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In Celebration Of His 80th Birthday, Willie Nelson Honored As Legacy Recordings’ Artist Of The Month For April 2013

Let’s Face The Music And Dance is comprised of 20th century pop, rock, jazz and country music classics and standards

LET’S FACE THE MUSIC AND DANCE, NEWLY RECORDED STUDIO ALBUM BY WILLIE NELSON AND THE FAMILY, AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE APRIL 16, 2013

NEW YORK, March 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – As America prepares to commemorate the 80^th birthday of Willie Nelson on April 29 ^th, the country music icon will be celebrated as Artist of the Month for April, 2013 by Legacy Recordings, a division of SONY MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT.  The celebration carries on all month, and includes the April 16 ^th release of a new album, Let’s Face The Music And Dance , on Legacy Recordings.

Let’s Face The Music And Dance is comprised of 20^th century pop, rock, jazz and country music classics and standards.  It was recorded by Willie and The Family, the band that Willie started with his sister Bobbie Nelson in 1973, and that has been his touring and recording group for forty years.  On April 28 ^th, Willie and The Family will play a special “birthday” concert at the Back Yard in Austin, Texas.

Legacy’s Artist of the Month program was launched at the start of this year, commem­or­ating Janis Joplin in January, Nina Simone in February, and Sly and the Family Stone in March.

In every case, the Artist of the Month program provides fresh perspectives on musical legends whose sounds continue to affect people’s lives.  The program enables new fans and deep aficionados the opportunity to focus on an essential figure in pop music history, whose principal catalog is a cornerstone of the Sony Music archives.

For the truly multi-dimensional Willie Nelson – singer, songwriter, Gypsy jazz guitarist, producer, bandleader, family man, perennial touring musician, television and movie actor, entrepreneur, activist, philanthropist, founder of FarmAid, rancher, golfer, proud Texan, and godfather of music’s Outlaw Country movement – it has really been One Hell Of A Ride , as suggested by the title of his 4-CD Legacy box set of 2008, the year of his 75^th birthday.

In 1975, some 15 years into his career, Willie scored his first Grammy Award®-winning #1 country hit on Columbia Records, “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain,” proving that Country Outlaws had earned a dominant chart role.  He went on to amass more than 20 #1 hits over the next three decades, which read like a mini-history of country music: “Good Hearted Woman” (with Waylon Jennings), “If You’ve Got The Money I’ve Got The Time,” the Grammy®-winning “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” (with Waylon), the Grammy®-winning “Georgia On My Mind,” “Blue Skies,” “Heartbreak Hotel” (with Leon Russell), “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” the Grammy®-winning “On The Road Again,” “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground,” the two-time Grammy®-winning “Always On My Mind,” “Just to Satisfy You” (with Waylon), “Pancho & Lefty” (with Merle Haggard), “To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before” (with Julio Iglesias), the Grammy®-winning “City Of New Orleans,” “Seven Spanish Angels” (with Ray Charles), “Forgiving You Was Easy,” the Grammy®-winning “Highwayman” (with Waylon, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson), “Living in the Promiseland,” “Mind Your Own Business” (with Hank Williams Jr., Reba McEntire, Tom Petty, and Reverend Ike), “Nothing I Can Do About It Now,” and 2002′s “Beer For My Horses” (with Toby Keith).

Starting back home in Texas in the early 1970s, Willie Nelson’s role (along with partners Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Townes Van Zandt, Billy Joe Shaver and others) as he emancipated country music from Nashville’s homogenized strictures, is now widely acknowledged.  In addition to eight Grammy Awards® from 1975 to 2008, Willie has received the Recording Academy’s prestigious Legends Award (1990) and Lifetime Achievement Award (1995).  In 1998, he received Kennedy Center Honors.

Willie has also received strong recognition from within the country music establishment, which embraced the musical advances brought on by the Outlaw Country upstarts.  In addition to his seven Country Music Association (CMA) awards from 1976 to 2002, Willie has also received the Entertainer Of the Year Award (1979) and in November 2012, the first inaugural Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award.  The Academy of Country Music (ACM) has honored Willie with five awards, including Entertainer Of the Year (1979).  Other notable Country honors include the Minnie Pearl Award and Living Legend Award, both at the TNN/ Music City Awards in 1995. The annual BMI Country Awards conferred its President’s Award on Willie in 2001, and the coveted BMI Icon Award in 2007.

