The Essential Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson recorded 11 albums for RCA between 1964 and 1971, but he has always discounted those recordings as victims of a Nashville industry that didn't understand what he was trying to do. Colin Escott, who put together this 1995 anthology, argues in the CD booklet that Nelson has oversimplified this period of his career. Sure, there were miscalculations as producer Chet Atkins tried to make Nelson's quirky vocal phrasing palatable to the country radio of the day, but there were also a fair number of artistic triumphs. After all, Escott points out, Nelson first recorded such classic compositions as "Bloody Mary Morning," "Me and Paul," "Funny How Time Slips Away," "The Party's Over," and "Phases, Stages, Circles, Cycles and Scenes" for RCA. Those five songs plus 15 others make up The Essential Willie Nelson, which skims the cream from that part of his career. Escott for the most part shies away from Atkins's most overproduced debacles and emphasizes the more understated sessions where Nelson did things "My Own Peculiar Way," as one song put it.