Willie Nelson
returns to his comfort zone on
I Don't Know a Thing About Love: The Songs of Harlan Howard
, an old-fashioned country album released a few weeks before his 90th birthday.
Nelson
isn't the first country singer to salute songwriter
Howard
.
Buck Owens
did it in 1961 with
Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard
, while
Waylon Jennings
released
Waylon Sings Ol' Harlan
in 1967. As it happens,
I Don't Know a Thing About Love
opens with "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail" and "The Chokin' Kind," songs associated with
Buck
and
Waylon
that have generated a number of covers over the years. Many of the songs here are also quite recognizable due to regular covers: "Streets of Baltimore," "Life Turned Her That Way," "Too Many Rivers," and "Busted" all qualify as 20th century standards. There are no surprises in the arrangements -- "Tiger by the Tail" isn't taken as quickly as
Buck Owens & the Buckaroos
' version, "Busted" doesn't hit as hard as the
Ray Charles
classic, yet
's versions still follow those blueprints -- so the focus is squarely on an ace band, which means
never sounds rote. Instead, it sounds like a latter-day
album: easy and relaxed, familiar and fresh, the pleasures lying as much in the comfortable gait of
's band as in his idiosyncratic delivery. Happily,
sounds sprier here than he has on other records of contemporaneous vintage, which gives a light, lively quality that's quite welcome. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine