After "Crazy" became a success and Willie had recorded sides for a few Liberty Records albums and even scoring one Top 10 hit, he then moved over to Chet Akins' RCA Records and while the legendary C.G.P. knew what a talent he had with Willie, he couldn't figure out that Willie was best left to be an artist of his own devices to record his albums, as he did with 1975's "Red Headed Stranger." From that point forward, labels and fans got Willie and he, along with his Outlaw friends, redefined the way albums were made. Instead of having a producer tell them what songs and what musicians they could use on the recording, which was standard until "Read Headed Stranger," artists were now free to record their albums with more input. It is with this sprit that Willie Nelson's good friend and band member Mickey Raphael went to work on 'un-producing' seventeen tracks from Willie’s 1966-1970 records that were all produced by Chet, Felton Jarvis and Danny Davis in the "Nashville Sound" of lush strings and harmony vocalists. Instead of that lush sound is a bare bones, classic album that recalls the stuff that Willie got famous. It's a less is more approach and it works, very well.
Of the 17 tracks on "Naked Willie," only three weren't written by the legend. The lead-off track "Bring Me Sunshine," with a loungy melody that recalls "King Of The Road," "Joynny One Time" and Kris Kristofferson's seminal "Sunday Morning Coming Down." Stellar tracks on this record include the stark, bare bones "Jimmy's Road," an anti-war song I can't imagine hearing any other way than the way it's presented here. "The Ghost" reminds me of the stellar "Hello Walls" (which Willie wrote) with it's loneliness and sadness over a love that's long gone. "If You Could See What's Going Through My Mind" is a great example of the A-list musicianship present on this album and how well it sounds paired with Willie.
There isn't a bad track or note to be found on "Naked Willie." While many of his songs have been re-mastered, remixed and repackaged time and time again, very few times has a repackaged piece of work sounded as vibrant, of the minute and class sounding as "Naked Willie" does. It's a work that chronicles a fertile songwriting period for Willie and it's an album that every Willie Nelson fan needs to place in their record collection and it's one that I'm very willing to place with Red Headed Stranger and Stardust as the greatest of Willie Nelson albums. It's that good.
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