This double-disc set is cross-licensed to include key tracks from 40 years of recording! Includes Night Life; Hello Walls; Me and Paul; Bloody Mary Morning; Funny How Time Slips Away; Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain; On the Road Again; If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time; Georgia on My Mind; My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys; Always on My Mind; Pancho and Lefty; Highwayman, and more. 41 tracks!

Willie Nelson recorded for many labels during the course of his lengthy career, but his greatest commercial success arrived during his time on Columbia during the late '70s and early '80s, which is one of the reasons that the career-spanning double-disc collection The Essential Willie Nelson appeared on Columbia/Legacy in 2003. The other reason, of course, is that during the first part of the 2000s, Legacy had been turning out cross-licensed, multi-label compilations of artists who hopped around from label to label or had unwieldy careers. Willie is a perfect example of this, as he had five significant stays at labels (in chronological order: Liberty, RCA, Atlantic, Columbia, Island), surrounded by a bunch of detours to independent labels, or duets never featured on his official records, all of which makes the task of assembling a concise, definitive collection a difficult one. With its 41 tracks, spanning nearly 40 years of recording, The Essential Willie Nelson gets about as close as a set could to providing the basics. That doesn't mean that it's perfect, of course. It naturally relies heavily on the Columbia recordings, since it was both his popular peak and the label that released this collection, with 25 of the tracks dating from this era. To a certain extent, this shortchanges the brilliant Atlantic records Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages, as well as his fascinatingly erratic RCA recordings (found in their entirety on the Bear Family box Nashville Was the Roughest), but it's also true that the entire first disc, which runs from "Night Life" and "Hello Walls" through "Me and Paul" and "Bloody Mary Morning," all the way to Stardust, has a great momentum and summarizes this transition very well. The second disc picks up this thread well for the first 12 songs or so, covering Honeysuckle Rose and "Always on My Mind," along with some duets ("Pancho & Lefty" with Merle Haggard, "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" with Julio Iglesias) before it loses steam as it approaches the mid-'80s - not so coincidentally, precisely the time that Willie's career was briefly derailed in a dispute with the IRS. From here on out, the compilation relies too heavily on idiosyncratic selections (partially because he stopped having hits, making selection a matter of picking fan favorites) and duets, including the rarities "Slow Dancing" and "One Time Too Many," where Willie is backed by U2 and Aerosmith, respectively, giving the very end of this collection an inappropriately sour aftertaste. These are minor problems, since the overall collection is as generous as Willie Nelson's music itself and it will likely satisfy the needs of most listeners wanting only one disc in their collection.



Tracklist:

CD1:

01. Willie Nelson - Night Life (02:32)
02. Willie Nelson - Hello Walls (02:24)
03. Willie Nelson - Crazy (02:52)
04. Willie Nelson - Funny How Time Slips Away (03:03)
05. Willie Nelson - I Never Cared For You (02:32)
06. Willie Nelson - The Party's Over (02:29)
07. Willie Nelson - Good Times (02:28)
08. Willie Nelson - Me And Paul (03:49)
09. Willie Nelson - Shotgun Willie (02:39)
10. Willie Nelson - Bloody Mary Morning (02:49)
11. Willie Nelson - Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain (02:21)
12. Willie Nelson With Waylon Jennings - Good Hearted Woman (02:59)
13. Willie Nelson - If You've Got The Money I've Got The Time (02:06)
14. Willie Nelson - Uncloudy Day (04:40)
15. Willie Nelson With Waylon Jennings - Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys (02:32)
16. Willie Nelson - Georgia On My Mind (04:21)
17. Willie Nelson - Blue Skies (03:35)
18. Willie Nelson - All Of Me (03:54)
19. Willie Nelson & Leon Russel - Heartbreak Hotel (03:03)
20. Willie Nelson - Help Me Make It Through The Night (04:01)
21. Willie Nelson - Whiskey River (Live) (03:31)
22. Willie Nelson - Stay A Little Longer (Live) (03:25)

CD2:

01. Willie Nelson - My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (03:06)
02. Willie Nelson & Ray Price - Faded Love (03:51)
03. Willie Nelson - On The Road Again (02:33)
04. Willie Nelson - Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground (04:31)
05. Willie Nelson - Always On My Mind (03:32)
06. Willie Nelson - Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning (04:21)
07. Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard - Pancho And Lefty (04:48)
08. Julio Iglesias & Willie Nelson - To All The Girls I've Loved Before (03:34)
09. Willie Nelson - City Of New Orleans (04:52)
10. Ray Charles & Willie Nelson - Seven Spanish Angels (03:52)
11. Willie Nelson - Forgiving You Was Easy (02:49)
12. Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings & Kris Kristofferson - Highwayman (03:04)
13. Willie Nelson - Living In The Promiseland (03:22)
14. Willie Nelson - Nothing I Can Do About It Now (03:19)
15. Willie Nelson - Graceland (04:46)
16. Willie Nelson & Emmylou Harris - Everywhere I Go (03:52)
17. U2 & Willie Nelson - Slow Dancing (04:02)
18. Willie Nelson & Lee Ann Womack - Mendocino County Line (04:33)
19. Willie Nelson With Steven Tyler & Aerosmith - One Time Too Many (05:23)