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A duet album I wasn't expecting


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See, this is why we shouldn't be turning the Large Hadron Collider on!!!!

 

Again, I didn't expect the apocalypse to be so strange. Mushroom clouds, people vanishing in thin air, horsemen riding around - yeah.

 

Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis - no.

 

This is the same Wynton that laughed at his brother playing with Sting, right...?

 

I suppose the "connection" may have to do with Willie's herbal "connections", perhaps.

 

Robert Plant and Allison Krauss - still haven't heard that, I'm fearful. This Unholy Duet - my mind asplodes.

 

/ Nigel mode: "Is this a joke?"

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I'm considering quitting the Internet.

 

I can't look at CNN's page anymore. Long ago switched from Fark's front page to their "geek" page, then thought about Reddit's "Happy" page...

 

The strangeness of the universe is omni-pervasive these days.

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It will be one of those extremely prestigious, extremely handsome, flawlessly produced, gorgeously marketed, Grammy-inviting, newsworthy, Christmas stocking-appropriate, extremely venerable and august albums---- that nobody wants to listen to more than once.

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Say what you will of Wynton, his "chop set" is complete. I could see him providing really hip arrangements and orchestrations for Willie's tunes, which can get pretty Tin Pan Alley for a country outlaw type.. Now, if it is one of those project where he and Willie fax their parts in from New York and Texas, to Quincy Jones, could be trouble.

 

Huh. As if Willie were dead...

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Wait, this is a followup, I pressed "send" and thought "wait a second, did I really get this right?


Willie Nelson is doing a record with Wynton "Retro Jazz Elitist" Marsalis???

 

 

That's the magic of Willie - probably the only person on Earth who can get Wynton Marsalis to lighten up a little. I do think Wynton is evolving though.

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I saw a You Tube clip with Willie was jamming with ZZ Top. It's remarkable how flexible that Willie sound is. He really didn't do too much to change his thing and yet there he was trading 4's with Billy G and it totally worked.

 

Given Willie's interest and finesse with standards, etc. somehow I don't really see the Wynton pair up that off the wall.

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This could be good or could be bad. I'll pass judgement when I hear it.

 

However, Willie did a song with the unique Jazz Trio, Tin Hat Trio which was brilliant. And Miles, once said that Willie had a very unique vocal style which includes melody not unlike his own. Don't underestimate Willies ability to make strange things like this work. Will it though, I don't know. I'm not a big fan of Wynton's really sterile gutless take on Jazz.

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I appreciate Nelson's sophistication and his genuine musicality far more than I appreciate Sting, who is clearly a smart and sophisticated guy, himself, but who just doesn't seem to be as connected with his music as Nelson. Nelson and his music seem inseparable. Whereas I've sometimes felt like music was just something Sting picked up to further his ambitions...

 

I wouldn't waste 5 seconds deciding who I'd rather work with. No slag on Sting. But Nelson seems to me to be the real thing... a man who, in large part, lives for his music.

 

 

With regard to this project... I could see it going two ways... it could be the classy but ultimately uninvolving Christmas gift CD of the season -- or, if done with real passion, I could imagine it recontextualizing Willie and his guitar (because we know that beat-to-crap gut-string box is going to be in the mix) in something more challenging and demanding than the typical Nelson Riddle-reminiscent Willie-does-Ronstadt thing that most Nashville types would come up with for a "class project" around Willie.

 

We'll see...

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B2B,did you read my posts?

 

No, but I have now... once again I distracted myself by starting to respond mid-thread.

 

Anyhow, I've now watched the clip and I have to say it pretty well captures what I was getting at (right down to the close up of the wear-hole in the guitar :D ) and seems to suggest a marriage of styles I feel immediately at home with.

 

Country and jazz have intertangled before, of course, and I've always thought of Willie more in the context of the country-swing side of things, a downhome sophisticate... more Hoagie Carmichael than Hank Williams.

 

 

Thanks for posting that clip, Bill. Not only is it a very nicely done little promo, it stands on its own, pretty well, as a mini-documentary.

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