Artist: Nelson, Willie
Label: EMI Records
Released: 2008
Two Men With The Blues is a title that, under the guise of mixing blues and jazz, brings together two eminent names of the music world: country legend Willie Nelson and jazz trumpet master Wynton Marsalis. A unique collaboration, downright unimaginable at first glance, which the two gents gave their own very special spin at a January gig last year at the Lincoln Home of Jazz center, and which, with summer 2008 rolling in, is shaping up to be one of the most eagerly awaited releases around.
Two Men With The Blues delivers an exciting set of ten top-notch, perfectly balanced tracks, masterfully fused into an effective, compact whole. On top of the brilliant performances, the smooth steering between styles is further sweetened by great chemistry between the two. It sticks to an idyllic, easy-on-the-ears approach throughout, without wandering too far into experimental waters. So this is a fairly conventional musical blend, aimed at a wider audience. The duo builds on symbiosis the whole way through, and only rarely do bursts of instrumental spice break it up. For a warm-up, you first get the bursting-with-energy Bright Lights, Big City, a poisonous mix of vocal country blues and instrumental jazz that gains its elasticity mostly from the enthusiastic playing around with the basics of jazz rhetoric. Rainy Day blues follows in its predecessor’s footsteps, much like the charismatic coinage My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It, a humorously horn-arranged number with a whiff of the 1920s that will “annoyingly” peck away at your eardrums.
Charles’ Georgia On My Mind wins plenty of sympathy too. A dreamy piano interpretation, here and there broken up by subtle trumpet, it gets its accessibility mostly thanks to Nelson’s lamenting vocals. A brilliantly slipped-in piano solo even gives the song a turn toward traditional blues, but only for a moment. Ain’t Nobody’s Business and the closing That’s All go a step further into exploratory horn improvisation. The former is really a kind of ambient upgrade of the above-mentioned Ray masterpiece, while That’s All presents itself as the complete opposite, with all the band members galloping through improvised runs, fiercely chasing the last train to show off their interpretive chops as the album nears its end.
Despite the flood of similar genre experiments we’ve been witnessing in recent years, Two Men With The Blues arrives as a real breath of fresh air this summer, even if, with a title that misleads many, it doesn’t exactly deliver pure pleasures in abundance to fans of authentic blues. But the more flexible worshippers of both genres, blues and jazz, will surely embrace it with enthusiasm, provided of course they aren’t afraid to peek a little deeper into the unknown.
Lineup
Willie Nelson: vocals, guitar
Wynton Marsalis: vocals, trumpet
Walter Blandind: saxophone
Mickey Raphael: harmonica
Dan Nimmer: piano
Carlos Henriquez: bass
Ali Jackson: drums
Production
Jazz
Tracklist
1.Bright Lights, Big City
2.Night Life
3.Caldonia
4.Stardust
5.Basin Street Blues
6.Georgia On My Mind
7.Rainy Day Blues
8.My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It
9.Ain’t Nobody’s Business
10.That’s All
Album length: 53.32
