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

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11. Country Love Songs, Robbie Fulks




Fulks' debut album marked the smart, lean highpoint of the original "alt. country" insurgency that sprung up in the 90s. For all the good music that came out of the rebellion against the hat acts, soccer mom pin-ups and VH1-lite divas, so little of it retained the twisted humor and vibrancy of the old school country music that served as its inspiration.   Country Love Songs has humor and spirit to burn and, more than any country album from that decade, it shows us just how much fun country music can be. But Fulks has always been much more than just a merry prankster as he also boasts world class songwriting skills that elevate the wickedly morbid "She Took A Lot of Pills (And Died)" beyond novelty status. Joke songs are generally only good for one or two listens before the punchline has been absorbed and then it's no longer funny, but that doesn't happen with Fulks because he's too good and too smart for that trap. "Let's Live Together" begins with a beautiful instrumental break (the great Skeletons backed Robbie on Country Love Songs) before launching into one of the truly great "Please baby, baby, baby, please" songs. Not since John Donne's "The Flea" has man put forth such an eloquent, spirited case for why he deserves to get laid on the regular; "Now, not very long ago, this would be scandal/From friends and from loved ones, we'd be forced apart/But those days are over; we're free, white and single/So let's live together, sweetheart." The part about being white shows admirable nerve on Robbie's part as a songwriter. Obviously he is in character on "Let's Live Together" just as he is with ever other song on the album but what is unusual is how little protection Fulks gives himself on that line. A lesser artist would ham it on the delivery just a little so as to make sure that anyone listening would know that the singer is a much better, smarter person than the character in the song. Fulks simply tosses it off with a nonchalance that transforms what would have been a very funny, un-P.C. crack into a genius bit of character detail.

Then there are the weepers. "The Buck Starts Here" and "Barely Human" are classic, classic country songs that perfectly showcase Fulks' strengths both as a songwriter and as underrated vocalist. They have the wordplay of a Harlan Howard or Shel Silverstein song, especially when Robbie sings "And so I walked to our bed side and pulled out that 45/That laid for years behind our chest of drawers" on "The Buck Starts Here" and you don't know if the heartsick narrator is going for his beat up copy of I've Got A Tiger By The Tail or is about to blow his brains out with a hand canon. They are both tribute songs; "The Buck Starts Here" to Buck Owens and "Barely Human" to not only songs about Milwaukee's Beast letting someone down, but to the state of mind and sawdust-on-the-floor atmosphere of the era that spawned those cautionary tales of too many parties and too many pals.  But, unlike other tribute songs, their appeal as entertainment is not contingent on audiences being experts on the Bakersfield sound or having Peter Guralnick on their speed dial.  You can probably get away with not even knowing that Buck Owens was on Hee Haw and love "The Buck Starts Here" because it absolutely stands on its own as a great blood on the vinyl song. "Let the sad songs roll on/Through a house filled with tears/Where the good times is gone/The Buck starts here." Whether your poison is Buck & The Buckaroos, Teddy Pendergrass or Coldplay, what Fulks is singing about in this song is something we all go through. What gets me about "Barely Human" is how, if Fulks had made one wrong turn, his tale of an alcoholic who does terrible things to those who love him would be so bleak that it couldn't be taken seriously. When we get overwhelmed by something, we try to laugh it off because our nerves can't process it. If you ever see a performance of Arthur Miller's The Crucible and it gets to the big climax where John Proctor screams "It's my name!" I promise you that someone in the audience will chuckle because it's just too much. But somehow, even with lyrics that could reduce you to sleeping with the lights on such as "What footprints are these in the fresh fallen snow?/And what kind of creature has hurt my wife so?/Who kicked down the front door?/I must have been gone/I'm barely human from twilight till dawn" don't short circuit your emotional involvement. Even without mentioning momma, trains, prison or trucks, these are perfect country songs and Robbie Fulks is the closest thing we have to a perfect country songwriter.





