Willie Nelson - Crazy: Demo Sessions (CD)

A major historical find on a major artis

By Yahoo! Shopping User  Mar 22, 2003

This collection of Nelson’s earliest Nashville demo recordings shows just how advanced his songwriting and performing abilities had become by the time he made it to Music City. They also show very plainly why a full-on artistic collision awaited him... at Liberty and RCA. These unadorned demo sessions (the first eight feature mostly Nelson and his acoustic guitar, the remaining tracks find Nelson backed by a talented and twangy collection of Nashville studio pickers) are full of Nelson’s intelligent songwriting and idiosyncratic phrasing, demonstrating the difference between what Nelson wanted to say and what Nashville wanted to hear. These demos are like a snapshot taken seconds before the straightjacket was fitted on him at Liberty and the straps tightened down at RCA.Many of these songs provided material for Nelson’s early albums, including "Three Days," "Undo the Right" and "Darkness of the Face of the Earth" (re-recorded for Nelson’s 1962 Liberty debut "And Then I Wrote"), "Are You Sure" (re-recorded for Nelson’s 1965 RCA debut, "Country Willie - His Own Songs"), and "Opportunity to Cry," "Permanently Lonely" and "Something to Think About" (re-recorded in a live setting for 1966’s "Live Country Music Concert"). Several provided material for then-contemporary artists such as Ray Price and Timi Yuro ("Are You Sure"), Faron Young ("Things to Remember" "A Moment Isn’t Very Long"), and of course Patsy Cline ("Crazy").This latter demo, of the iconic "Crazy," is among the album’s most interesting. Nelson’s phrasing, highly influenced by Sinatra and other crooners, gives hints of the style in which Cline (and her producer, Owen Bradley) would cut her most famous recording. At the same time, Nelson’s own style must also be listened through to hear the hit. Comparing the demo to Cline’s finished product is a valuable lesson in what each of songwriter, singer and producer add to a hit record.Even more fascinating is how much these demos reflect the sound that Nelson would eventually record once he’d broken free of Nashville’s conventions. "The Local Memory" would turn up on Nelson’s 1973 debut for Atlantic, "Shotgun Willie." "Opportunity to Cry" was re-recorded with Merle Haggard for 1982’s "Pancho & Lefty," and "Darkness on the Face of the Earth" was featured on Nelson’s 1998 release, "Teatro." Nelson’s earliest catalog of songs has also provided material for contemporary artists, with recent takes of these songs by k.d. lang and Waylon Jennings ("Three Days"), Tracy Byrd and Wade Hayes ("Undo the Right"), and George Jones ("I Gotta Get Drunk").Sugar Hill’s collection includes an unlisted sixteenth bonus track that itself includes three more songs, a video interview with songwriter Hank Cochran, informative historical liner notes by Steve Fishell, and song-by-song annotations. The mono sound is clean and compelling, and more than half of these tracks have never before been issued commercially.These tracks are a major find in the history of a major artist -- a must-have for any Willie Nelson fan. Read more Less