Personnel includes: Rick Nelson, Glen Campbell, Clarence White.
Personnel: Rick Nelson (vocals, acoustic guitar).
Liner Note Author: John Stafford.
Unknown Contributor Roles: Clarence White; Glen Campbell; Rick Nelson.
By the mid 1960s, Ricky Nelson had dropped the Y from his first name and moved away from the rockabilly-styled pop he'd been associated with. His albums BRIGHT LIGHTS & COUNTRY MUSIC and COUNTRY FEVER showed him fully embracing the country sound that had long been lurking in the periphery of his music. While there are still a few rockin' cuts here ("Mystery Train," "Night Train to Memphis") that recall Sun Studios-era rockabilly (an almost inescapable sound, given Nelson's band, which featured legendary axe-man James Burton), the order of the day here is stripped-down, rootsy country.
The sound suits Nelson well, and his choice of cover material is uniformly strong. Tunes by Willie Nelson, Merle Travis, Hank Williams, and Glenn Campbell (who also plays on the album) sound fine in Nelson's tender tenor, and there is the ubiquitous Dylan cover in "Walkin' Down the Line." Those who had written Nelson off as a teen-idol nostalgia act were forced to contend with this reinvention, which also presaged the emergence of country-rock in the late '60s and early '70s.
