Willie Nelson Country Music Concert

A superb DVD with the self-effacing Willie Nelson performing an inspired selection of the best known songs of his long and continuing career. Willie was born in Abbott, Texas in 1933 into a desperately poor family, his parents abandoned him at a very early age and he was left with his grandparents, which s fate would have it was where Willie strummed his first guitar. From this faltering start the road ahead was never going to be a smooth one, but his desire to make music overrode any everyday issues such as earning enough to pay the bills or feed his family. It was this dogged dedication to his music that in 1960 spurred him to drive to Nashville armed with his guitar, a clutch of overdue bills and a 19 year old Buick that was about to push its last piston.

The genius of their first special was how it favored neither man's immediate, obvious specialty: Nelson is, of course, a country music icon, while Marsalis is one of the nation's foremost jazzmen, but for that show, they met in the middle and played some blues. This time, in taking on the Charles songbook, they allow themselves to hopscotch all over the melodic map, as he did. Charles was, of course, the "genius of soul," but he was also a musical journeyman who experimented in pop, blues, jazz, and country (most famously on his classic Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music albums). And they don't restrict themselves to Charles' own compositions, just songs he performed throughout his career.