A bit of a revelation. I understate, caught by surprise. The record lives up to its title! All the signs are that it shouldn't. It's that old trick where, after someone becomes famous, their old record label puts out the stuff they recorded in the early (non famous) days and tries to pass it off as a "greatest" collection, carefully avoiding the word "hits" because there aren't any of those. I've been suckered before this way, too many times: Marianne Faithful, George Jones, Ralph McTell. The cover photo is disingenuous, too: all the songs on the album were recorded before Willie adopted his (now) trademark outlaw look; he had no beard, no bandanna or long hair when he sang them.
Boy, what great songs, though! Traditional country fayre, it's true, but wonderfully observed. They're drawn from albums Willie released between 1962 and 1971, as far as I can tell from the discography, and all written (or co-written) by him. One of the amazing things, for a compilation spanning nine years' work (especially those nine years), is that the production and arrangements remain so consistent that they could all be from the same album. The one exception to this is What Can You Do to Me Now?, where Willie has an orchestra behind him, but all the others have the voice right up front, and very sparse, subtle backing. Silence again. Solos are rare, disciplined and unshowy; get in, do the job, out again. Similar to Hank Williams, Willie keeps the songs concise: though a handful break the three minute mark, almost half come in under two and a half.
I hadn't noticed before, but Neil Young 'borrowed' the tune for Bound for Glory (on Old Ways) from Willie's Good Hearted Woman. I think Willie lent his voice, and his one-time piano player, to the recording of the song, so it seems safe to assume there was no subterfuge about this.
As I implied, I didn't really know what I was getting with this record. I'd read a guide to country music in the NME by Hank Wangford. He wrote, "Willie is a bigger rebel than Joe Strummer will ever be." I could never quite figure out what evidence he had to back up that statement, but when he said Willie's Red-Headed Stranger was the album to look for, I looked for it. Couldn't find it, so I got this instead, £3.29 from the Our Price in the Friary Centre, Guildford, at the same time I got Three of Perfect Pair — maybe.
Someway, somehow I'll make a man of me.
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