Heartworn Highways: The 25 Greatest Country Albums of All Time
by Zayne Reeves

A month ago, I decided that I needed to drive myself crazy.  That's the only reason I can come up with for why I volunteered to do this. That and a deep love for country music.  This piece is already long enough so I am going to go ahead and explain my rules for selection a little bit, as well as cover my ass by doing a roll call of greats who didn't make the cut, before turning you loose to agree, disagree or violently disagree with my choices.


Rule #1: No repeat artists. I dislike lists where the same band or artist appears four times in the top ten alone. I could very easily throw in five Johnny Cash albums if I wanted to but that's not telling you anything you don't already know. This applies to anthologies as well which means that if a particular artist is on the album list, they won't be on the anthology and vica verse.  I wanted to spread the wealth as much as I could by having forty different artists on this list.  Obviously there will be some artists who pop up on somebody else's record but that's unavoidable really.

Rule #2: No rock or pop acts. I love Nashville Skyline, Modern Sounds In Country & Western Music, Harvest and Almost Blue, but none of them are on this list. I would rather use this opportunity to celebrate artists that some of you might not be as familiar with.  Another reason is that impact of records like Nashville Skyline was lost on me because I grew up with country music and was listening to Roger Miller long before Tom Waits came into the picture. And finally, I have a grudge against the way the music industry has always thrown more money at rock and pop musicians. In Waylon Jennings' autobiography, he talked about how the budget for one Jefferson Airplane album was equivalent to the entire yearly marketing budget for that same label's country division.  Consider this list my little pygmy dart against that particular iniquity.

Rule #3: No bluegrass or western swing. Part of this is me splitting genre hairs but mostly it's simply because I only had a finite number of slots and I didn't want to make this even harder on myself by having to make decisions like "Hazel Dickens or Ray Price?" or "The Louvin Brothers or Bob Wills?" Now you will notice that I bend this with one particular act but that's because I never thought of them as being bluegrass and I don't think they did either.  

Rule #4: Folk is in like Flint. Folk and country overlap a great deal and I couldn't see doing this list and being happy with it if I didn't include several artists who are often thought of as folkies.

Rule #5: No Bear Family. Well, there is actually one Bear Family cameo to be found but, for the sake of simplicity and budget, I excluded the great German collector's label. If you need everything that Marty Robbins ever recorded, Bear Family has just the boxed set for you. But I am assuming that most of you reading this are in my age range and can't exactly afford their stuff and besides, they really are much more for completists than the casual, curious or even merely devoted.   

Rule #6: Actually, this isn't a rule so much as it is me acknowledging that I snubbed some major, major figures in country music. For the most part, they're absent because I had forty slots and not fifty or sixty because many of them surely would have made the list then. Among those absent from the list are, in no particular order, Roy Acuff,  Faron Young, Uncle Tupelo, Dwight Yoakam, Connie Smith, Hank Thompson, Jim Reeves, Kris Kristofferson, The Delmore Brothers, Charley Pride, Jerry Jeff Walker, Uncle Dave Macon, Gary Stewart, Buck Owens, Hank Snow, Guy Clark, Steve Young, Rosanne Cash, Kitty Wells, Rose Maddox & The Maddox Brothers, Stoney Edwards, Ernest Tubb, Rodney Crowell, Conway Twitty, The Blue Sky Boys, Porter Wagoner, Eddy Arnold, Carl Smith, Kelly Willis, Alejandro Escovedo, Wynn Stewart, Jim Lauderdale, The Glaser Brothers, Mickey Newbury, Bill Anderson and The Drive-By Truckers.  I love them all but there just wasn't room.

Drum roll, please.................


The 25 Greatest Country Albums of All Time

1.  At Folsom Prison, Johnny Cash




In the end, it had to be The Man In Black. Putting this list together, I fought it as long as I could, fearing that calling At Folsom Prison the greatest country album ever would be painfully obvious until I finally came to the conclusion that giving the top spot to any other album would be as perverse as insisting that the sun and moon do not exist. 

Recorded on January 13th, 1968, At Folsom Prison is country music's most charismatic megastar standing up for those who do not have a voice of their own anymore. Whether they were guilty of the crimes that landed them in Folsom or not, Cash had the balls to insist that these men, these hard men, were still members of the human race who deserved compassion and recognition. Cash also saw the correlation between a life of poverty with no opportunities and a life of crime and, without excusing the prisoners for what they had done, you can feel the empathy that he had for them on this record. It took real courage for Johnny Cash, who had just emerged from his own private hell, to get up in front of a bunch of convicts with his wife and his band and give them the performance that he does here. Nowadays, a country music rebel is a smirking yuckster or some burly thug who bullies anyone who speaks up for themselves.

