One Hell Of a Ride (4-CD Box Set)

my shopping cart
Country Music CD » One Hell Of a Ride (4-CD Box Set)
One Hell Of a Box Set)
Amazon.com
Marketplace (45 New & Used)
  1. Audio CD: Release Date 2008-04-01
  2. Publisher: Sony
  3. Artist: Willie Nelson
  4. Format: Box set, Original recording remastered
  5. Sales Rank in Music: #6066

Product Review

This box contains a wealth of American music, plus a couple of jewels--Django Reinhardt's "Nuages" and Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come"--from beyond these shores. Here are 100 songs commemorating Willie Nelson's incredible journey by going full circle. "When I've Sang My Last Hillbilly Song," leading off Disc One, was recorded in 1954 or '55; it is reprised on Disc Four's final track, updated in 2007. Between those years Nelson, a Depression era kid who grew up dirt poor in Abbott, Texas, became one of the world's most recognizable figures, in the music/entertainment business or otherwise. One Hell Of A Ride is, quite simply, the most all-encompassing Nelson retrospective ever assembled.



In addition to all of its glorious music, this package also features incisive words in an essay by Nelson's biographer, Joe Nick Patoski, whose Willie Nelson: An Epic Life was published in 2008. There's also a brief reminiscence by Mickey Raphael, Nelson's longtime harmonica player, that is funny and affecting.



Finally, there is the man himself, who on April 30, 2008 turned 75. The songs herein, many of them touchstones, some lesser known gems, reflect the musical sense and sensibility of an artist for all ages, and for the ages.

Product Features

Title Tracks for One Hell Of a Ride (4-CD Box Set)

Customer Reviews

Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (30 customer reviews)

54 of 62 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Great collection, but once again...frustrating, April 1, 2008
Mark Weisinger (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: One Hell Of a Ride (4-CD Box Set) (Audio CD)
Let me start by saying that I'm a big Willie Nelson fan, and I hate docking this collection a star. It's not because the material on this set isn't first-rate. On the contrary; everything here is classic. Even some of the lesser-known and/or second-tier songs would be career highlights for most artists. But the problem with this set is the same problem suffered by every Willie Nelson compilation released so far: what's missing from it.

There are several good Willie Nelson compilations on the market right now: the classic (and recently remastered) "Greatest Hits (and Some That Will Be)," the boxed set "Revolutions of Time," and two compilations both called "Essential Willie Nelson" (one a single-disc covering his early years and the other a recent double-disc covering his entire career). While all of these collections are great, none is truly comprehensive. I was really hoping that this would finally be the collection that "got it right," but once again, we're given...Read more


16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A worthy box set for Willie's 75th anniversary, April 15, 2008
DJ Joe Sixpack (...in Middle America) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   
This review is from: One Hell Of a Ride (4-CD Box Set) (Audio CD)
To be sure, there's no shortage of Willie Nelson best-ofs out there, but this far-flung 4-CD set is a real doozy. It draws on Willie's work from a number of labels, including former rivals RCA and Columbia (now both part of Sony-BMG) as well as early '60s recordings on Liberty (owned by EMI), a couple of tracks from his lone mid-period album for Atlantic and various offerings on Universal over the last ten years.

It's a fitting tribute to Nelson, a prolific trendsetter and stubborn iconoclast whose seventy-fifth birthday coincides with the album's release. The collection starts out with a prehistoric demo that Willie made around 1954 or '55, back before his early success as the songwriter of hits such as "Crazy" and "Nite Life..." Even back then, working in the real hillbilly days when Nashville was only beginning to consolidate its power as the center of a new country music industry, Willie had an odd, exceptional air about him. His phrasing was already a little bit...Read more


10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Stop The Nit Pickin', April 21, 2008
Shell-Zee (Long Island, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: One Hell Of a Ride (4-CD Box Set) (Audio CD)
Come on stop nit pickin'. Seems like everyone has his or her favorite song that's not included on this collection. The problem is Willie has been so prolific for the past twenty five years, that it would be impossible to satisfy everyone even if they had made this a five or six disc collection. All I know is this is a great collection and I'm delighted to find one hundred of Willie's greatest songs all in one collection.

With that said I would like to see a few of Willie's great albums like "Angel Eyes", "Without A Song", "Islands In The Sea" and the "Songwriter" soundtrack (with Kris Kristofferson) reissued. Or maybe Atlantic Records would have the good sense to reissue their terrific three disc collection "Classic & Unreleased". Then again I guess that's a bit of nit pickin' on my part.

© 2012 www.countrymusiccd.org