Essential Willie Nelson

CD 1

1. Night Life
2. Hello Walls
3. Crazy
4. Funny How Time Slips Away
5. I Never Cared For You
6. The Party's Over
7. Good Times
8. Me And Paul
9. Shotgun Willie
10. Bloody Mary Morning
11. Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain
12. Good Hearted Woman With Waylon And Jennings
13. If You've Got The Money I've Got The Time
14. Uncloudy Day
15. Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys With Waylon And Jennings
16. Georgia On My Mind
17. Blue Skies
18. All Of Me
19. Heartbreak Hotel With Leon Russell
20. Help Me Make It Through The Night
21. Whiskey River (Live)
22. Stay A Little Longer (Live)

CD 2

1. My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys
2. Faded Love With Ray Price
3. On The Road Again
4. Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground
5. Always On My Mind
6. Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning
7. Pancho And Lefty With Merle Haggard
8. To All The Girls I've Loved Before With Julio Iglesias
9. City Of New Orleans
10. Seven Spanish Angels With Ray Charles
11. Forgiving You Was Easy
12. Highwayman With Waylon Johnny Jennings, Johnny Cash And Kris Kristofferson
13. Living In The Promiseland
14. Nothing I Can Do About It Now
15. Graceland
16. Everywhere I Go With Emmylou Harris
17. Slow Dancing (U2 Feat. Willie Nelson)
18. Mendocino County Line With Lee Ann Womack
19. One Time Too Many With Steven Tyler And Aerosmith (Previously Unreleased)

With 41 tracks drawn from nine record labels, the two-disc Essential Willie Nelson is impressive in its breadth. Disc one is simply superb; it begins with 1961's "Night Life," recorded for the obscure Bellaire label, and moves on to several of Nelson's early 1960s Liberty recordings, an overlooked gem recorded for Monument in 1964 ("I Never Cared for You"), a cherry-picked selection of his RCA and Atlantic sides, and finally his mid-1970s hits for Columbia (where he found his greatest chart success, beginning, in 1975, with the No. 1 single "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain"). Disc two, however, is hit-or-miss. Classics like "On the Road Again," "Pancho & Lefty," and "Nothing I Can Do About It Now" are offset by such lesser material as "To All The Girls I've Loved Before" (recorded with Latin pop star Julio Iglesias), the phoned-in "City of New Orleans," and the sounds-better-on-paper "Highwayman" collaboration with Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Waylon Jennings. (Just because they all made it to No. 1 doesn't make them "essential.") Nelson's two best albums of the 1990s, Across the Borderline and Teatro, are represented by a paltry two songs. The disc ends with collaborations with U2, Lee Ann Womack, and Steven Tyler and Aerosmith (the previously unreleased "One Time Too Many"). None is particularly worthy of a best-of collection. Still, while it doesn't quite live up to its billing, the Essential Willie Nelson offers an excellent career overview of one of country music's true legends. --David Hill