Simply glancing at the song titles, you can see what a cheeky, playful guy Cash was.  Opening with the inevitable "Folsom Prison Blues," Cash also performs "Busted," "Cocaine Blues," "25 Minutes To Go," "Send A Picture of Mother," "The Wall," and "I Got Stripes." Now think about what it takes to give a spirited performance of a song like "Send A Picture of Mother" in front of an audience of arsonists, bank robbers, rapists and murderers, some of whom probably did turn twenty-one in prison doing life without parole, and in the dead of winter no less. And The Man In Black had them eating out of his hand the whole time. He once observed that there was a point in this show where he could have yelled "Break!" and the entire prison population would have revolted at his command. And while it's a good thing that Johnny kept his head when that moment happened, you're grateful for that level of tension and excitement because it allows you, from the safety of your own home, to feel just a little bit dangerous. Even "Flushed From The Bathroom of Your Heart" is great in the context of this album. At Folsom Prison put Johnny Cash back on the map and led to At San Quentin, which made an even bigger commercial impact, as well as getting his own show on CBS; the beloved, highly influential (and badly in need of a DVD release!) Johnny Cash Show. Having now eclipsed even Hank Williams, Sr., Johnny Cash is the face and voice of country music and this is its greatest album.




2. Wrecking Ball, Emmylou Harris




Emmylou Harris is the model for how to conduct yourself as an artist in the cutthroat music industry. She began as an earnest folkie before her partnership with Gram Parsons changed her view of country music and, after his death she embarked on her own solo career that honored the spirit of his music while forging her own way. Her early records are a blueprint for how to make pure, no frills country music and she probably did more than any other artist at that time to keep the music grounded while the Outlaw thing got out of hand and the whole damnable Urban Cowboy era was just around the corner. Oh and John Denver and Olivia Newton John were sweeping the CMA's around this time too so, yeah, thanks for saving our asses with Elite Hotel and Luxury Liner, Emmylou.  An astoundingly consistent artist, she continued to release a steady string of rock solid albums all through the 80s, although you could tell with 1988's Bluebird and 1990's Brand New Dance that she was restless and eager to shake up her sound. With its gritty, challenging songs and more adventurous production, 1993's Cowgirl's Prayer looked like Emmylou finding her change of pace with what was easily her strongest studio set in years. Little could we have known that it was but a sketch next to Wrecking Ball.

Produced by Daniel Lanois, Wrecking Ball is what happens when the right voice, the right material and the right sound all come together to give us a great artist's best album.  Steve Earle once said that having Emmylou cut one of your songs was the greatest compliment, and with songs by Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Julie Miller, Gillian Welch, Neil Young, Earle, Jimi Hendrix and David Olney, Wrecking Ball confirms Harris' status as her generation's keeper of the Great American Songbook. With Lanois, Emmylou found the best producer imaginable for what she was after with Wrecking Ball as she was able to realize a bold new step in her career, one that she continues to expand upon with Spyboy and her most recent studio record, Stumble Into Grace. As a producer, Daniel Lanois is comparable to Billy Sherrill in that he has such an easily identifiable sound.  In Lanois' case it is all swampy ambience, and it never had a more ideal vehicle than Emmylou's voice. It's hard to pick standouts on an album so majestic and filled with great performances, but her take on Williams' unspeakably sad "Sweet Old World" deserves special mention. On that track, Emmylou is joined by Lucinda herself as well as Steve Earle on guitar and Neil Young on harmony vocal and harmonica, and as impressive as that lineup is, it takes a back seat to the song which is the way it should be.  The song is about a suicide and there is a pain, anger and frustration to "Sweet Old World" that cuts through any notion of detachment on your part as a listener right away when you are hit with a chorus that manages to be mournful and bitterly accusatory at the same time; "See what you lost when you left this world/This sweet old world/What you lost when you left this world/This sweet old world." Both adventurous and traditional, Wrecking Ball is what popular country music is supposed to sound like.





