Willie Nelson's "Stardust" album, which hit music stores in April 1978, seemed to catch a lot of people by surprise.
After all, he was practically unknown to noncountry music fans until three years earlier, when he released the wildly popular "Red Headed Stranger" album, which included the No. 1 hit "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain."
But he had been around for awhile, mostly writing songs but recording some, too.
He released another country album the following year, collaborating with Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser, but then he chose to do something different.
For "Stardust," he recorded covers of 10 pop standards — songs that many people already knew. And he proved that he was more than a country singer/songwriter. He was versatile enough to cover songs from other genres and make them his own, like "Georgia on My Mind."
"Georgia on My Mind" was written nearly half a century earlier by Hoagy Carmichael and was most closely associated with Ray Charles — until Nelson recorded it. Nelson won a Grammy for his rendition of the song.
Carmichael had another composition on the album — the title track "Stardust," which was written more than half a century before.
The album also included songs written by Irving Berlin, Duke Ellington and the Gershwins, but Carmichael was the only songwriter who had more than one song on it.
A recording of the song was used to wake up the crew of the Space Shuttle in 2000.
Nelson put his own distinctive spin on the songs but perhaps none as much as his version of "Moonlight in Vermont," which was probably one of the newer songs on the album, having been written in 1944 by John Blackburn and Karl Suessdorf.
As with all the other songs on the album, it has been covered many times by many artists, but Nelson's version was truly unique.
Nelson asked his friend producer Booker T. Jones to arrange the song for him, which Jones did.
"Stardust" was certified quintuple platinum in 2002 and later inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame.