12. Coat of Many Colors, Dolly Parton




Of all the great, great songwriters present on this list, Dolly Parton is perhaps the least appreciated of the whole lot. Sure, she's got the international icon thing going for her but how often do you hear her getting compared to Bob Dylan or John Prine as a candidate for Great American Songwriter? Not often enough, I bet. "Jolene," "Just Because I'm A Woman," "I Will Always Love You," "Joshua," "Little Sparrow," "Mountain Angel" and "Endless Stream of Tears" are just a handful of pages out of her incredible songbook and it's amazing to me that some people look at her and still see the "Dumb Blond" she so slyly sang of nearly forty years ago. Their loss. Coat of Many Colors boasts what is arguably her strongest set of original songs complimented by three excellent Porter Wagoner tunes. Dolly caught some flak for crossing over so thoroughly to commercial pop music and, to this day, it's the stuff from her "9 To 5" era that most people think of.  So the pure, classic country sound of this record can take you by surprise. "Traveling Man," "Early Morning Breeze" and "My Blue Tears" are all perfect examples of the "three chords and the truth" school of country songwriting.

And then there's the title track. Honestly, I don't know what I can add to what has long been the great woman's signature song. It's the most heartbreaking song you will find on this entire list. Not heartbreaking in the sense of "Waitin' Round To Die" or "Crazy" but rather in its depiction of absolute, saintly innocence in a world that doesn't deserve it. The song tells of an incident from Parton's childhood when her mother sewed her a coat out of assorted rags, regaling her with stories from the Bible as she stitched this great labor of love together. The sweetness in Dolly's voice when she sings "Momma sewed the rags together/Sewin' every piece with love/She made my coat of many colors/That I was so proud of" is so unlike anything else in country music that it actually makes you avert your eyes when she later tells how the other children at school mocked her homemade clothes. Today, Dolly Parton is a household name with her own theme park in Gatlinburg, TN and her last three bluegrass albums are resounding proof that she is still every inch an artist. Beloved and underestimated at the same time, she's country music's most misunderstood genius.





13. Lubbock (On Everything), Terry Allen




Think of this as the Texas version of Good Old Boys. Terry Allen is an intellectual with a nasty sense of humor and lucky for us he has decided to use his powers for good instead of becoming a criminal mastermind. Lubbock (On Everything) is a biting but never mean-spirited look at Allen's hometown and how boredom and lack of opportunities in towns like Lubbock can warp you. With "The Great Joe Bob (A Regional Tragedy)" a star running-back becomes the town menace, shacking up with a floozy and knocking over a liquor store. "Jukebox Jamboree" concerns a desultory affair while "Cocktails For Three" finds one member of a threesome getting creeped out by the whole arrangement and deciding he'd be better off sticking to masturbation and heavy drinking. But it's not all acidic character studies as Terry Allen shows his soft side on "The Wolfman of Del Rio" (a sort of karmic twin to "Heard It On The X") and the elegiac "The Thirty Years War Waltz" which he wrote for his wife, Jo Harvey. As you can guess from its title, the song acknowledges the ups and downs of a long term relationship and it does so with a grace, economy and wit that is all Terry Allen.





14. Lucinda Williams, Lucinda Williams




This was a tough one for me. I went back and forth between this and Essence before finally settling on her '89 classic because, in the end, it has the better batch of songs even if I am in love with her voice on Essence. Lucinda has been described as the White Trash Poet and, far from being condescending, it's a handle that fits her well, especially on this record. "The Night's Too Long" in the wrong hands would be a harsh, judgmental song about a woman named Sylvia who goes out to the bars a lot and likes the drinking and the rough guys maybe just a little too much for her own good. But Lucinda understands Sylvia, likes her and doesn't come down on her because she knows that there are things beyond Sylvia's control that drive her to stay out all night every night. "Abandoned" talks about a jerk of a boyfriend with "Sad eyes and crooked smile that I remember well."  Lucinda seems to have a thing for guys who have something crooked about them.  In "Overtime" off World Without Tears, it was "sexy, crooked teeth" as opposed to a smile that she was obsessed over. Back to "Abandoned" which has one of the most devastating final verses you are ever likely to hear; "These boots are the same boots I was wearin' then/And this beer I'm drinkin' is still the same old brand/But these blues are somethin' new/They came around when I lost you/And it looks like I got stuck with an empty hand." I don't know who this guy is or what he did exactly, but I'm sure he still feels like he just got splashed with hot grease every time he hears this song.

