There’s a folk quality to it, but also a sophistication. Willie reaches for melodies the way one might reach to pet the family dog: lovingly, without drama or strain. All feelings, however big, are rendered with sweetness and distance, as though being looked back on from a point beyond life (“Unchained Melody”). Jones, who also produced-are spacious, the sound ethereal (“Stardust,” “Georgia on My Mind”). The arrangements-by Memphis soul legend Booker T. No touch too heavy, no tempo above a resting heartbeat. Recorded in a living room with a mobile studio in the Hollywood Hills. Ten songs, each of them a favorite from Willie’s childhood, a handful of them dating to before his birth in 1933. He was a writer, they said-why not write? Plus, they added, why would his young, country audience care about old Broadway and Hoagy Carmichael songs, anyhow? They wouldn’t, Willie said, but older people would, and the young ones would just figure he had written them in the first place. When Willie Nelson approached Columbia Records about making an album of classic American songs, they told him he was crazy.
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