Let's Face the Music and Dance (album)

Let's Face the Music and Dance
Studio album by Willie Nelson
Released	April 16, 2013
Studio	Pedernales Recording
Genre	Country, Rock, Jazz, Pop
Length	48:17
Label	Legacy Recordings
Producer	Buddy Cannon
Willie Nelson chronology

Last updated July 27, 2019

Let's Face the Music and Dance is the sixty-first studio album by American country singer-songwriter Willie Nelson. Nelson's second album under his contract with Legacy Recordings, it was released on April 16, 2013. The album produced by Buddy Cannon featured a collection of standards that Nelson and his sister Bobbie played throughout their careers.

Willie Hugh Nelson is an American singer, songwriter, musician, actor, producer, author, poet, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger (1975) and Stardust (1978), made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music. He was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed in the late 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound. Nelson has acted in over 30 films, co-authored several books, and has been involved in activism for the use of biofuels and the legalization of marijuana.

Legacy Recordings US record label; imprint of Sony Music Entertainment

Legacy Recordings is an American record label that is a division of Sony Music. Formed in 1990 after Sony's acquisition of CBS Records, Legacy originally handled the archives of Sony Music-owned labels Columbia Records and Epic Records. In 2004, under the Sony BMG joint venture, the label began to manage the archives of RCA Records, J Records, Windham Hill Records, Arista, LaFace, Jive, and Buddah Records. Legacy Recordings now also handles Philadelphia International Records and the catalog of recordings produced by Phil Spector.

Bobbie Lee Nelson is an American pianist and singer, sister of Willie Nelson and a member of his band, Willie Nelson and Family. Her grandmother taught her to play keyboards at age five with a pump organ, and after successful appearances at gospel conventions held in Hillsboro, Texas, her grandfather bought her a piano.

Recording

Composed of pop, jazz, rock, and country music standards, the set also included a new version of Nelson's original "Is the Better Part Over" from his 1989 album A Horse Called Music . The album was recorded at Nelson's Pedernales studio in Austin, Texas, was produced by Buddy Cannon and later mixed by Butch Carr at Budro Music Repair Shop in Nashville, Tennessee.^[1] The album focuses in his musical relation with his sister, Bobbie, as the standards were played by them during their childhood and throughout their musical career.^[2]

Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form in the United States and United Kingdom during the mid-1950s. The terms "popular music" and "pop music" are often used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular and includes many diverse styles. "Pop" and "rock" were roughly synonymous terms until the late 1960s, when they became increasingly differentiated from each other.

Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, United States. It originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in blues and ragtime. Jazz is seen by many as "America's classical music". Since the 1920s Jazz Age, jazz has become recognized as a major form of musical expression. It then emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of African-American and European-American musical parentage with a performance orientation. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as "one of America's original art forms".

Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the early 1950s, and developed into a range of different styles in the 1960s and later, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style which drew heavily on the genres of blues, rhythm and blues, and from country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical styles. Musically, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political.

Release and reception

The second album by Nelson under his contract with Legacy Recordings, it was released on April 16, 2013.^[1]^[3]^[4]

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	68/100^[5]
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	^[6]
The Austin Chronicle	^[7]
Exclaim!	^[8]
Daily Record	Favorable.^[9]
PopMatters	^[10]

Allmusic rated the album with three stars out of five, Stephen Thomas Erlewine praised the musicality, describing Nelson and The Family's sound as "one seamless unit".^[6] The Austin Chronicle also rated the album with three stars out of five, and referred to Nelson's upcoming birthday, calling it "An exquisitely contemplative turn into 80".^[7]

Stephen Thomas ('Tom') Erlewine is an American music critic and senior editor for the online music database AllMusic. He is the author of many artist biographies and record reviews for AllMusic, as well as a freelance writer, occasionally contributing liner notes.

The Family is Willie Nelson's touring and recording group. Nelson, who did not manage through the 1960s to succeed as a singer, retired after the failure of his 1971 album Yesterday's Wine. The following year, he returned from retirement rejuvenated by the burgeoning music movement of Austin, Texas.

<i>The Austin Chronicle</i> American newspaper

The Austin Chronicle is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demographic. The newspaper reported a weekly readership of 545,500. It is part of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and it emulates the typical publications of the 1960s counterculture movement.

Meanwhile, Exclaim! praised Nelson's guitar playing and described the band as a "small combo playing songs as timeless as (Nelson's) wonderfully idiosyncratic voice".^[8] Daily Record also favored his guitar playing as well as voice, also remarking Nelson's tendence to feature covers, instead of original songwritting in his recent recordings.^[9] Popmatters rated the album with seven stars out of ten. The review praised Nelson's coordination with the band, describing the record as "a welcome effort; it’s comfortable, graceful, and uniformly pleasant".^[10]

Exclaim! is a monthly Canadian music magazine that features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and cutting-edge artists. Content is based on the monthly print publication, which publishes 9 issues per year, distributing over 103,000 copies to over 2,600 locations across Canada. The magazine has an average of 361,200 monthly readers. Their website, exclaim.ca, has an average of 675,000 unique visitors a month.

The Daily Record is a seven-day morning daily newspaper of the USA Today Network located in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey.

Track listing

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Length
1.	"Let's Face the Music and Dance"	Irving Berlin	3:23
2.	"Is The Better Part Over"	Willie Nelson	2:39
3.	"You'll Never Know"	Harry Warren, Mack Gordon	3:32
4.	"Vous Et Moi"	Django Reinhardt	3:23
5.	"Walkin' My Baby Back Home"	Roy Turk, Fred E. Ahlert	3:42
6.	"Matchbox"	Carl Perkins	2:40
7.	"Twilight Time"	Buck Ram	4:07
8.	"I Can’t Give You Anything But Love"	Jimmy McHugh, Dorothy Fields	3:45
9.	"I’ll Keep On Loving You"	Moon Mullican	3:38
10.	"I Wish I Didn’t Love You So"	Frank Loesser	4:18
11.	"South Of The Border"	Jimmy Kennedy, Michael Carr	3:51
12.	"Nuages"	Django Reinhardt	3:37
13.	"Marie (The Dawn Is Breaking)"	Irving Berlin	3:07
14.	"Shame On You"	Spade Cooley	2:25
Total length:			48:17

Personnel

Willie Nelson - acoustic guitar, lead vocals
Jim "Moose" Brown - Hammond B-3 organ
Paul English - snare drums, gut string guitar
Bobbie Nelson - piano
Micah Nelson - churango, percussion
Mickey Raphael - harmonica
Kevin Smith - upright bass

Paul English is Willie Nelson's longtime drummer who started playing with him in Fort Worth in 1955, although he did not become Nelson's regular drummer until 1966. In the years in between he played with Delbert McClinton among others. In the early days, one of his duties was to serve as a strong armed collection agent for overdue payments from club owners for the band. He is the husband of second wife, Janie English.

The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings.

Michael Siegfried "Mickey" Raphael is an American harmonica player, music producer and actor best known for his work with Willie Nelson. He has performed or recorded with Jason Isbell, Townes Van Zandt, Chris Stapleton, Tom Morello, Paul Simon, Snoop Dogg, Engelbert Humperdinck, Leon Bridges, Neil Young, Norah Jones Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Duane Eddy, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Leon Russell, Lionel Richie, Elton John, Mötley Crüe, Zac Brown Band, Dave Matthews, Blue Öyster Cult, Wynton Marsalis, Lonnie Donnegan, Kenny Chesney, U2, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Kris Kristofferson, Jerry Lee Lewis, Blind Boys of Alabama, Waylon Jennings, Aaron Lewis, Rodney Crowell, Supersuckers and Dan Auerbach.

Charts

Chart (2013)	Peak position
US Billboard Top Country Albums	16^[11]
US Billboard 200	49

Related Research Articles

<i>Stardust</i> (Willie Nelson album) 1978 studio album by Willie Nelson

Stardust is the twenty-second studio album by Willie Nelson, released in 1978. Its ten songs consist entirely of pop standards that Nelson picked from among his favorites. Nelson asked Booker T. Jones, who was his neighbor in Malibu at the time, to arrange a version of "Moonlight in Vermont". Impressed with Jones's work, Nelson asked him to produce the entire album. Nelson's decision to record such well-known tracks was controversial among Columbia executives because he had distinguished himself in the outlaw country genre. Recording of the album took only ten days.

