Willie Nelson - 54 Songs: The Songwriter Sessions (CD)

All Music Guide

This threedisc set is, essentially, a reproduction including sequencing of the Complete Ghost Sessions that were released earlier in 2006 on Masked Weasel. 54 Songs: The Songwriter Sessions assembles stray recordings some fairly wellknown, others not from Willie Nelson's career before his tenure with Columbia. There have been many compilations of the material found on this set, but few of them came close to being chosen on the merit of the songs themselves. Series producers Pat Thomas and Russ Tolman unearthed nuggets, laid out a few familiar faces, and even placed some tunes here that were resurrected and rerecorded later in Nelson's career. The chronology isn't strict, but volume one assembles mostly material from the late '50s and early '60s, the second is comprised entirely of recordings from the '60s, and volume three contains tracks from the late '60s and early '70s, just before the Red Headed Stranger shot Nelson off into superstardom. The sound quality varies quite a bit he...re, from merely adequate to quite good. To be truthful, some of the cuts on the first disc are downright dodgy soundwise. Nonetheless, for the money these are pretty solid artifacts for the more serious Nelson collector, though they're hardly for the uninitiated. Each of these volumes is also sold separately. - Thom Jurekð°, All Music Guide Read more Less