3. Red-Headed Stranger, Willie Nelson




In any time, no matter the fad or trend of the day, Red-Headed Stranger would be a great album. The arrangements are to the bone without being some sort of self-conscious artifice and it seems an odd thing to say but this song cycle about a bloodthirsty psychopath really is a uniter, not a divider. Grannies, oil rig roughnecks and people who know how to properly pronounce Camus all love this record. Up until Red-Headed Stranger, Nelson had been an extraordinarily successful songwriter for other artists such as Patsy Cline ("Crazy") and Faron Young ("Hello Walls"), among others and a moderately successful cult artist in his own right. Having left Nashville after his house burned down, Nelson retreated to Austin, Texas in the early 70s and began doing things his own way and uniting a lot of rednecks and hippies who came together to see him perform. He released a string of inspired records - Yesterday's Wine, Shotgun Willie and Phases & Stages - that earned him enormous critical esteem, but only decent sales. But all that changed with Red-Headed Stranger, and it would be ironic that the record label didn't even want to release it (too sparse) if it weren't for the sad fact that the suits never really change or get more adventurous even after they are proven wrong like they were with this record.

Mixing in his own compositions, "Time of The Preacher" being the best known of the bunch, with songs by Hank Cochran (the aching "Can I Sleep In Your Arms") and Eddy Arnold (the title track) among others, the album’s most significant, and best loved, song is without a doubt Fred Rose's "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain." Previously a hit for Roy Acuff, Nelson performs a sort of alchemy with Rose's song that can stop time for whoever is listening to it. Unlike Acuff or Tubb or any of the other classic country singers who came before him, Willie Nelson always pitched his voice like a jazz singer's and the sensitivity on display with "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain" still has the power to startle. "When we kissed goodbye and parted/I knew that we'd never meet again" is as simple a line as you can get which makes it the perfect blank slate for Nelson to put all kinds of spins and stretches on each syllable until he's buried these serrated hooks into your heart only to rip them out with "Love is like a dying ember and only memories remain/And through the ages I'll remember/Blue eyes crying in the rain." It stands to this very day as the greatest single in all of country music just as Red-Headed Stranger will always be its greatest concept album.





4. Time (The Revelator), Gillian Welch




To this very day, there is a contingency of music fans who insist that Gillian Welch is somehow inauthentic or committing a kind of desecration against Americana music because she had the audacity to be born somewhere north of McShantytown, Georgia. Their argument is that, because she wasn't raised on a farm that grew cow manure and hard scrabble authenticity in equal quantities, she somehow doesn't have the right to rock a gingham dress, play the banjo and present her great art to paying audiences. Here's what I have to say to that: I was born in Memphis and raised in Tuscaloosa, Alabama so, to steal Brett Butler's line, I'm so southern that I'm related to myself and I think Welch is a genius. In Chronicles, Dylan made an astonishing observation about Robert Johnson's music when he wrote; "There's no guarantee that any of his lines ever happened, were said, or even imagined." and there is a similar mystery to Time (The Revelator). It's not so much that Welch and David Rawlings are talking about icicles hanging from trees but there's something equally bottomless about the way she sings "Deep in the valley/Fucking outta sight/I'm going back to Cali/Where I can sleep out every night" in "Revelator." For those who've been listening since Revival (her remarkable debut), Welch & Rawlings have always had the extraordinary gift for crafting songs that can seem as ancient as "Bonnie Ship The Diamond" and yet are clearly the work of sensitive, meticulous artists. Now after four albums, we can see that they have been carefully mapping out a distinctive sound that has subtly evolved from record to record.

Even though Time (The Revelator) is just Welch and Rawlings, there is an expansiveness to this record that doesn't exist on Revival, Hell Among The Yearlings or Soul Journey despite the fact that those records featured additional musicians on them. And where Revival and Hell Among The Yearlings were full of stark murder ballads, dead baby songs and other gothic horror tales that put them in the cheery company of Freakwater and The Handsome Family, they eclipse all that here with "Dear Someone," "I Dream A Highway" and "April The 14th, Part I."  On "Ruination Day, Part II" there's this remarkable line "It was not December/It was not May/It was the 14th of April/That is Ruination Day" that I don't think will ever leave my brain. There's something so damn ominous and sinister about the way Welch drones out the lyric, as if the worst thing in the world is waiting patiently in the bushes for just the right moment to tear the world apart.  In four short years, this record has grown into a seminal work, propelling Gillian Welch from being just another talented folkie into a major artist who gets compared favorably to Neil Young. Most telling is the enormous respect it has garnered among her peers. When asked what songs he wished that he had written, Josh Ritter responded with "April The 14th, Part I" while "Dear Someone" and "Elvis Presley Blues" appear on Norah Jones and Emmylou Harris' Starbucks Artists' Choice compilations. Best of all is the feeling you get from this record that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are just getting started.





5. More A Legend Than A Band, The Flatlanders




For almost thirty years, More A Legend Than A Band was the epitome of truth in advertising. Thankfully the planets have aligned this decade for Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock to change all that. 2002's Now Again found the old friends in fine form with a strong set of new songs while last year's Wheels of Fortune was a warm, spirited song swap that underscored the informal nature of the band. But it's More A Legend Than A Band, a record so badly mismarketed and neglected that it was virtually impossible to find a copy of it until the 1990 CD reissue, that remains their defining moment.  There is no song in country music with the dark, ethereal beauty of "Dallas." It swirls like a blade in the air and bites down hard into your flesh when Jimmie Dale Gilmore sings  "Well Dallas is a rich man with a death wish in his eye." This is followed immediately by "Tonight I'm Gonna Go Downtown" for a pungent one-two punch that might just wear out the repeat button on your CD player. "Tonight I'm Gonna Go Downtown" could almost be the perfect 50s honky tonk song if it weren't for the lovely tendrils of weirdness streaming from it. Steve Wesson's musical saw on this record has its detractors but I can't imagine More A Legend Than A Band having anything like the power it does without it and nowhere is it more prominent or effective than on "Tonight I'm Gonna Go Downtown." When you take that saw, which sounds just like the UFO's in Plan 9 From
Outer Space, and mix it with Gilmore's ghostly warble, you transform an already great lyric like "Tonight I think I'm gonna look around/For something I couldn't see when this world was more real to me/Yeah, tonight I think I'm gonna go downtown" into something that feels like the fall of the universe.

While Joe Ely's role was more of a sideman on this record, Butch Hancock was responsible for four of its seven original songs, with "You've Never Seen Me Cry" standing out as a particularly strong lyric. "The windmills and the water tanks all stand on solid ground/The country mailman wonders as he motors into town/The sunlight came, the sunlight went/The stars came out to see/The way I laughed and the way I cried/And the way you treated me" go a long way towards showing why Hancock is considered the greatest songwriter of the group. Elsewhere on the album, The Flatlanders pay proper respect to their roots with a delightful raveup of the great Cajun standard "Jole Blon" as well as tip their hat to friend and fellow maverick Willie Nelson with a devastating reading of his "One Day At A Time." Then there is "Bhagavan Decreed" which is the only time you will see either word in country music although I don't mean to make light because it's a terrific song that tells us "You can burn your brain cells out just trying to get higher/But you'll find the highest place is under ground." The album ends with the Butch Hancock song "One Road More" and it is my hope that, as far as The Flatlanders are concerned, there will always be one road more.





6. Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs, Marty Robbins




"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." goes the line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and make no mistake about it, Robbins' seminal concept album is the legend. And it's absolute poetry.  Marty Robbins' voice was one of the purest and most versatile in the history of country music and it's the perfect instrument for transporting listeners to a world of bloodless gunshot wounds, women, parasols in tow, gliding across Main Street in hoop skirts and rounders blowing a lonesome harmonica solo under the prairie night sky. Robbins also showed off his underrated gifts as a songwriter by penning the album's best-loved songs; "El Paso," "The Master's Call" and "Big Iron."  "Big Iron" especially embodies all the best qualities of the dimestore novel as it tells the story of an invincible Arizona marshal who guns down the dastardly Texas Red. It's a song that's all broad strokes and tall tales and yet you buy it because of the integrity in Marty's voice and because it's flat out fun. It's the Raiders of The Lost Ark of country albums; an irresistible mix of impeccable craft and popcorn entertainment.





7. Dreaming My Dreams, Waylon Jennings




Starting with 1973's Lonesome, On'ry & Mean and going all the way up to 1978's I've Always Been Crazy, Waylon Jennings could do practically no wrong when it came to making great country music. While Honky Tonk Heroes remains Jennings' best known record, I have a slight preference for the mix of gentle balladry and defiant, piss-and-vinegar mission statements found in Dreaming My Dreams. Produced by Cowboy Jack Clement at Tompall Glaser's famed Hillbilly Central recording studio, Dreams is the "Outlaw" movement's  (a term Jennings was, at best, ambivalent towards) finest thirty minutes outside of Red-Headed Stranger. "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" is a screw you anthem that, three decades later, has yet to be equaled in country music.  It's "Up Against The Wall, Redneck Mother" but without all that guilt. In the song, Waylon takes Nashville to task for desecrating Hank's memory with the bland, mannered pop that was passing for country music at the time (and boy how some things never change!) while also slyly insinuating that he was gonna do things his own way, even if it might not be how Hank would've wanted it done. Waylon's cocky defiance here underscores how neutered most of mainstream country music is nowadays, just as it did with Waylon's own era. On the title track however, Jennings is completely tender as he addresses a former lover. "Some day I'll get over you/I'll live to see it all through/But I'll always be dreaming my dreams with you." There's a vulnerability here that you don't normally associate with any cartoon notion of hardnosed outlaw music and I think that was probably Waylon's biggest problem with the handle.

A terrific songwriter, Waylon composed "Dreaming My Dreams With You," "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" and "Bob Wills Is Still The King," which pays eloquent tribute to the great western swing bandleader. While he might not have been as consistently great a songwriter as Nelson was in his prime, Waylon's best songs (like the three mentioned) can stand up next to anything Shotgun Willie ever put to paper. A superb singer, and justly appreciated as such, Jennings even manages to make "Let's All Help The Cowboy Sing The Blues," one of weaker entries in the Jack Clement canon, sparkle through sheer talent and charisma. From here you may proceed onto pretty much anything Waylon did in the 70's, especially Waylon Live, which was recently expanded to two discs, and the legendary Honky Tonk Heroes. I also recommend his autobiography which I consider to the best and most honest book written about country music.





8. Satan Is Real, The Louvin Brothers




You can't have a country album list like this without a fire and brimstone gospel album.  Get beyond the cover which is, depending on your politics, either genius or the apex of kitsch, and what you have is some seriously scary music. Whether you are a true believer or not, Satan Is Real grabs you by the collar and shakes you senseless with its conviction and with Ira Louvin's need for salvation. The troubled genius of the pair (like Carter Stanley was to The Stanley Brothers), Ira was a tormented man who felt that God was calling him for a life outside of music and yet he was never able to pull himself away from a life on the road and that tear in his soul put a meanness in him that was redeemed by the way his voice held all the contradictions you could ever find in human behavior.  This is not the placid elevator music you associate with those Christian pop concerts you sometimes see televised on your local access channel where they sing about salvation and damnation with all the passion of a pharmacy store cashier asking for a price check on Maalox. Ira and Charlie (don't mean to leave Sensible Shoe brother out), however, have seen the darkness and Satan Is Real is a chase album where, track after track, they try to  outrun temptation and the flames of Hell and it's as pulse-pounding as Hackman racing the subway train in The French Connection. Also, rather than resurrect the same old traditional gospel songs that seem to be contractually obligated to appear on these kinds of records, Ira & Charlie wrote much of the material themselves which only serves to heighten the extremely personal nature of the record. "There's A Higher Power" and "The Christian Life" have both become standards since The Louvins wrote them back in 1959, and their version of Helen and June Carter's "The Kneeling Drunkard's Plea" remains the definitive take on that great piece of gothic sermonizing. Not an album that you can slide in any old time, Satan Is Real is nonetheless one of the most riveting accounts of the soul in peril ever recorded.





9. G.P./Grievous Angel, Gram Parsons




While this list excludes rock and pop stars who crossed over with country albums, I have always thought of Gram Parsons as stone country from the very beginning, so this is home for him. Considering how short his time on earth was, it is all the more remarkable what he was able to accomplish; The International Submarine Band, a brief but significant run with The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers and these two stunning solo albums which are available only as a twofer set.  I went back and forth as to whether or not I was going to give a slot to The Flying Burrito Brothers or Gram solo before finally deciding that this record means just a little bit more to me than The Gilded Palace of Sin.  I first heard G.P./Grievous Angel in high school and I was hooked on its sound right away. I don't care what anyone says, Gram Parsons was a tremendous singer. Maybe he didn't boast a four octave range but he knew right away how to use what he had, and there's a vulnerability and expressiveness to his voice that made him perfect for country music.  His duets with Emmylou Harris on this record have no equal in country music outside of George Jones & Melba Montgomery, Welch & Rawlings and John Prine & Iris DeMent. He was also a terrific songwriter and his best material here; "A Song For You," "How Much I've Lied," "Return of The Grievous Angel," "Brass Buttons,"  and "In My Hour of Darkness" (to name but a few highlights) are now standards in any decent alt. country act's repertoire, much the same way that "Wabash Cannonball" and "My Blue Eyed Jane" were for the previous generation's hopefuls looking to get a contract with "Pappy" Dailey. Determined to live out Faron Young's line about living fast, loving hard and leaving beautiful memories, Gram Parsons did just that. The man who Waylon Jennings had proclaimed to be the only person who could gobble up more pills than he could died shortly before his 27th birthday. Outside of Johnny Cash, Parsons did more than any other artists to bring country and rock audiences together and his "Cosmic American music" looms large over everyone from Rodney Crowell to Jay Farrar to Norah Jones.




