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A Horse Called Music
1989

1. Nothing I Can Do About it Now
2. Highway
3. I never Cared for You
4. If I were a painting
5. Spirit
6. There you Are
7. Mr. Record Man
8. If My World Didn’t Have You
9. Horse Called Music
10. Is the Better Part Over?

A Horse Called Music, Nelson’s 31st album for Columbia, is a return to familiar territory for the 56-year-old Spicewood resident.   Last Year’s Wonderful World was Nelson’s third cover of of music of the ’40s and ’50′s, A Horse Called Music finds Nelson staking mostly honky tonks again with the help of his producer from the ’60s, Fred Foster.  As such, it is a comfortable, realistic album, with the brilliance that made him the king of country music.

Three Nelson originals make the album more than worth it’s purchase price:  Is the Better Part Over?, Mr. Record Man, and I never Cared For You.  the latter two have been around for years, but were re-recorded for this album.  I Never Cared for You was cut when Nelson was a Monument Records artist and Foster ws his producer, and this cut is an effective celebration of their re-formed collaboration.  Mr. Record Man, which was the first charted single of Nelson’s career, is re-worked here emphasizing Nelson’s trademark gut-stringed guitar picking.

Is the Better Part Over? is the new original on Horse.  It is classic Willie, both in terms of poetry and music, and Nelson’s lyrical beauty shines through.

Nothing I Can Do About It Now, perhaps the best cover song on this 10-song album (and currently No. 12 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart), was specifically written by Beth Nielson Chapman for A Horse Called Music.  It captures the style Nelson’s most comfortable singing in.

Nelson has made some of the best albums in country music (Red Headed Stranger, Yesterday’s Wine, Country Music Live Album and Phases and Stages). 

– Casey Monahan

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 12:15 am and is filed under Albums, News and Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.