Willie Nelson's Crate-Digging and 'Stardust'

In 1978, Willie Nelson was at the top of his game — proclaimed the "King Of Country" in publications like the New York Times and the Washington Post (which have always had their finger on the pulse of what's happening in Nashville and Texas), he was both a bona fide hitmaker and a perfect story for the coastal literati, with his 30 years of unsung Music Row toil and his plainspoken wit and wisdom. Famously (and as ever), he elected to zig when everyone would have him zag, recording — rather than more rollickin' outlaw singles — a collection of outmoded tunes plucked from the American Songbook and produced by Booker T. Jones. The result, Stardust, is hardly niche. The gentle, understated and deeply felt collection went platinum the year it was released and has since repeated that certification five times over, all while establishing Nelson's status as a preeminent interpreter of American song across jazz, blues, pop and country.

Why am I stating the obvious? Well, I heard the title track, "Stardust," on Sirius the other day and it brought me to tears; it's a favorite standard (which is a little like saying "Jolene" is your favorite country song, but whatever), though I've tended to favor this Cannonball Adderley live version. Willie's version is so simple and perfect, though, familiar but still full of life.

Is it country? As Willie put it to Newsweek at the time, "Who cares? Maybe by the time everybody figures out what to call it, they all will have bought it anyway." I was curious if his recording of "Stardust" was in fact as radical of a departure as it seemed at the time — if the notably jazzy standard had deeper country roots.

Unsurprisingly, before people were quite as concerned with whether or not something was country or not, there are a few examples of people in the country sphere recording the Hoagy Carmichael classic. Even less surprisingly, almost all of those people were working in the realm of Western swing — playing country-jazz and jazz-country around Texas and beyond right as Willie was coming up.

The first country-ish recording of the tune that I found was by Western swing pioneer Cliff Bruner, which the internet dates to around 1939 — Bruner had played with Milton Brown, the "Father of Western Swing" (and a North Texan) before Brown's untimely death. Bruner's take is pretty much straight jazz, and it's interesting to think about it living alongside the group's early country tunes. His "Texas Wanderers" also featured Bob Dunn — one of the first country musicians to record an electric steel guitar.

Next was from guitarist Grady Martin, an eventual Nashville A-Team member who would record with Willie (although not on Stardust). His take has a little more of a country oom-pah groove, although remains in a pretty jazzy pocket.

Also unsurprisingly, the king himself (apologies to Willie) Bob Wills performed the tune on several radio broadcasts. An inspiration for Nelson, obviously, on fronts genre-bending and otherwise.

Another random pre-Stardust country-jazz "Stardust" is here with Roy Sneed and his Western Gentlemen, recorded live at a prison, San Luis Obispo Men's Colony. The whoops of recognition when they start playing the song are great, as is the sweet performance itself.

Finally, in the interests of pursuing our genre-bending rabbit hole even further, I learned the Hoagy Carmichael was a regular as "Jonesy" on the TV Western Laramie. Jazz and country and pop and Western — as intertwined as it gets, going all the way back