Such outpourings belie the humble origins of Willie Hugh Nelson, born on April 29, 1933, in Abbott, Texas.  Willie arrived in Nashville in 1960, and was befriended by Hank Cochran, who got him signed to Ray Price’s music publishing company.  Willie’s breakthrough came quickly, the year Faron Young cut the #1 hit “Hello Walls,” Patsy Cline recorded the #2 hit “Crazy,” and Billy Walker cut “Funny How Time Slips Away,” all in 1961.

After LPs on Liberty and Monument, Willie was signed to RCA Records in 1965.  After making some 14 LPs for the label over the next seven years, Willie moved his family back to Texas.  He soon became the kingpin of Austin’s hotbed of honky tonk, “cosmic cowboy,” and ’70s rock, populated by hillbilly hippies, folk singers and ‘ropers & dopers,’ all at home on the  Armadillo World Headquarters concert stage.

Willie’s RCA deal ended in 1972 and he recorded two groundbreaking LPs on Atlantic: Shotgun Willie and Phases & Stages were critically hailed and signaled a new musical genre that would overtake the music for years to come: Outlaw Country.

The turning point was Willie’s self-produced Columbia debut LP of 1975, the RIAA double-platinum #1 concept album Red Headed Stranger (with “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain”).  Capitalizing on its success, RCA repackaged an LP’s worth of left-of-center tracks by Willie, Waylon, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser as Wanted: The Outlaws .  It went to #1 and its first single, “Good Hearted Woman,” a duet by Waylon & Willie also hit #1.  The project swept the CMA Awards for Vocal Duo Of the Year, Single Of the Year, and Album Of the Year.  “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” won Willie his first Grammy Award that year, for Best Male Country Vocal.

Eighteen years at Columbia (1975 to 1993) was a long time – they encompassed five U.S. Presidents, to put it in perspective, and more than 30 album releases.  He charted 12 #1 country albums for the label, and another 12 reached Top 5; at the same time, there were 16 #1 country singles on Columbia, and another 30 that reached the Top 40.  There were historic full-album collaborations on Columbia with Leon Russell, Roger Miller, Ray Price, Merle Haggard, Webb Pierce, Faron Young, Hank Snow, and the Highwaymen (Waylon, Johnny Cash, Kristofferson).

In February 2012, after albums on Island, Sugar Hill, Lost Highway, Blue Note, and more, it was announced that Willie had returned “home” as a result of his signing to the Columbia Records-affiliated Legacy, and the release of a new album in May, Heroes .  Produced by Buddy Cannon, it included songs from a variety of sources, and guests ranging from Willie’s son Lukas to Haggard, Kristofferson, and Shaver, to Sheryl Crow and Snoop Dogg.  Let’s Face The Music And Dance , again produced by Buddy Cannon (and recorded at Pedernales Recording Studio in Austin, Texas) is the follow up.

As Legacy’s Artist of the Month, the spotlight continues to shine on Willie Nelson .  “Motivated by the desire to do good for those who did good by him, he is still playing music for all the right reasons,” fellow Texan Joe Nick Patoski has written of Willie, “for the sake of music, and for the people who created that music.  That drive and desire have rewarded him with a well-spent musical life, documented by these recordings that show a man in full, always changing, always moving, forever on the road again.”

VISIT:

willienelson.com
legacyrecordings.com

SOURCE Legacy Recordings

Web Site: http://www.legacyrecordings.com

See larger image Let's Face The Music and Dance (Audio CD) This April-2013 Willie Nelson turns 80 years old, a milestone which has not slowed down the American icon in the slightest. Following the success of his 2012 success Heroes, Willie Nelson returns, this time with his Family band, to deliver another beautiful new album of songs that are near and dear to his heart. Like the man himself, this stunning collection is not easily defined by genre or style. The songs include American standards and country classics, Irving Berlin and Carl Perkins, Django Reinhart as well as Willie-penned originals. Yet the result is a beautiful, cohesive set songs about love and reflection in Willie's inimitable style. It is a record in the vein of both Stardust and Redheaded Stranger and destined to become a classic. List Price: $11.98 USD New From: $9.43 USD In Stock Used from: $5.86 USD In Stock Release date April 16, 2013.

The Annenberg Space for Photography Presents WHO SHOT ROCK & ROLL: A Photographic History, 1955 – Present, Opening June 23, 2012

The Ramones at Eric's Club, Liverpool, England. (PRNewsFoto/The Annenberg Foundation)

LOS ANGELES, March 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — The Annenberg Space for Photography is pleased to announce its next exhibit – WHO SHOT ROCK & ROLL, a group show featuring the work of over 100 photographers. Originally shown and created by the Brooklyn Museum with guest curator and author Gail Buckland, WHO SHOT ROCK & ROLL is the first major museum exhibit on rock and roll to spotlight the creative and collaborative role that photographers played in the history of rock music. WHO SHOT ROCK & ROLL opens to the public in Los Angeles on June 23, 2012 and runs through October 7, 2012.

The Los Angeles showing of this exhibit is the only one on the western coast of the United States and will feature an original documentary film produced by Arclight Productions exclusively for the Annenberg Space for Photography. The film will be shown in vivid detail on two 14′ by 7′ screens in 4K resolution and will feature new photographs, interviews and behind the scenes footage with exhibit photographers Ed Colver, Henry Diltz, Jill Furmanovsky, Lynn Goldsmith, Bob Gruen, Norman Seeff, Mark Seliger and Guy Webster. Shot in Los Angeles, New York and the United Kingdom, the film will also include appearances by recording artists such as Alice Cooper and Henry Rollins , as well as rock photography uber-collector Michael Ochs , Grammy-winning album cover designer Gary Burden and Gail Buckland.

WHO SHOT ROCK & ROLL features 166 prints from iconic photographers such as Amy Arbus, Diane Arbus, Roberta Bayley, Stephanie Chernikowski, Danny Clinch, Anton Corbijn, Godlis, Jean-Paul Goude, Ross Halfin, Dennis Hopper, Richard Kern, David LaChapelle, Michael Lavine, Annie Leibovitz, Gered Mankowitz, Jim Marshall, Linda McCartney, Ryan McGinley, Marcia Resnick, Stephane Sednaoui, Pennie Smith, Storm Thorgerson and Albert Watson.

Through the lenses of the photographers, visitors will experience the history of rock & roll through the following:

• Rare images behind the scenes like Alfred Wertheimer’s series of photos of Elvis Presley playfully kissing a woman backstage before a performance
• Young artists at the start of their careers including Maripol’s shot of Madonna at Danceteria in 1983
• Live performances like Ian Dickson’s photo of The Ramones playing a club in Liverpool, England
• Fans like the Central Press photo of London bobbies holding back a crush of fevered Beatles fans outside Buckingham Palace
• Portraits that reveal the soul of the musician such as Michael Lavine’s haunting portrait of Notorious B.I.G. taken at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn
• Images highlighting the artistic collaboration between photographers and musicians like Richard Kern and Marilyn Manson’s take on Marilyn Monroe’s infamous nude calendar photograph

In addition, visitors will see a slideshow of 80 images by Henry Diltz taken between 1966-1990 set to a soundtrack. Woven into the lively exhibit, brief music videos will include Sonic Youth’s Death Valley ’69 by Judith Barry and Richard Kern, U2′s One and Electrical Storm by Anton Corbijn, Grace Jones’ One Man Show by Jean-Paul Goude, The Vines‘ Outtathaway by David LaChapelle and Bjork‘s Big Time Sensuality by Stephane Sednaoui and a video of Elvis performing “Heartbreak Hotel” from the TV program, “Stage Show.”

The Annenberg Space for Photography has partnered with acclaimed Los Angeles public radio station KCRW (89.9FM and KCRW.com) to create a live music series during the month of July. KCRW’s influence in the careers of many musicians, both established and up-and-coming, is unquestionable. The Saturday night live music series will create an exciting addition to WHO SHOT ROCK & ROLL and remind music fans from across the city and beyond as to the importance live performances have played in the history of rock music. The series will be free and open to the public. Further details will be announced in coming months.

The Space’s successful IRIS Nights lecture series will offer an additional unique perspective into the world of rock music, featuring photographers and guest artists sharing their experiences documenting the images of rock music through the years.

Images are available upon request.

About the Annenberg Space for Photography
The Annenberg Space for Photography is a cultural destination dedicated to exhibiting photography. The Space conveys a range of human experiences and serves as an expression of the philanthropic work of the Annenberg Foundation and its Directors. The intimate environment features state-of-the-art, high-definition digital technology as well as traditional prints by some of the world’s most renowned and emerging photographers. It is the first solely photographic cultural destination in the Los Angeles area.

Annenberg Space for Photography
2000 Avenue of the Stars, Century City, CA 90067
Tel: 213.403.3000
www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org
Wednesday through Friday: 11 am – 6 pm, Saturday: 11 am – 7:30 pm, Sunday: 11 am – 6 pm,
closed Monday and Tuesday
Admission is free

SOURCE The Annenberg Foundation