"Changed The Locks" and "Passionate Kisses" (the latter a big hit for Mary Chapin Carpenter) are perhaps the best known tracks off Lucinda Williams, and both are perfect stews of rock, country and folk music. "Changed The Locks," where a woman goes to extraordinary measures to hide from a bad man, is Lucinda at her toughest and darkest while "Passionate Kisses" is one of the happier songs about unrequited yearning to come down the pike. Mary Chapin Carpenter's version is quite good and it gave Lucinda some much needed exposure and mailbox money but you can't beat her own take which can't help but draw a little bit more blood even when it hits the irresistible chorus. Out of all the songs on this record, the one that seems to mean the most to the people I talk to is "Side of The Road." Lucinda walks a very fine line with that song and what I admire about it is how she pulls the gambit off. The woman in Side of The Road walks away from her partner, who is still sitting in the car, and wanders into a field just to be free for a few minutes and remember what it's like to not have that particular lover in her life. It could have been strident and unbearable but because of Lucinda's genius as a songwriter, it overcomes what I like to call "The only question worth asking is what am I going through right now?" trap where the writer ends up looking whiny and self-absorbed.  Produced by Lucinda and Gurf Morlix, this landmark record stands up today as a fiercely independent poet's coming of age and a master class in songwriting.





15. Mendocino, The Sir Douglas Quintet




In his lifetime, Doug Sahm never really got his due. Not even close. Since his death in 1999, there has been something of a reevaluation of his contributions to popular music (they be vast) and at least now you're seeing his name get dropped like Townes' whenever writers like me need to use shorthand for conveying our standards of greatness. That's all well and good but I wish that Doug Sahm could have kicked back with some Mick Jagger money or, at the very least, someone could've gotten that El Paso pot bust squashed for the band. For the most part, I'm sanguine about mediocrity holding sway while the truly gifted sometimes have to toll away for decades before some fluke hit or a Simpsons reference drives their Q rating through the roof. But the fact that Doug Sahm and The Sir Douglas Quintet were never really able to break past cult status frustrates me because everything about their music and their sound was absolutely right to go stomping through the charts.  They had a hit with "She's About A Mover" (this is not the original version on Mendocino) but they could never really get anything to stick.  Sahm had a voice like a redneck hippie Ray Charles, Augie Meyer is, was and always will be hell on the keyboards and any kind of organ instrument, and the rest of the classic Sir Douglas lineup is all here as well; Johnny Perez on drums, Harvey Kagan on bass and Frank Morin doing all kinds of badass stuff on horns.

"You can teach me life's lessons, you can bring me lotta gold/But you just can't live in Texas. if you don't have a lotta soul" goes the most famous line from "At The Crossroads." Sahm was heartsick for Texas while recording Mendocino in San Francisco (the El Paso incident made returning to the state problematic) and that longing gives his voice a sad, throbbing edge that contrasts beautifully with the records' wild ass grooves.  With song titles like "Texas Me" and "Lawd, I'm Just A Country Boy In This Great Big Freaky City," it isn't hard to guess the man's frame of mind and the ghostly echo that courses through these songs only heightens the sense of loss and yearning for one's home even more. With lyrics like "Teeny bopper, my teenage lover/I caught your waves last night/It sent my mind to wanderin'/You're such a groove/Please don't move" I guess you could classify the title track as a cosmic cowboy "Hey Nineteen" and while it would earn him a stern lecture from Bill O'Reilly, there's a heart to this song that makes you forgive the subject matter. "I wonder what happened to the man inside, the real old Texas Me" sings Sahm on the bittersweet "Texas Me" which, for my money, is Mendocino's centerpiece. Featuring some truly nasty fiddle and steel guitar work (along with Augie's usual brilliance), it's the greatest song ever written about how your home state can have this gravitational pull on your soul no matter where you are geographically. Acadie did a
splendid job on its reissue of Mendocino, including some cool band photos, thoughtful liner notes by Ed Ward and some nifty bonus tracks including alternate versions of "At The Crossroads" and "Texas Me." If you don't have this already, go ahead and click on one of the Amazon links and hook yourself up. I'll still be here when you're done.





16. Train A Comin', Steve Earle




There are comebacks and then there is what Steve Earle did with Train A Comin'. So much has already been written about the demons that almost drove this man to an early grave (check out Hardcore Troubadour: The Life And Near Death of Steve Earle for a superb, warts and all look at this great songwriter) that I feel like I'm beating a dead horse by even mentioning it briefly. Having wrecked a promising music career with drugs and frequent scuffles with the law, Earle hit rock bottom in the early 90s when he got busted for drugs and did a little time behind bars for it. He came out the other end sober, focused and ready to work. This was the first in a series of terrific post-incarceration albums that put him back on the map as a vital artist. As much as I love I Feel Alright, El Corazon and Transcendental Blues, there is an urgency to this record, a desperate need to exist, that makes it just a little bit more special.

Train A Comin' is a house cleaning album that finds Earle combing through his back pages as far as 1974 for "Mercenary Song," as well as writing new material and showing roots by covering The Beatles, Townes Van Zandt and "Rivers of Babylon." The idea was that this record would ease him back into the industry by not pressuring him to write and record twelve to fifteen brand new songs and it paid off greater than anyone could have reasonably expected. Earle was joined by such luminaries as Emmylou Harris, Norman Blake, Peter Rowan and the late, great Roy Huskey on bass. This was a dream team of sympathetic artists for Steve Earle to be working with and the sound of this record is so warm and assured that you would never guess the nightmare that Earle had lived through. "Mystery Train, Part II" starts things off in high gear (at least on the copies that have the Earle-approved track order) with its menacing tale of "Hillbillies from Hell." A big hit for Travis Tritt, "Sometimes She Forgets" is nonetheless a terrific country ballad while "Goodbye" remains his most moving song of lost love whether he was talking about a woman or, as his son Justin suggested, drugs. Much of the older material like "Mercenary Blues," "Tom Ames' Prayer" and "Ben McCulloch" could have been major hits for Waylon, Willie and the boys back in the Outlaw era and it's such a shame that we had to wait so long to hear these incredible songs. "Tom Ames' Prayer" in particular is such a classic desperado song, opening with "Everyone in Nacogdoches knew Tom Ames/Would come to some bad end" and leaving us at "Then he cocked both his pistols and he spit in the dirt/And he walked out in the street." Steve Earle also lays claim to the best interpretation of a Townes Van Zandt song with his touching, vulnerable take on "Tecumseh Valley." It's a song that sounded two hundred years old when Townes wrote it back in 1969 and it was movingly covered by Nanci Griffith on her Other Voices, Other Rooms record. But there's something about Steve Earle's voice here that is most heartbreaking of all. Townes always sounded a little like someone who would've pimped Caroline (the song's protagonist) out in the first place and you'd think that a tough, rowdy guy like Earle would be the same way but he caresses the song as if it were his newborn daughter and when he arrives at the song's sad, inevitable conclusion, it's crying time again.





17. King of California, Dave Alvin




Although it is doubtful he will ever receive proper recognition for it, Dave Alvin was probably the greatest songwriter of the 1980s, certainly in the top 5. "Border Radio," "Jubilee Train," "Bus Station," "American Music," "Just Another Sunday," "Romeo's Escape," "Every Night About This Time" and "Fourth of July" among so many are, well, American music at its finest. To the point, rooted and progressive at the same time, these are songs of great consequence. Leading up to this record, Alvin had spent a few years performing solo (or occasionally accompanied by Greg Leisz) and the experience had an enormous impact on his voice, loosening it up and giving him ample opportunity to explore his phrasing. I think it's an exaggeration to say that he "finally" learned how to sing with this album but it does show just how much he had grown since Museum of Heart and Blue Boulevard. Much like the Steve Earle record on the list , King of California is, as Alvin wrote in its liner notes, "a collection of stripped down versions of old, new, borrowed and blue songs," and taken as a whole, it's a powerful vision of America that owes something to John Ford, Charles Bukowski, Lightnin' Hopkins and more miles than money.

The title track could be an episode of HBO's Deadwood, and it feels as ancient and beautiful (and deadly) as the mountains that lured so many souls to bad ends with its promise of fast fortunes. Alvin is joined by a pair of dynamite singers, Rosie Flores and Syd Straw, who duet with him on, respectively, "Goodbye Again" and the classic George Jones honky tonker "What Am I Worth."  Tom Russell's masterpiece "Blue Wing" is given a knockout reading by Alvin who finds the tenderness that eludes Russell's own version and even "Bus Station" and "Border Radio," two of the best-loved songs from the Blasters-era, feel like fresh compositions thanks to strong, confident performances. Best of all is "Fourth of July," which I've always had a soft spot for anyway. A sad, funny and ultimately uplifting song about a love that is seeing tough times, the lyrics recall Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" when Alvin sings "On the stairs I smoke a cigarette alone/Mexicans kids are shooting fireworks below/Hey baby, it's the Fourth of July" and makes it feel like the end of love itself. A couple who "gave up trying a long time ago" have a spat and the guy is kicked out of their crappy apartment and hangs out by the stairway while the woman cries alone in the dark. The man notices those kids shooting fireworks, remembers what day it is and tries to coax his way back in the apartment using Independence Day as leverage. Once a young boy sitting at the feet of Big Joe Turner at the Ash Grove, Dave Alvin stands today as an imposing figure who commands the same level of respect among his peers and fans as he surely felt for Big Joe all those years ago.





18. Stand By Your Man, Tammy Wynette




"Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman" might be the most famous opening line in the history of country music, and nearly four decades after it was released, the song "Stand By Your Man" still polarizes music lovers. I'm not sure if it's because people miss the part where Tammy sings "And if you love him/Oh be proud of him/'Cause after all he's just a man" which is a pretty wicked little barb and I feel rather flush in the face now just from typing it.  A line like "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" is a unanimous crowd pleaser but there's something about hearing a strong female voice like Wynette's sing, without a shred of irony, the words "Stand by your man" as the song's emotional payoff that is beyond the pale for some. The controversy surrounding "Stand By Your Man" certainly helped push its sales through the roof and the song became Tammy Wynette's signature piece. It also marked one of many high points in her relationship with producer Billy Sherrill.  Like George Jones, whom she was about to embark on a legendarily troubled relationship with, Wynette's voice and personality were ideally suited for Sherrill's vision and he proved himself to be almost faultless when it came to picking out the right material for her to tackle. Stand By Your Man keeps its focus on troubled relationships and it can be tough going at times because it goes from "I Stayed Long Enough" to "Cry, Cry Again" before ending with the biggest tearjerker of the bunch, "Don't Make Me Go To School" which tells the story from the child's point of view. There isn't much in the way of levity with Stand By Your Man and if you are not in the mood for it, the narrow focus of its subject matter can be a little claustrophobic but it is nonetheless the key countrypolitan album that cemented a great producer's place at the top, gave a monumental artist her most famous song and it holds up as perhaps the most fully realized countrypolitan album of all time.





19. Pontiac, Lyle Lovett




Lyle Lovett and Steve Earle were the natural evolution of their mentors, Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. Comfortable in the studio, inspired band leaders and canny vocalists, they took the poetic grit of that previous generation and fused it with a sound that can rock or swing in ways that were completely beyond Clark and Van Zandt's grasp.  During the "Great Credibility Scare of '86," they were among country's hottest stars and although their cup of coffee with commercial stardom ended with Garth Brooks' ascension, the exposure has allowed them continued access to bigger venues and the ability to move 100,000 to 200,000 copies of each new record, which gives them at least a little breathing room. Earle has proven to be the more prolific of the two, but this one wins the Who Made The Better MCA Record contest hands down.  After Lucinda's self-titled release, I can't think of a better country album from the 80s than Pontiac. "Give Me Back My Heart" has lost none of its sass as a kissoff song with lines like "I love the road and I love the air/And I don't worry hell I never care/I love my women and sometimes they love me" and the wickedly infectious "Ooh give me back my heart/Chipkicker-redneck woman/I can't be no cowgirl's paradise." There's a satirical bent to Pontiac, and all of Lovett's music really, that is a welcome antidote to neo-traditionalism's tendency to take itself a little too seriously sometimes. "If I were Roy Rogers/I'd sure enough be single/I couldn't bring myself to marrying old Dale/It'd just be me and Trigger/We'd go riding through them movies/Then we'd buy a boat and on the sea we'd sail" from "If I Had A Boat" is just one of the bizarre verses in that song about riding a pony on a boat and yet, strange as the lyrics are, it's all very deeply felt and as far removed from novelty status as "Long White Cadillac" and "Ain't Ever Satisfied."

Produced by Tony Brown, Nashville's top gun in the 1980s, Pontiac has that same clean (too clean for my tastes) sound that was all the rage back when country music was ditching analog in favor of digital. Truth be told, this would have made my top fifteen if it weren't for how digital just sucks the marrow out of art. Still, carping aside, I cannot say enough about the level of songwriting on display here or Lovett's soulful, expressive voice which gave credibility to some pretty oddball lyrics and, by the same token, injected some welcome eccentricity to the straightforward stuff. "L.A. County" is a chilling murder ballad about a guy whose girl ran off with another man and now the narrator is set to gun them both down at the altar. "And the lights of L.A. County/Look like diamonds in the sky/When you're driving through the hours/With an old friend by your side" is such an indelible, spooky chorus and the calm, rational way Lovett delivers the lines allows you to graft your own demons on this dark story, putting you in the driver's seat. To this day, I doubt he can get through a show without having to play "L.A. County" and I mean that as a high compliment to this great, great song. Lovett has made some terrific records since, Joshua Judges Ruth and Road To Ensenada in particular, but Pontiac is likely to stand as his consensus masterpiece.





20. Freedom's Child, Billy Joe Shaver




Although it didn't get anywhere near the same level of ink, Billy Joe Shaver enjoyed an artistic renaissance in the 90s that was every bit as revelatory as Johnny Cash's. Joining forces with his late son Eddy, one of the most blistering guitarists of the past twenty years, father and son formed the band Shaver and released one terrific album after another; Tramp On Your Street, Unshaven, Highway of Life, Victory, Electric Shaver and The Earth Rolls On rank among the very best country albums of recent years and were all far superior to what many of his peers were churning out at the same time. Although Billy Joe had written such classics as "I've Been To Georgia On A Fast Train," "Black Rose," and "Old Five And Dimers" his own recording career had, at best, been a cultist footnote until 1993's rip-roaring Tramp On Your Street. Their winning formula was to take some of Billy Joe's older songs, which were begging for fresh arrangements, and mix them in with equally tough and memorable new songs.  When you threw in the uniqueness of the band, a hillbilly poet fronting a filthy bunch of rock and rollers, you had something special. But then, like a sad country song gone stark raving mad, Billy Joe lost his both his mother and his wife to cancer and his son Eddy to drugs all within a two year span (Eddy died shortly before The Earth Rolls On was released) before suffering a near fatal heart attack himself while in the middle of a show.

In typical fashion, Billy Joe Shaver took what must have been unfathomable personal anguish and made great art out of it with Freedom's Child. This time with R.S. Field (Webb Wilder, Allison Moorer) manning the boards, Freedom's Child found Billy Joe abandoning the hard rock sound of Shaver for a more relaxed, jazzy bounce that allowed him to show off nuances in his voice that had been previously unexplored.  The leadoff track, "Hold On To Yours (And I'll Hold On To Mine)" might sound like some groan inducing redneck anthem but it's actually a wise, tender account of how important it is for lovers to hold on to their own separate identities as they fall deeper and harder for each other every day. "It will last as long as there's me and you" sings Shaver, and you can't deny the truth found in his words. The title track, an articulate and moving observation about the sad, senseless way war can't help but bury an entire generation before it even reaches its prime, is also not what you might expect from a hard living gypsy cowboy.  You also get hair raising murder ballads like "Honey Chile" and raucous beerhall anthems of the first order such as "That's What She Said Last Night" and "Deja Blues."  But the heart, soul and marrow of Freedom's Child is found in two heartstopping pieces of Shaver autobiography; "Day By Day" and "We." The former gives us the entire history of Shaver's tumultuous relationship with his wife (they divorced, reconciled and remarried) and his equally rocky relationship with his brilliant, troubled son.  The way Shaver can turn a phrase is unparalleled in this song. In the opening verse, he describes the birth of his son as follows: "Her belly was swelled with the child that she carried/The unwelcome start of a God given dream." That's just poetry. "We" finds Shaver tossing off a series of haikus to the love that he had with his wife that might sound Hallmark-y coming from a man of lesser experience but considering the universe of grief and loss that Billy Joe Shaver has absorbed, it has the resonance of gospel truth. When this album came out, I would tell friends "Billy Joe Shaver is the greatest songwriter to ever come out of Texas and I'll stand on Steve Earle's coffee table in my pink bunny slippers and say that!" I stand by that statement, slippers in tow.





21. Folk Songs of The Hills, Merle Travis




Okay, so I'm cheating a little here. Folk Songs of The Hills is a twofer compiled by the great Bear Family that brings Travis' Back Home and Songs of The Coalmines together to create an absolutely seamless epic. I'll spare you the rationalizations as to why this is in the album category and not with the anthologies and just admit that I couldn't fit it in the latter so I shoehorned him in here because I couldn't live with this list if it didn't have Merle Travis on it. The man wrote "Sixteen Tons," "Nine Pound Hammer" and "Dark As A Dungeon" among many others, and was arguably the greatest country guitarist of his generation so this just wouldn't work without him. There is a charm to Travis' performances on Folk Songs that is uniquely of its time and would be unrepeatable today because it would be laughed off as some kind of corny affectation. A lively raconteur, Travis delivers these spoken word narrations at the beginning of each of the twenty four songs that recall those old Disney educational films about a day on the farm with Uncle Roy. But rather than dating the material, it makes the listener feel as if they are sitting with Merle at some general store's front porch, completely spellbound by this gentle genius. A warm, unassuming vocalist, Travis has a light touch with the even the darkest of material such as "Bloody Brethitt County" and "Barbara Allen" and leaves it to his audience find all the devils lurking in each song.





22. In Spite of Ourselves, John Prine




There is so much screwing around going on in this record that even Moe Bandy's great Honky Tonk Amnesia anthology sounds as chaste as a Promise Keeper's barbershop quartet by comparison. And just so that we are clear on this, Honky Tonk Amnesia features songs with titles like "Don't Anyone Make Love At Home Anymore," "I Just Cheated Me Out of You" and "It Was Always So Easy To Find An Unhappy Woman" making it the gold standard when it comes to motel matches. You have to hand it to Prine, he corralled nine of the coolest women in all of roots music including Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris and Melba Montgomery to get down and dirty with him on a bunch of classic country songs he handpicked along with producer Jim Rooney. It must have been nice coming in to work knowing that you would start your day off with Patty Loveless and wind up in the arms of Dolores Keane after a brisk mid-afternoon wifeswap with Iris DeMent. But In Spite Of Ourselves is more than just a bunch of cheatin' songs.  Prine realized that if he did nothing but "Back Street Affair" and "Let's Invite Them Over Again" he would risk turning his dream project into a one-joke (albeit a great one) novelty. So he wisely pulled together some offbeat love songs like "We're Not The Jet Set" and Cowboy Jack Clement's surprisingly tender "I Know One" to offset all the fooling around and to give a sense of real loss and heartache to the proceedings that ground it and make an idea that looked good on paper into a truly great album. Best of all is the title track, written by Prine, which manages to be slightly raunchy and deeply moving at the same time and features a once-in-a-lifetime vocal from DeMent. "In Spite of Ourselves" is a celebration of love between two supremely weird individuals that, while being funny as hell, transcends its own joke because of how perfectly matched Prine and DeMent are as duet partners; bringing equal parts gravitas and loopiness to the table that make them such a believable pair of misfit lovers.





23. 12 Shades of Brown, Junior Brown




Don't ever bother looking for the next Junior Brown because that mold was broken on the day that Mr. Guit Steel came into this world. Blessed with staggering chops as a guitarist (he's been compared to Hendrix) and a paint-peeling voice that recalls Ernest Tubb in both its artlessness and its absolute integrity, his music is simultaneously a throwback to the era of the great Louisiana Hayride shows and something that sounds like a Martian with a Crawdaddy! Subscription fronting a Tennessee Ernie Ford cover band. 12 Shades of Brown was Brown's debut for Curb Records (he got a big assist from a famous fan, Nick Lowe, who was impressed with a tape of a then unsigned Brown) and it remains his best showcase as a songwriter. "My Baby Don't Dance To Nothing But Ernest Tubb," "Broke Down South of Dallas" and the wrenching "Don't Sell The Farm" are among the best country songs of the 1990s. Like Robbie Fulks, Junior Brown understands that this is supposed to be entertainment so he brings such showmanship and flair to his work that it can't help but show up much of the neo-traditional movement for being as dry and dull as the Tulare dust.





