Willie Nelson

“…a handsome hardcover book…stocked with factual details on every one of those albums, along with Himes’ analyses of the music within. Even a Nelson neophyte could benefit from the author’s astute evaluations, both of the albums as a whole and the songs within. This reviewer has probably heard only half of the albums, give or take, but found Himes’ entries on some of the unheard and more obscure titles—and those that have totally evaded his radar—to be among the most informative and fascinating.”

"Music critic and author Geoffrey Himes took a daunting approach to writing his new Willie Nelson biography: Tell the story through decades of albums - and grade them. That meant going back and re-listening to more than 150 albums for his new, 150,000-word book, “Willie Nelson: All the Albums.” There's still plenty about Nelson's famously colorful songster life in the weighty, beautifully illustrated biography…. fans and music historians will love the inclusion of images of every album cover, recording and release details, chart positions, names of studio musicians, recording engineers and producers – and hundreds of images of Nelson over the years."

"Geoffrey Himes, that longtime longbeard of the Baltimore music scene, took on the labor of chronicling and critiquing each of the 152 solo and collaborative albums from the long career of the legendary Willie Nelson. Listening to so much Willie, giving his work context and writing concise opinions about each album on the publisher’s deadline would be daunting for anyone, even a veteran music critic like Himes…. It helps that Himes had reviewed many of the albums during his own prolific career as a critic and feature writer for numerous newspapers – The Baltimore Sun back in the day, and The Washington Post for decades – and magazines, including Rolling Stone, DownBeat and Smithsonian."

"Himes is such a gifted storyteller that it never feels like a slog, like an academic textbook or something. Rather, we’re offered one golden nugget after another about an artist that you could be forgiven for thinking you’d learned all there was to learn. The excellent prose combined with a lot of stunning images makes for a pleasurable reading experience."