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When country singers go back to their roots, the album's usually called Amazing Grace, but Willie Nelson's never been known for his orthodoxy. Instead of hymns, he's giving us ten of the best from popular classicists like George and Ira Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Irving Berlin. Still, Stardust traces Nelson's musical family tree more convincingly that The Troublemaker, his own white-gospel collection.
In one sense, Stardust is a memory album: "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "Georgia on My Mind" and the rest were songs Nelson grew up playing in dives and dance halls across Texas. He and his band haven't reworked them much since then. You can still hear a hint of polka and the clippety-clop of singing cowboys in the bass like of "Blue Skies," and the black-tie-and-champagne bounce of "Someone to Watch Over Me" has been smoothed to a whiskey (straight up) trot. A harmonica does the duty of a horn section, and in between the verses Nelson picks out the melody on his guitar. The notes are as sweet and easy as the smiles of the women eyeing the bandstand over their partners' shoulders.
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But Stardust is more than a personal history or testimonial. It's a reminder. The songs Nelson has chosen are a part of Nashville's collective bloodlines too, as much as tent-show evangelism and barroom stomps are. The old standards' precise balance of artifice and sentiment stood as a pattern for the popular song that was never seriously challenged until the eruption of rock & roll. In Nashville, it persisted even then. In "Stardust" or "September Song," as in Nashville's most enduring creations (including many of Nelson's own), resignation, with its implied self-sufficiency, triumphs -- barely -- over whatever agony of emotion is at hand. Tears may slide into the beer, but the singer's dignity is preserved.
For all the sleek sophistication of the material, Stardust is as down-home as the Legion dance. Heard coast to coast in lounges and on elevator soundtracks, these tunes have become part of the folk music of exurban America. And that's the way Nelson plays them -- spare and simple, with a jump band's verve and a storyteller's love of a good tale. By offering these songs, he's displaying the tools of a journeyman musician's trade -- worn smooth and polished by constant use -- and when he lays them out this way, they kind of look like works of art. Willie Nelson may be acknowledging both his own and country music's debt to Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, but he's also showing these hallowed musical institutions how the country makes their music its own.
- Ariel Swartley, Rolling Stone, 6/29/78.
Bonus Reviews!
Unusual pairing of artist and producer here as Booker T. Jones was the prime mover in Booker T & the MGs a few years back. But the combination works well for Nelson who has been scoring huge successes both with Waylon Jennings and as a solo artist. He puts his distinctive, soft vocal style to good use interpreting a number of standards as well as country-flavored tunes. All of the material seems well suited to his easygoing style as Nelson backs himself with guitar and gets help with guitar, drums, keyboards, bass and harmonica. Best cuts: "Stardust," "Georgia On My Mind," "Unchained Melody," "September Song," "Moonlight In Vermont."
- Billboard, 1978.
I can always do without "Unchained Melody," and at times I wish he'd pick up the tempo. Basically, though, I'm real happy this record exists, not just because Nelson can be a great interpretive singer -- his "Moonlight in Vermont" is a revelation -- but because he's provided me with eleven great popular songs that I've never had much emotional access to. Standards that deserve the name -- felt, deliberate, schmaltz-free. A-
- Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.
The record label didn't want Nelson to do this project, inspired partially by the death of pop crooner Bing Crosby. Standard material -- "Moonlight in Vermont," "All of Me," "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" -- is arranged by Booker T. |Jones| (of "Green Onions" fame) and recorded in Nelson's inimitable style in Emmylou Harris's house.
- Tom Roland, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.
On this legendary departure from the traditional Willie, America's pop troubadour puts his one-of-a-kind touch on old pop standards, finding common ground between outlaw country and mellow, classic stuff by Berlin, Carmichael, Gershwin and Ellington. Sweet and simple, more bow tie than bandana, each song is turned and twisted until it's his own and, paired with the production talents of Booker T. Jones, sets a romantic mood that appeals to a whole new audience. * * * * *
- Zagat Survey Music Guide - 1,000 Top Albums of All Time, 2003.
Stardust is Nelson's love song to old-time American music: At the height of his country popularity, the crooner digs up his favorite Tin Pan Alley standards -- "Georgia on My Mind," "Unchained Melody," "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" -- and makes them swing as if he had just come up with them in his La-Z-Boy.
Stardust was chosen as the 257th greatest album of all time by the editors of Rolling Stone magazine in Dec. 2003.
- Rolling Stone, 12/11/03.
After the success of 1975's quietly iconoclastic The Red Headed Stranger, Willie Nelson's bosses at Columbia Records were probably inclined to let him try just about anything. Still, the concept of Stardust must have made them nervous -- why would the honky-tonker release a lavishly produced collection of Tin Pan Alley standards?
But if Red Headed Stranger confirmed that Nelson was one of the great country artists of his day, Stardust sealed his reputation as one of the best and most distinctive American singers of any day. Often imitated, even mocked, but seldom matched, Nelson's singing was already rather more jazzy than that of his colleagues in Nashville, and Stardust let him take on the idiom of jazz singing directly. On the title cut, Nelson sings sometimes a little ahead, sometimes well behind the beat, and plucks notes seemingly from nowhere.
Nelson broke new commercial ground with Stardust, which stayed on the U.S. Billboard album chart for two years and, improbably enough, with tunes by pop songsters like Hoagy Carmichael and Irving Berlin on the country charts. If The Red Headed Stranger made Nelson a country legend, Stardust made him a household name. A movie career followed, as well as more country hits, and Nelson later continued his genre experiments with forays into blues and gospel. But a quarter century later, Nelson was still interpreting and reinterpreting tunes from Stardust at his concerts, which affirms that with Willie Nelson, there is no country or pop, just Willie Nelson songs.
- Kenneth Burns, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, 2005.
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