Mickey Raphael wrote these liner notes for the ‘Naked Willie’ album released last month. This album makes such a contribution to Willie Nelson’s collection of music, and it will go down in history as the missing piece in Willie’s remarkable body of work, as it lets us hear Willie singing these great songs at the time they were recorded. Pure Willie. Doesn’t get much better than that, does it?
There are naked pictures of Willie in the liner notes, too, but I’m not going to post them here, because this isn’t that kind of a website. You’ll just have to buy the album to see the pics and hear the music!
We have Mickey Raphael to thank for this album, well, next to Willie for recording it of course. This project was Mickey’s idea and after clearing it with Willie, he went to the record company’s with the idea to present these songs in this simple, streamlined way. Thanks, Mickey!
“I have been a fan of Willie for over 35 years and of all his songs, these are some of my favorites. Most of them were recorded between 1966 and 1970 for RCA Records before the Outlaw craze and before I joined the band.
The production style of the great Chet Atkins on the original versions followed the trend of the day with lush string arrangements and vocal group back-up, aka ‘The Nashville Sound.’
What I’ve learned from Willie, working with him over the past three decades, is that less is more.
Working with engineer Tony Castle and with Willie’s blessing, we went back to the session tapes and brought these recordings back to their basics.
This is what it might have sounded like had Willie produced his own recording sessions for RCA.
Stripped down, Naked.
— Mickey Raphael
Wendover, Nevada
January 8, 2009