Willie Nelson – Red Headed Stranger (1975/2014) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Willie Nelson – Red Headed Stranger (1975/2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 33:55 minutes | 605 MB | Genre: Country
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia Nashville

Red Headed Stranger was a blockbuster among both country music and mainstream audiences, going multi-platinum and making Nelson one of the biggest stars in country. The album’s title would become a lasting nickname for Nelson. The album was ranked #184 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It was ranked #1 on CMT’s 40 Greatest Albums in Country Music in 2006.

Album Chart Position in 1975:
Billboard Top Country Albums – 1
Billboard Top LPs & Tapes – 28

Singles Peak Position:
1975 – “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” – Billboard Hot Country Singles – 1
1975 – “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” – Billboard Hot 100 – 21
1976 – “Remember Me” – Billboard Hot Country Singles – 2
1976 – “Remember Me” – Billboard Hot 100 – 67

Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger perhaps is the strangest blockbuster country produced, a concept album about a preacher on the run after murdering his departed wife and her new lover, told entirely with brief song-poems and utterly minimal backing. It’s defiantly anticommercial and it demands intense concentration — all reasons why nobody thought it would be a hit, a story related in Chet Flippo’s liner notes to the 2000 reissue. It was a phenomenal blockbuster, though, selling millions of copies, establishing Nelson as a superstar recording artist in its own right. For all its success, it still remains a prickly, difficult album, though, making the interspersed concept of Phases and Stages sound shiny in comparison. It’s difficult because it’s old-fashioned, sounding like a tale told around a cowboy campfire. Now, this all reads well on paper, and there’s much to admire in Nelson’s intimate gamble, but it’s really elusive, as the themes get a little muddled and the tunes themselves are a bit bare. It’s undoubtedly distinctive — and it sounds more distinctive with each passing year — but it’s strictly an intellectual triumph and, after a pair of albums that were musically and intellectually sound, it’s a bit of a letdown, no matter how successful it was.

Tracklist:
01. Willie Nelson – Time of the Preacher (02:25)
02. Willie Nelson – I Couldn’t Believe It Was True (01:32)
03. Willie Nelson – Time of the Preacher Theme (01:13)
04. Willie Nelson – Medley: Blue Rock Montana / Red Headed Stranger (01:35)
05. Willie Nelson – Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain (02:21)
06. Willie Nelson – Red Headed Stranger (03:59)
07. Willie Nelson – Time of the Preacher Theme (00:26)
08. Willie Nelson – Just as I Am (01:48)
09. Willie Nelson – Denver (00:53)
10. Willie Nelson – O’er the Waves (00:47)
11. Willie Nelson – Down Yonder (01:56)
12. Willie Nelson – Can I Sleep in Your Arms (05:23)
13. Willie Nelson – Remember Me (When the Candle Lights Are Gleaming) (02:52)
14. Willie Nelson – Hands on the Wheel (04:22)
15. Willie Nelson – Bandera (02:15)

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