Willie Nelson – You Don’t Know Me: The Songs Of Cindy Walker

Nineteen forty-one was Cindy Walker’s year. The 23-year-old Texas singer-songwriter moved to Hollywood, where Bing Crosby recorded one of her songs and Decca Records signed her as a vocalist. Hearing that Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys were in town filming a western, Walker tracked him down and sang him some of her songs. He added several to the film, which truly launched her as a composer.

Wills realized her multifaceted compositional genius. Able to write to order (as she often did for him), Walker had a flair for atmospheric emotion. Despite her youth, she had a chameleon-like way of assuming perspectives: the weary cowboy of “Dusty Skies”, the desolate alcoholic of “The Warm Red Wine”, the 1940s gray pride anthem “Don’t Be Ashamed Of Your Age”. Walker’s later masterpieces included “Take Me In Your Arms” for Eddy Arnold, “You Don’t Know Me” for Arnold (and later Ray Charles), “I Don’t Care” for Webb Pierce, and “Dream Baby” for Roy Orbison.

Given Walker’s ties to Wills, one of Willie Nelson’s lifelong heroes, this album’s hardly a surprise — though amazingly, it’s only the second Walker tribute, after ex-Texas Playboy Leon Rausch’s. Despite a voice that’s more weathered than usual, Nelson is at home with these tunes, aided by frequent collaborator and former Wills fiddler/mandolinist Johnny Gimble and pedal steel jazz great Buddy Emmons, who transform this Nashville studio band into an authentic western swing outfit.

Ably produced by Fred Foster, Nelson’s effortless performances reflect his comfort with Walker’s oeuvre (at 88, she resides quietly in Texas). The Wills tunes echo the originals, though he bases “It’s All Your Fault” on Wade Ray’s 1951 recording. Gimble’s energetic fiddling and scat-singing belies the stroke he had some years back.

Willie’s ubiquitous releases and experiments in recent years have included triumphs and duds. Here, he’s in reassuringly familiar territory.