<i>Shotgun Willie</i> 1973 studio album by Willie Nelson

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<i>Teatro</i> (Willie Nelson album) 1998 studio album by Willie Nelson

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<i>The Troublemaker</i> (album) 1976 studio album by Willie Nelson

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References

1 2 "Legacy Recordings Set to Release Let's Face The Music And Dance, The New Album From Willie Nelson and Family, on Tuesday, April 16". Legacy Recordings. The Sacramento Bee. January 23, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2013.^{[ permanent dead link ]}
↑ Dukes, Billy (March 6, 2013). "Willie Nelson Shares Stories, Inspiration Behind 'Let's Face the Music and Dance' Album – Exclusive Video". Taste of Country. tasteofcountry.com. Retrieved March 7, 2013.
↑ "Willie Nelson - Let's Face the Music and Dance". CMT.com. Country Music Television. Retrieved January 16, 2013.
↑ Stromblad, Cory (January 18, 2013). "Willie Nelson Sets Release Date for New 'Let's Face the Music and Dance' Album". Taste of country. tasteofcountry.com. Retrieved January 21, 2013.
↑ "Let's Face the Music and Dance by Willie Nelson" . Retrieved 19 September 2016.
1 2 Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Let's Face the Music and Dance". Allmusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved April 16, 2013.
1 2 Freeman, Doug (April 12, 2013). "Willie Nelson Let's Face the Music and Dance (Sony Legacy" . Retrieved April 16, 2013.
1 2 Schneider, Jason (April 12, 2013). "Willie Nelson & Family Let's Face the Music and Dance". Exclaim!.ca. Exclaim!. Archived from the original on 2013-04-30. Retrieved 2013-04-16.
1 2 Biese, Alex (April 21, 2013). "Willie Nelson at 80: 'Let's dance'". Daily Record. Gannett, Inc. Archived from the original on June 28, 2013. Retrieved April 22, 2013.
1 2 Leftridge, Steve (May 6, 2013). "Willie Nelson and Family: Let's Face the Music and Dance". PopMatters. PopMatters Meida, Inc. Retrieved May 6, 2013.
↑ Jessen, Wade (April 25, 2013). "Casey Donahew Band Brings 'Red Dirt' Sound To Top 10". Billboard. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved May 6, 2013.

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[LR-1] 1 2 "Legacy Recordings Set to Release Let's Face The Music And Dance, The New Album From Willie Nelson and Family, on Tuesday, April 16". Legacy Recordings. The Sacramento Bee. January 23, 2013. Retrieved January 24, 2013.^{[ permanent dead link ]}

[2] Dukes, Billy (March 6, 2013). "Willie Nelson Shares Stories, Inspiration Behind 'Let's Face the Music and Dance' Album – Exclusive Video". Taste of Country. tasteofcountry.com. Retrieved March 7, 2013.

[3] "Willie Nelson - Let's Face the Music and Dance". CMT.com. Country Music Television. Retrieved January 16, 2013.

[4] Stromblad, Cory (January 18, 2013). "Willie Nelson Sets Release Date for New 'Let's Face the Music and Dance' Album". Taste of country. tasteofcountry.com. Retrieved January 21, 2013.

[5] "Let's Face the Music and Dance by Willie Nelson" . Retrieved 19 September 2016.

[allmusic-6] 1 2 Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Let's Face the Music and Dance". Allmusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved April 16, 2013.

[austinchronicle-7] 1 2 Freeman, Doug (April 12, 2013). "Willie Nelson Let's Face the Music and Dance (Sony Legacy" . Retrieved April 16, 2013.

[exclaim-8] 1 2 Schneider, Jason (April 12, 2013). "Willie Nelson & Family Let's Face the Music and Dance". Exclaim!.ca. Exclaim!. Archived from the original on 2013-04-30. Retrieved 2013-04-16.

[DR-9] 1 2 Biese, Alex (April 21, 2013). "Willie Nelson at 80: 'Let's dance'". Daily Record. Gannett, Inc. Archived from the original on June 28, 2013. Retrieved April 22, 2013.

[PM-10] 1 2 Leftridge, Steve (May 6, 2013). "Willie Nelson and Family: Let's Face the Music and Dance". PopMatters. PopMatters Meida, Inc. Retrieved May 6, 2013.

[11] Jessen, Wade (April 25, 2013). "Casey Donahew Band Brings 'Red Dirt' Sound To Top 10". Billboard. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved May 6, 2013.