Back before he became the outlaw-country movement’s ponytailed poster boy, Willie Nelson was a Nashville songwriter toiling the trenches with hundreds of other guitar-strumming hopefuls. Eventually, he added “singer” to his résumé and set out to make it on his own. And like many country-music artists of the ’60s, Nelson fell victim to MusicCity’s hit-making machine—which slathered tons of goopy strings, schmaltzy backing vocals, and other crimes against music onto songs. (Is it any wonder Nelson went running to Austin with middle fingers flying a few years later?) Naked Willie gathers 17 tracks Nelson recorded between 1966 and 1970, strips away the gunk, and presents the material the way the singer heard it when he recorded it. Problem is, this rewriting of history complicates the natural order of things (just ask the Beatles, whose Let It Be … Nakedreally isn’t all that much better than Phil Spector’s heavy-handed version of their final album). Sure, many of these songs are way more tolerable without the grandma-safe orchestras, but not much is revealed in these back-to-basics forms. It doesn’t help matters that this isn’t the greatest batch of songs Nelson’s written and recorded. “The Ghost” is more haunting, and “What Can You Do to Me Now?” sounds more despondent than ever. Plus, it’s nice to hear the crack session musicians out front. But peeling away the past won’t erase the memories. --Michael Gallucci
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