"They're slicing me up and selling me like bologna," Hank Williams Sr. once said. He worried about being sold as a commodity, but his art spoke for itself. This two-disk set includes the joyful hootenannies ("Hey, Good Lookin,' " "Jambalaya"), sad reflections ("Long Gone Lonesome Blues," "Your Cheatin' Heart"), and gospel testifiers ("I Saw the Light") of country music's first bona fide superstar.
His plaintive wail matches the mastery of his poetic lyrics: "The silence of a fallen star lights up a purple sky / And as I wonder where you are, I'm so lonesome I could cry." Tormented by drug and alcohol abuse, he died at age 29 on Jan. 1, 1953, of a heart attack in the backseat of a car. AllMusic.com says "there isn't a better introduction to his rich body of work" than this collection.
"Hello, I'm Johnny Cash," the Man in Black announced in January 1968, and Folsom State Prison in California erupted. This near-riot among inmates was from the pleasure that comes only with human empathy, delivered to these outcasts by the troubled son of an Arkansas sharecropper. He sang about wanting to stay "far from Folsom Prison," but the songs told of someone who belonged there, someone who shared the inmates' need for redemption.
The songs were a mix of Cash originals ("Folsom Prison Blues," "I Still Miss Someone"), well-chosen covers ("Long Black Veil," "Green, Green Grass of Home"), and a giddy duet with his future wife, June Carter ("Jackson"). "At Folsom Prison" earned near-universal reviews as one of the greatest albums of all time, country or otherwise.
Tammy Wynette grew up idolizing George Jones, whom Rolling Stone magazine called "a peerless singer" who "mastered and expanded" modern country music. The two would marry in 1969. From 1972 to '77, they created some of the most heavenly country duets ever recorded.
This CD includes the tenuous "We're Gonna Hold On," the humorous "(We're Not) The Jet Set," and the bittersweet "Golden Ring." Alcohol and rumored affairs were the backdrop in real life and on record. Reviewer Mark Coleman wrote that it was impossible to hear this "wonderful" CD "as anything but autobiography." As great as they were, their big solo hits never really matched the beauty of these duets in terms of their pure, honest heartbreak.
Willie Nelson was already an established country star in 1975 when he entered the studio to record his landmark album, "Red Headed Stranger." His previous album, "Phases and Stages," was similarly united by a single theme, but "Stranger" often gets credited as being the first fully realized country concept album. Spare musical productions built around a cosmic cowboy and his guitar told a narrative set during "the time of the preacher, in the year of '01."
The songs are haunted by a recurring outlaw, "wild in his sorrow," riding from town to town, and by lovers killed by a jealous gunslinger, who "die with a smile on their faces." The gorgeous hit single "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" is a breathless stop along the way. "Red Headed Stranger" would become Nelson's acknowledged masterpiece.