Willie Nelson - You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Willie NelsonEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-03-14
Music Label: Lost Highway
Soundtracks:
- Bubbles In My Beer
- Not That I Care
- Take Me In Your Arms
- Don't Be Ashamed Of Your Age
- You Don't Know Me
- Sugar Moon
- I Don't Care
- Cherokee Maiden
- The Warm Red Wine
- Miss Molly
- Dusty Skies
- It's All Your Fault
- Just Walkin' Out The Door
Free Music Notes for You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker
Free Music Review: Cindy and Willie: Works for me!
Hit: 5 Stars
While browsing the CD sale rack at Joe Dahlquist's Ben Franklin store in Reed City recently, I struck gold, so I figured I'd share it with you.
Willie Nelson's latest CD marks a welcome return to country music as it was over fifty years ago. You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker is Willie's tribute to one of the great songwriters from the golden era that gave us Bob Wills, Gene Autry, Webb Pierce, Ernest Tubb and Eddy Arnold, just to name a few of the stars who covered Walker's tunes.
The album is equal parts Walker and Willie, a winning combination. I didn't know that much about Walker, but I've been a fan of Willie for nearly thirty years. Of course Nelson has been writing and recording songs himself for close to fifty years now, but only started receiving national recognition in the late seventies with the release of his landmark concept album, Red-Headed Stranger. With that record he broke free of the normal Nashville product and established what came to be called the "outlaw sound." He was soon joined in this movement by Waylon, Jerry Jeff, Johnny and Kris, and others.
I started seriously collecting Willie's stuff after the crossover success of his beautiful ballad, "You Were Always on My Mind." Well, I call it beautiful, but I'll concede that Willie's voice is probably an acquired taste. My wife calls his singing just plain awful. I call it, well, "just plain Willie," like an old friend's familiar voice. And the sounds he coaxes from the gut strings of that old much-patched guitar are, to me, simply sublime.
From the opening notes of "Bubbles in My Beer" to the closing strains of "I Was Just Walkin' Out the Door," there are just no bad tracks on this disc. With an all-star musical ensemble led by fiddler Johnny Gimble (who once played with the Texas Playboys) and backing vocals by the venerable Jordanaires, country music just doesn't get much better than this.
The title track is, of course, an absolute gem. It's a song that nearly every major vocalist of the past half century has recorded, but Willie somehow makes it his own. Even Eddy Arnold and Jerry Vale would have to tip their hats to Willie's treatment.
"Sugar Moon" has been a favorite tune of mine ever since I heard Leon Redbone's mellow rendition back in the eighties. (Never heard Leon? Find him. Listen. Enjoy!)
There are few songs here that don't strike a familiar chord, but one I had never heard before is "Dusty Skies," perhaps one of the most moving pieces on the album. It's Walker's response to the national misery of the Great Depression and the devastation that was the "dust bowl" of Oklahoma. Willie's soulful nasal twang blends perfectly with the velvet voices of the Jordanaires and mournful moan of Charlie McCoy's mouth organ as he sings --
"So get along little dogies, we're movin' off of this range
Never thought as how I'd make a change
But the blue skies have failed and we're on our last trail
Underneath these dusty skies
These ain't tears in my eyes
Just sand, from these dusty skies."
Cindy Walker, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, died on March 23, 2006. She was 87. But she lived to see this album made and was very pleased with it. Willie is too. He compares it to Stardust, his classic 1978 album of pop standards. If you like good music, you'll like this album. If you like Willie, you'll love it. - Tim Bazzett, author of the ReedCityBoy trilogy ([...])
You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker Poster
Though Willie Nelson's thematic albums in recent years have been hit-and-miss, this labor of love is a thorough delight. One Texas legend pays tribute to another and evokes the inspiration of a third, as Nelson puts his stylistic signature on the songbook of Cindy Walker, with arrangements channeling the spirit of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys (whose most familiar songs include many of Walker's). Nelson's conversational phrasing refreshes the familiar title track and brings out the soulful depths of heartfelt (and heartsick) balladry such as "Not That I Care." The nimble band features the interplay of Playboys alum Johnny Gimble on fiddle and the legendary Buddy Emmons on steel guitar, under the production of Nashville veteran Fred Foster. Saloon songs such as "Bubbles in My Beer" and "The Warm Red Wine" meet the mythic West of "Cherokee Maiden" and "Dusty Skies" and the weathered resilience of "Don't Be Ashamed of Your Age" and "I Don't Care," as the collection pays testament not only to Walker's range, but to Nelson's interpretive mastery. --Don McLeeseProduced by Fred Foster, the man behind such stars as Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, & Kris Kristofferson, You Don't Know Me: The Songs of Cindy Walker is truly a return to form for Willie. The band performing on the record is made up of several of Nashville's premier session players, who successfully capture the spirit and sound of classic country music. All songs were written by Country Music Hall of Fame inductee (1997), Cindy Walker. At 87, she has a long list of writing credits to her name, which include: "Dusty Skies" recorded by Spade Cooley, Bob Wills, & The Sons of the Pioneers, "Cherokee Maiden" recorded by Bob Wills, Merle Haggard, & Mel Tillis, "Warm Red Wine" recorded by Ernest Tubb and George Jones, "You Don't Know Me" recorded by Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Jimmy Dean, Henry Mancini, & many more The single, "You Don't Know Me" was made most famous by Willie's close friend Ray Charles on The Modern Sounds of Country and Western Music. "I loved her music," Nelson says of Walker's catalog of playful saloon songs and heartfelt ballads. "Even before we met I felt like I knew her from listening to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys do her songs. Every night of the week as a teenager I was playing things like "Miss Molly" and "I Was Just Walking Out The Door" somewhere.
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