contemporary albums: Steve Tyrell's A NEW STANDARD and, best of all, Willie Nelson's STARDUST. Re-discovering this album, complete with two new tracks, is a joy. Of the many great albums that Willie Nelson has recorded, this one is my favorite. It sounds just as good today as it did twenty years ago, and I suspect it will sound the same in another twenty years. I am living proof that you don't have to listen to standards on a regular basis - if ever - to love this album. STARDUST is an absolute gem that gets better every time you play it. Bravo, Willie!

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Nelson's classic lengthened, but difficult to improve July 1, 2008

By hyperbolium

Format:Audio CD

Country artists taking on pop standards wasn't a new idea when Willie Nelson released the ten tracks of 1978's Stardust LP. Ferlin Husky had released an entire album's worth on 1957's Boulevard of Broken Dreams, and other country stars regularly drew from the Great American Songbook. Nelson himself had recorded "That Lucky Old Sun" two years earlier for his The Sound in Your Mind LP. What made Stardust so audacious was the confluence of Nelson's iconoclastic career and the times in which the album was released. Where his outlaw compadre Waylon Jennings had directly confronted Nashville, Nelson vented his subversion by retreating to Texas, and waxing concept albums like Phases and Stages and The Red Headed Stranger.

Nelson's previous release, the 1977 tribute to Lefty Frizzell, To Lefty From Willie, didn't straightforwardly set the stage for an album of standards, but the depth of his song selections, the respect he showed the material, and his idiosyncratic phrasing revealed an interpretive stylist whose talent stretched well beyond his own words. With the outlaw country movement in full swing, Nelson's choice to drop an album of classic American pop was perhaps the most revolutionary move of his career. Recorded with his band and produced by Booker T. Jones, Nelson re-contextualized the songs to expose their common roots in the American experience, much as Ray Charles had managed with 1962's Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.

Predictably, Columbia's brass didn't have a clue, yet the album turned into the biggest success of Nelson's career, producing a pair of chart-topping singles ("Blue Skies" and "Georgia on My Mind," the latter snagging a Grammy®) and the #3 "All of Me," sold millions of copies, and stuck to the country album chart for over ten years! The album's crossover success wasn't quite as pronounced, though it did stay two years on the pop album chart. Nelson's vision brought the songs of Hoagy Carmichael, Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, Duke Ellington, George & Ira Gershwin, and others to a new audience and a new generation. He did this by staying true to both the songs and his own art, blending together a reverence for the compositions with his personal musical style.

The arrangements include several of Nelson's trademark sounds, including Mickey Raphael's harmonica and Nelson's gut-string guitar; Booker T's organ adds soul, jazz and gospel notes throughout. Nelson's band proves itself superb company for pop standards, able to underline the vocals and swing ever-so-lightly as needed. The results are a perfect rendering of pop standards in the Willie Nelson style. As strongly as these tracks took hold with the public, they exerted an even deeper spell on Nelson, who continued to record from the pop songbook for years to come, including 1981's Somewhere Over the Rainbow LP.

Columbia/Legacy's 30th anniversary edition of Stardust includes a second CD of sixteen additional standards waxed by Nelson between 1976's The Sound in Your Mind and 1990's Born For Trouble. Drawn from across fifteen years, there's more variety and less cohesion between the arrangements, which makes disc two less an album and more an opportunity to hear Nelson's evolving creativity. Few of these tracks measure up to the inspiration of the original Stardust, but there are highlights, including a gypsy-jazz country-blue version of "I'm Confessin' (That I Love You)," a downbeat, pre-Stardust take of "Lucky Old Sun," and a romantically yearning cover of "Mona Lisa" that features guitar runs reminiscent of Anton Karas' zither in The Third Man. Completists should note that neither of the bonus tracks from the 1999 Stardust reissue ("Scarlet Ribbons" and "I Can See Clearly Now") are included here. New liner notes from Rich Kienzle are worth reading, but with the original album a five-star release on its own, it's really difficult to make improvements. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Super songs by a subtle, super singer... May 18, 2004

By William E. Adams

Format:Audio CD

On this record, Willie proved that his favorite items from "The Great American Songbook" were good enough to survive his distinctive phrasing and country/blues accompaniment organized by his buddy, Booker T., the producer. Mostly mellow, this album gives you 45 minutes of quiet pleasure. The songs were designed for pop, jazz or Broadway treatments, but Willie proved he could do them justice in his own sweet way. I had a boss who purchased this one when it came out in 1978 or so, and played it for me one day. I was barely conscious of Willie back then, but I knew the material from more traditional renditions. While I did not rush out to buy this at the time, it was because it was a tight budget year, not because I didn't like it. Now I've just acquired it, 25 years on, yet both Willie and the songs survive. If you like Nelson, this CD is one of the essentials. If you like "The Great American Songbook" this version of some of the best from that body of work is also essential. Here, Willie invented a style that melds jazz, pop, country, folk, blues and Broadway. Play "Red-Headed Stranger" and follow it with this one, and you have all the evidence one needs that Mr. Nelson is an immortal in the roster of great American music-makers.