Willie Nelson
Stardust

*NOTE: This record was not noisy enough to rate our M-- to EX++ grade, but it's not quite up to our standards for Mint Minus Minus either. If you're looking for quiet vinyl, this is probably not the best copy for you.

*NOTE: There is a warp on the edge of side 1 that is not audible in the least. If you're using a reasonably good arm and cartridge, you should have no problem tracking it perfectly. That said, if you have any issues, you can return it within 30 days for a full refund, and we will pay the domestic return shipping.

"Georgia On My Mind" is a demo quality track on this album. You aren't going to believe all the ambience on this copy. The top end is gorgeous -- sweet, delicate, and silky with loads of extension. The sound is extremely hi-res without sacrificing any of the warmth that makes this music so special.

Just listen to the rimshots and the bell in "Georgia On My Mind" -- we guarantee you have never heard those instruments sound so present, clear, and immediate.

Willie's voice is natural and tonally correct, with all the breathy texture you could ever hope to hear. The acoustic guitars and Booker T.'s organ are perfection.

What The Best Sides Of Stardust Have To Offer Is Not Hard To Hear

• The biggest, most immediate staging in the largest acoustic space
• The most Tubey Magic, without which you have almost nothing. CDs give you clean and clear. Only the best vintage vinyl pressings offer the kind of Tubey Magic that was on the tapes in 1978
• Tight, note-like, rich, full-bodied bass, with the correct amount of weight down low
• Natural tonality in the midrange -- with all the instruments having the correct timbre
• Transparency and resolution, critical to hearing into the three-dimensional studio space

No doubt there's more but we hope that should do for now. Playing the record is the only way to hear all of the qualities we discuss above, and playing the best pressings against a pile of other copies under rigorously controlled conditions is the only way to find a pressing that sounds as good as this one does.

Awareness

On the better copies, we became aware of aspects of the music as well as the recording that we hadn't paid attention to during the previous hours of Stardust play. All the elements were there, but not there, right in front of us, laid out clearly for all to hear.

The music may not have changed, but our appreciation of it sure did. Here was the real Willie Nelson backed by Booker T. and the boys. Now we could hear just how much love these guys have for this music.

That's what the better copies do -- they show you just how magical these very special performances must have been, laid down onto analog tape over forty years ago. Clearly both the music and the sound of this record are timeless.

What We're Listening For On Stardust

• Energy for starters. What could be more important than the life of the music?
• Then: presence and immediacy. The vocals aren't "back there" somewhere, lost in the mix. They're front and center where any recording engineer worth his salt would put them.
• The Big Sound comes next -- wall to wall, lots of depth, huge space, three-dimensionality, all that sort of thing.
• Then transient information -- fast, clear, sharp attacks, not the smear and thickness so common to these LPs.
• Tight note-like bass -- which ties in with good transient information, also the issue of frequency extension further down.
• Next: transparency -- the quality that allows you to hear deep into the soundfield, showing you the space and air around all the instruments.
• Extend the top and bottom and voila, you have The Real Thing -- an honest to goodness Hot Stamper.

Vinyl Condition

Mint Minus Minus is about as quiet as any vintage pressing will play, and since only the right vintage pressings have any hope of sounding good on this album, that will most often be the playing condition of the copies we sell. (The copies that are even a "bit noisier get listed on the site are seriously reduced prices or traded back in to the local record stores we shop at.)

Those of you looking for quiet vinyl will have to settle for the sound of other pressings and Heavy Vinyl reissues, purchased elsewhere of course as we have no interest in selling records that don't have the vintage analog magic of these wonderful recordings.

If you want to make the trade-off between bad sound and quiet surfaces with whatever Heavy Vinyl pressing might be available, well, that's certainly your prerogative, but we can't imagine losing what's good about this music -- the size, the energy, the presence, the clarity, the weight -- just to hear it with less background noise.

Track Commentary

The Tracklist tab above will take you to a select song breakdown for each side, with plenty of What to Listen For advice.

Other records with track breakdowns can be found here.

