Willie Stripped

Long before he became a long-haired, convention-defying outlaw icon, Willie Nelson was a buttoned-down Nashville cat, courting the country mainstream by making records full of the sugary strings and outsized backing-vocal groups that were de rigeur at the time. The thing is, there were some great songs and strong vocal performances underneath it all, and NAKED WILLIE goes back in time to rewrite history. It presents the basic band-and-vocal tracks as they were originally laid down, without any of the aforementioned adornments that were added after the fact. Pulling back those layers of overproduction does indeed shine a spotlight on just how good Willie already was, even early in the game.