Stardust (1978)

I’ve been putting this one off for awhile, but I just can’t hold out any longer. I think it is a lock for my top ten, but now is the time to see if it lives up to my own hype. Willie has his standard road band with him (Bobbie, Paul, Mickey, Bee, and Jody). What’s different is the producer: Booker T. Jones. The liner notes are revealing. How could Booker T. and Willie possibly have these same songs in common? How could these songs be Willie’s “favorite all-time songs”? Really? But that says it all. A mix of pop, jazz, and country. Willie has always been open to them all. In fact, in the liner notes Willlie claims that “Moonlight in Vermont” is his “favorite song of all time.” Hyperbole? Perhaps, but still. What kind of outlaw says this? This album may feature Mickey Raphael’s harmonica more prominently than any other of Willie’s albums. Booker T. somehow showcases the harmonica and brings it out as prominently as the vocals.

It’s as slow as any of Willie’s albums, but Booker T’s organ and the R&B drums and bass give this album a bouncier rhythmic feel than Willie’s other albums. In 1978, too, Willie’s voice seems to be in its prime. Willie’s guitar picking is so clean and precise. Even the strings don’t seem out of place on this album. I think it’s the harmonica, though. This has to be the highlight of Mickey Raphael’s career. This album is perfect like Gatsby, like a sonnet. Every word, every line, every rhyme fits just so. How would you begin to compare or rank songs on this album? They are all of a piece. This album has a sense of wholeness and completeness. Maybe it’s because Willie loves these songs so much, because he believes them so much, because he respects them so much, because he has known them so well and for so long. Georgia’s on his mind, but so is Vermont. Willie reconciles Texas and New England just as he reconciles jazz, pop, blues, country, and R & B. In “Unchained Melody,” Willie returns to his Proustian theme: “Time goes by so slowly, and time can do so much.” Willie sings so slowly, and sings so slowly about the slowness of time. Unchained from the beat, breaking meter. Unchained from home, on the road. “September Song” is another one of Willie’s seasonal songs. Perhaps the most melancholy on this melancholy album. For a hakuna matata philosopher, Willie surprisingly likes autumn best. He may be the happiest melancholic to ever live. A true nightingale. The drums flutter like the wings of a bird. This song feels so delicate, so fragile, it could almost break. “The days dwindle down to a precious few” as the Harmonica flutters on the edge of dissolving, gasping for life. “And these few precious days I’ll spend with you.” These Precious Days could be the title of Willie’s biography. So precious he tries to savor them, make them last longer, like notes, like the beat. “On the Sunny Side of the Street” skips and flits along, and yet it maintains an undercurrent of nostalgia. The harmonica makes sure of that. You can’t play a sad song on a banjo, but you can’t play a purely happy song on the harmonica, either. A harmonica cries no matter what you do. You can try to cry happy tears, but it cries nonetheless. Willie says he loves “Moonlight in Vermont” because it is all prose and doesn’t rhyme. He calls it “the prettiest melody I’ve ever heard.” Willie warbles along with the harmonica on this song. I’m studying the romantic era in European Studies right now with juniors at Asheville School—Beethoven, Keats, Turner, Shelley (Frankenstein). This album has that sublime romantic quality. “My mind’s more at ease…but why stir up memories.” On one hand, Willie has made a career of stirring up memories. Worrying them, disturbing them, like a sleeping dog that should be let alone. On the other hand, he wants to keep his mind at ease, and running and drinking are good ways to keep memories at bay. To numb them or outrun them. Willie’s sort of like the girls who play hard to get and run away from the boys, but they are looking over their shoulders secretly hoping they’ll get caught. Willie tries to numb and/or outrun his memories, but he secretly hopes they’ll catch up with him in his home motel. The fact that Willie has always loved reggae kills me. As much as I dislike his reggae album, Countryman, I respect his total openness to genres. “I Can See Clearly Now” works. I think it is worthy of the other ten that made the cut in 1978. The reference to blue skies would have been a neat connection to “Blue Skies.” Mickey Raphael goes to town on this track. The drums and bass bounce. It may be a bit too trippy and meandering. It might have broken the consistency of the mood of the original album. Probably a smart move to leave it out, but I’m glad they re-discovered it. It has a “Freebird”-esque rocking finale. “Scarlet Ribbon,” from the bonus tracks, clearly is not up to the level of the perfect ten that made the final cut for the album. Nevertheless, I feel very confident in saying now, just a little over a month into my year-long journey, that no album will bump Stardust from Willie’s top ten. No way.