A Must Own Willie Nelson Album (One of Many)

We consider Stardust the Man's masterpiece. It's a Demo Disc quality recording that should be part of any serious Vocal Collection.

Others that belong in that category can be found here.

Side One

• Stardust
• Georgia On My Mind

• This track has some lovely subtleties that demand a copy with the kind of superb transparency and clarity offered by this pressing. The rimshots that keep the beat here should have lots of ambience and room around them, and the bell only sounds right if there's enough extension on the top end.

• Blue Skies
• All Of Me
• Unchained Melody

Side Two

• September Song
• On The Sunny Side Of The Street

• Without superb bass definition, the bottom end becomes blurred and the whole track kind of falls apart. Willie's voice is completely unique and hard to get right, but on a stellar copy like this, he'll sound silky sweet with no spit or grain.

• Moonlight In Vermont
• Don't Get Around Much Anymore
• Someone To Watch Over Me

Rolling Stone Review

When country singers go back to their roots, the album's usually called Amazing Grace, but Willie Nelson's never been known for his orthodoxy. Instead of hymns, he's giving us ten of the best from popular classicists like George and Ira Gershwin, Duke Ellington and Irving Berlin. Still, Stardust traces Nelson's musical family tree more convincingly than The Troublemaker, his own white-gospel collection.

In one sense, Stardust is a memory album: "On the Sunny Side of the Street," "Georgia on My Mind" and the rest were songs Nelson grew up playing in dives and dance halls across Texas. He and his band haven't reworked them much since then. You can still hear a hint of polka and the clippety-clop of singing cowboys in the bass line of "Blue Skies," and the black-tie-and-champagne bounce of "Someone to Watch Over Me" has been smoothed to a whiskey (straight up) fox trot. A harmonica does the duty of a horn section, and in between the verses Nelson picks out the melody on his guitar. The notes are as sweet and easy as the smiles of the women eyeing the bandstand over their partners' shoulders.

Stardust is also Nelson's tribute to his teachers — as a songwriter, he learned a lot from these guys. Like how to open a song with a rush and a phrase that lands you in the middle of a situation: "All of me..." or "Hello, walls...." Or how to cover the two-by-fours of verse/verse/bridge with a seamless melody that glides over all the joints and angles. Willie Nelson, singer, learned his offbeat phrasing from urbane songs like these, where it still shows off best. Refusing to be hurried by the band, he strolls through "All of Me" and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," as wry and debonair as the lyrics.

But Stardust is more than a personal history or testimonial. It's a reminder. The songs Nelson has chosen are a part of Nashville's collective bloodlines too, as much as tent-show evangelism and barroom stomps are. The old standards' precise balance of artifice and sentiment stood as a pattern for the popular song that was never seriously challenged until the eruption of rock & roll. In Nashville, it persisted even then. In "Stardust" or "September Song," as in Nashville's most enduring creations (including many of Nelson's own), resignation, with its implied self-sufficiency, triumphs — barely — over whatever agony of emotion is at hand. Tears may slide into the beer, but the singer's dignity is preserved.

For all the sleek sophistication of the material, Stardust is as down-home as the Legion dance. Heard coast to coast in lounges and on elevator soundtracks, these tunes have become part of the folk music of exurban America. And that's the way Nelson plays them — spare and simple, with a jump band's verve and a storyteller's love of a good tale. By offering these songs, he's displaying the tools of a journeyman musician's trade — worn smooth and polished by constant use — and when he lays them out this way, they kind of look like works of art. Willie Nelson may be acknowledging both his own and country music's debt to Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, but he's also showing these hallowed musical institutions how the country makes their music its own.

— Ariel Swartley, June 29, 1978

AMG 5 Star Rave Review

At the height of outlaw country, Willie Nelson pulled off perhaps the riskiest move of the entire bunch. He set aside originals, country, and folk and recorded Stardust, a collection of pop standards produced by Booker T. Jones... Stardust showcases Nelson's skills as a musician and his entire aesthetic — where there is nothing separating classic American musical forms, it can all be played together — perhaps better than any other album, which is why it was a sensation upon its release and grows stronger with each passing year.