10. Live At The Old Quarter, Townes Van Zandt




For a very long time, I tried not to like Townes Van Zandt.  When I was at the height of my Dylan period, I bristled at how Van Zandt enthusiasts always seemed to feel it necessary to denigrate "Uncle Robert" (I'll never get that State sketch out of my head) in order to prop up their guy. If you read the liner notes to For The Sake of The Song, there's this infuriating passage about how fans of Dylan proclaim him the greatest because he's this world famous figure and it's easier for them to say that than do their homework on other songwriters. To me, this is akin to having the trailer for the new Willy Wonka feature include some blurb stating "If you come away from this film still liking Gene Wilder, you deserve to die alone and scared." It only hurts your cause is all I'm sayin'.  Also, I'm not exactly crazy about how Townes' tortured life has become synonymous with artistic integrity for those who've come along since and I'm afraid that too many talented artists will wind up hurting themselves trying to match his hard, hard living the way previous generations did with Hank Sr. The thawing process didn't start until his Poet tribute record came out and I spent a few months totally obsessed with Willie Nelson's reading of "Marie."

But none of the above tells you anything about why Live At The Old Quarter is one of the greatest country albums of all time. It's all in the songs, every single bit of it. Outside of the Hank and Merle anthologies, there's nothing on this list that boasts such an endless string of masterpieces. "Pancho & Lefty" remains Townes' most famous song thanks to the Willie & Merle version that was a smash back in the early 80s and the song has lost none of its mythical appeal in spite of the fact that you can throw a rock out your bedroom window and hit someone performing it at a coffeehouse open mic. You can argue that there are songs on here that are even better than "Poncho & Lefty," but it's such a perfect representation of why Townes was a genius songwriter. You look at the lyrics to that song and what distinguishes it from so much of folk or country or whatever you want to call it songwriting is how Townes never got hung up on "breakfast to bed" details. As with Dylan, Prine and Welch, Townes gives you these verses that conjure up a thousand different images in your mind and no matter how many times you listen to them, they always show you something different. Take the third verse of "Pancho & Lefty:" "Lefty he can't sing the blues/All night long like he used to/The dust that Pancho bit down south/Ended up in Lefty's mouth/The day they laid poor Pancho low/Lefty split for Ohio/Where he got the bread to go/There ain't nobody knows." Now I've heard that verse sung a million times by about that many singers and it always takes me somewhere new. I've seen flashes of Lefty Frizzell collecting a blood money payoff from Jimmy Martin, silver fish in a dank, south of the border flophouse and, oddly enough, Streisand's Yentl.

Part of what makes Live At The Old Quarter so great is the atmosphere of this gritty little joint and the 18' by 38' room that Townes and so many others held court in back in those heady days in Houston. You can hear bottles clanking, people rustling and even sounds from the street outside but all of that falls away once the lyrics start pouring out from Townes. Unbeatable songs like "Two Girls," "If I Needed You," "Tecumseh Valley," "Loretta," and "Lungs"  that have been covered by the likes of Don Williams, Emmylou Harris, Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, The Gourds, Norah Jones and countless others.

On "Two Girls" there's this surreal, funhouse element to the material that you don't often find in folk music. "Clouds didn't look like cotton/Didn't even look like clouds/I was underneath the weather/My friends looked like a crowd/The swimmin' hole was full of rum/I tried to find out why/All I learned was this my friend/You got to swim before you fly" is the song's opening verse and it is as startling a depiction of alienation as anything you're likely to encounter. Everything around you and inside you is off and even the reliable forms of escape from it all don't quite get the job done for you anymore. 

Tragically, Townes was as troubled as he was brilliant and, unlike some of his peers and
students, he never did beat the devil. Live At The Old Quarter remains the highpoint of his career, before frustration with lack of commercial success and self-destructive behavior took control of the wheel,  and it's the way he should be remembered.

Click here for Part Two of Heartworn Highways: The 25 Greatest Country Albums of All Time