Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis: Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles
May 27th, 2011 by gcunniff
“Nelson’s singing and guitar playing have always fallen well to the jazz side of country all along anyway, and he’s hardly been a garden variety hat act during his long career, while Marsalis has long worked to reintroduce jazz as a viable popular form in American music. It’s about synthesis, really, and so it makes perfect sense for Nelson and Marsalis to turn to the music of Ray Charles, one of the greatest assimilators of American pop music — all forms of it, from gospel to blues, country, jazz, and R&B-for their encore shows at the heralded jazz house — this time for two sold-out nights at Rose Theater in February 2009 with special guest Norah Jones.” –All Music Guide