Brother from another Lone Star, Waylon Jennings turned 30 in 1967, the year his fifth LP, Waylon Sings Ol’ Harlan, dropped. “Waylon is going to be one of country’s greatest stars,” predicted Detroit soothsayer Harlan Howard in the liner notes. Deep, robust, the Panhandle pioneer strutted outlaw C&W before it existed. More than half a century later, his Wanted! The Outlaws album-mate Willie Nelson, 90, circles back to Howard’s hard, heartbroke songbook. At 10 songs in 32 minutes, I Don’t Know a Thing About Love notches – approximately, estimates longtime label Sony Legacy – the Hawaiian Austinite’s 157th release, sports son Micah Nelson’s whimsical clair de lune cover art, and closes a cosmic country loop. Overlapping three cuts with Waymore’s young gun confessional, Willie’s turn flutters a delicate, determined, and ultimately disarming vocal performance. Eleven months after last April’s reflective A Beautiful Time, with sly, sobering hit “I Don’t Go to Funerals,” Nelson derives obvious inspiration from the material, same as recent cover discs on Sinatra, Gershwin, and especially Ray Price. Leading off at a tapping, twanging clip, “Tiger by the Tail” shakes out a newfound vulnerability from the genre standard (“I’m about as helpless as a leaf in a gale“). First cut by Waylon, “The Chokin’ Kind” rustles up a gentle, pianistic (miss you, Bobbie Nelson) alternative murder ballad (“Don’t make your love the chokin’ kind“). “Streets of Baltimore” quivers, shivers, and trembles Gram Parsons, while Mickey Raphael’s heated harp on “Busted” inflames Willie’s almost ironic reading. May to December, Waylon & Willie ride again.
Willie Nelson
I Don’t Know a Thing About Love (Sony Legacy)
This article appears in May 5 • 2023.
