Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles
| Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles | ||||
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| Live album by Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis | ||||
| Released | March 29, 2011 | |||
| Recorded | February 9 –10 2009 | |||
| Venue | Rose Theater, New York | |||
| Genre | Jazz, country | |||
| Length | 61:49 | |||
| Label | Blue Note | |||
| Willie Nelson chronology | ||||
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| Wynton Marsalis chronology | ||||
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"Here We Go Again"
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | (63/100) |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |    |
| The Austin Chronicle | |
| BBC Music | (positive) |
| The Daily Telegraph | |
| The Jazz Line | |
| Los Angeles Times | |
| The New Zealand Herald | |
| PopMatters | (7/10) |
| Rolling Stone | |
Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles is a live tribute album by country singer Willie Nelson and jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. It was recorded during concerts at the Rose Theater in New York City, on February 9 and 10, 2009. The album received mixed reviews, in which the instrumentation of Marsalis' orchestra was praised by the critics.
Nelson and Marsalis played together for the first time in 2007 at The Allen Room in Lincoln Center, which resulted in the critically acclaimed album Two Men with the Blues, released the next year. The album held the number one position in the Billboard Jazz Albums chart for four weeks. Nelson and Marsalis joined again in 2009 along with Norah Jones for a series of two concerts, at the Rose Theater, on February 9 and February 10. The recordings were released on March 29, 2011.
The Los Angeles Times's music critic rated the release with three stars out of four, and wrote: "Ray Charles surely would have admired the inventive and lively jazz-drenched arrangements accompanying many of his standards, including "Hit the Road Jack," "Busted," "Hallelujah I Love Her So," "Unchain My Heart" and "Cryin' Time."Rolling Stone praised Nelson and Jones' duet on Buck Owens' "Crying Time", but criticized the abundance of solos between Nelson and Marsalis' band: "(Here We Go Again) feels like a missed opportunity. Nelson's nylon-stabbing guitar is too scarce here, giving way to Marsalis' jazz band, a slick cast that rotates solos exhaustively." The Texas Monthly also criticized the arrangements: "applying Willie's offhand cool and Jones's trademark reserve to the genius's hits, particularly his blistering soul classics, makes about as much sense as asking Tony Bennett to cover the Butthole Surfers [...] Here We Go Again is full of arrangements that take the wrong fork in the road. The expert musicianship of Marsalis's working band overthinks and dulls down almost every tune."
The Daily Telegraph rated it with four stars out of five. Praising Nelson, Marsalis and Jones as well as the backing band, the critic stated "They have done Ray Charles proud". Meanwhile, The Austin Chronicle rated the album with two stars out of five; critic Jay Trachtenberg wrote: "Despite boasting favorites from Charles repertoire including "Cryin' Time," "Busted," and "Hit the Road Jack," this summit never clicks, perhaps a result of the one-off nature of the project making it hard for the musical personalities to fully gel".The New Zealand Herald wrote: "While they may seem like a funny couple, with the deft precision and style of Marsalis seemingly at odds with Nelson's more unkempt delivery, it actually works".
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Wikipedia