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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: A&M
Salesrank: 19311
Released: July 27, 1999 |
| Our Price: $13.77 |
| Used Price: $12.97 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Editorial Review:
This double-disc reissue documents one of the more curious careers in country music. Both 1978's White Mansions and 1980's The Legend of Jesse James are Southern song cycles that were conceived by Britain's Paul Kennerley, then an unknown songwriter who somehow recruited a high-profile cast for each. A Civil War saga from the Southern perspective, White Mansions suffers from caricature and cliché but benefits from signature contributions by Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Eric Clapton. Jesse James has more focus and narrative momentum, with Levon Helm, Johnny Cash, and Emmylou Harris in lead roles. Though the albums are more noteworthy for artistic ambition than memorable material, Kennerley subsequently became a successful Nashville songwriter and Harris's husband from 1985 to 1993. --Don McLeese
White Mansions/The Legend of Jesse James Reviews:
Rare and needed voice from the South via UK 
2009-11-06 - White Mansions/The Legend of Jesse James is a wonderfully refreshing dual CD lesson on the American Civil War and its ancillary but lasting effects on the culture and its people who bore the brunt. In great songs much of the story is told from the viewpoints of participants.
These CDs should be included in any high school or college American history course.
Of particular note is the Jesse James story, because it is facts-based and it delivers with soulful punch pictures of the lives and times and understanding from the biases of the James family and gang and guerilla bands and their neighbors and sympathizers.
Hard to beat the music and singing of such superstars as Eric Clapton, Waylon Jennings, Emmylou Harris and Jesse Coulter. These are two albums that never hit the mainstream, but remain classics, the test of time in this case being some 15 years.
Outstanding!!! I always love to share this music with others! 
2009-09-10 - My brother turned me on to Jesse James in the mid 80s and I have been in love with it ever since. We recorded it w/o stereo and so some of the sounds were missing (Jesse's mom asking what happened at the beginning) on the version I shared with my husband. When I got home one day my husband was playing Jesse James and I heard Jesse's mom and I said, "Oh, you fixed it, how???!!!???" Then my husband presented me with the White Mansions/Jesse James combo. CD, which was hard to get at that time. I JUMPED UP AND DOWN WITH JOY!!!!! This is one of the best surprises I ever rec'd from my husband (and he's given me some good surprises!). I also had to listen to Jesse James several times before trying out the White Mansions CD. I think White Mansions is very good; but the lyrics and music in Jesse James, especially the lyrics, are so clever and poetic. I will forever love these and I love to share them with anyone I think will totally appreciate them. Any lesser appreciation is unworthy. Enjoy!!!
lame 
2009-05-18 - White Mansions is still one of my favorites, but Jesse James is weak and predictable following the same pattern of the earlier work. Don't waste your money of the this one, just stick to WM.
Absolutely Fantastic
2008-11-25 - This is not a new CD but I read rave views about it and decided to order it. It's a two CD set and my favorite is the Legend of Jesse James. The White Mansions CD may be equally as great but I can't stop playing Jesse James long enough to find out.
When "Country Music" wasn't an oxymoron
2008-07-18 - The other reviewers here have described both these masterpieces quite perfectly. So I'll just add that they both are written & conceived by Paul Kennerly, Emmylou Harris' ex, the guy who wrote all the "good" songs by the Judds, an Englishman who helped late seventies/early eighties Country Music to be something more than a vehicle for whiny, adenoidal lil' boyz wearing cowboy hats or vapor-brained former "beauty queens." And on a more personal note, after moving from somewhere in Georgia to an even-more-undefinable "somewhere" in Ohio, the combination of Eric Clapton's bottleneck-slide guitar, Steve Cash's vocal on the song "White Trash" and a 12 oz Red Bull kind of..."solidify reality" when things tend to get..."weird" up here in Buckeye Country.