24. Lullabys, Legends & Lies, Bobby Bare




Bobby Bare first came onto the scene with the wicked novelty "All American Boy" in the 1950s before disappearing and then reemerging on the scene with such hits as "500 Miles To Detroit" and "The Streets of Baltimore." At the height of his career, Bare made this wild, free-spirited album that was comprised entirely of songs written by the late, great and much missed Shel Silverstein. I doubt there was a man better loved by his peers than Shel and the proof is in Lullabys, Legends & Lies where one of country's tippy top stars reasoned that it would be impossible to have an album with thirteen Shel Silverstein songs and not have at least one big hit in the bunch.  It was a smart move, as "Daddy What If" and "Marie Laveau" tore up the charts (the former giving Bare's talented son, Bobby Bare Jr. his first taste of success) and the album enjoyed crossover success with the hipster scene (much like what Waylon & Willie were channeling) thanks in large part to Silverstein's participation. The songs off Lullabys, Legends & Lies are by turn bawdy ("The Mermaid"), cheeseball ("Paul"), sagelike ("The Winner") and just plain weird ("She's My Ever Lovin' Machine"). A ballsy guy, Bare was actually the first major country star to negotiate artistic freedom to record the way he saw fit, and he served as inspiration for Jennings' more celebrated defiance of the Nashville system. Unlike most of the Nashville rebels, Bare's music never really succumbed to self-referential bloat and he stayed consistent with his quality control all the way until the point that he took himself out of the rat race to enjoy some richly deserved peace and quiet. His long absence from the spotlight has caused him to fade a little for younger audiences, which is too bad because you cannot go wrong with any of Bobby Bare's stuff.





25. Hank Williams Jr. & Friends, Hank Williams, Jr.




This is about as close as I've ever come to self-censorship.  While his father remains the avatar of all that is good and right in country music, Bocephus' artistic credibility has imploded so badly over the past twenty years or so that it makes it very difficult to argue on his behalf that, from the mid 70s all the way to the early 80s, he was not only as good as his equally famous peers like Waylon & Willie but he was also as good as the cult figures who were supplying all the big stars with their best material, men like Guy Clark, Steve Young and Billy Joe Shaver, who are spoken of in hushed, respectful tones at every guitar pull that occurs within three hundred miles of Nashville. Up until this album, Hank Williams, Jr. was country music's spoiled Prince Hal, given access to every perk & vice in the industry because of his name and whose career had been carefully controlled and orchestrated by his mother to be little more than a series of tribute records to his father.

With Friends, Hank surrounded himself with simpatico musicians including Chuck Leavell (The Allman Brothers), Toy Caldwell (The Marshall Tucker Band) and Charlie Daniels, chose the material that he wanted to cover (his "Can't You See" is perhaps the best version of that country rock staple) and gave us the best songs to ever come from his own pen. To hear "I Really Did" is to, at least momentarily, forgive all the outta-my-backyard myopia and lowbrow frat pitches that have been his bread and butter since he found that new bunch of rowdy friends after the old ones went and settled down on him.  Gentle, mature and aching, it's unlike anything you are conditioned to expect from the man who sullied our ears and our respective conscious with the supremely dick-ish "Give Us A Reason." Elsewhere on "Stoned At The Jukebox," "Clovis, New Mexico" and, especially "The Living Proof" you have the same level of storytelling genius normally associated with something like TVZ's "Poncho & Lefty" or Rodney  Crowell's "Ain't Livin' Long Like This." Shortly after this album, Hank Jr. fell six hundred feet off the side of a mountain and nearly died only to come back and release a passel of good-to-great country albums before the long decline that started with Man Of Steel and continues to this day everytime he's seen backslapping Kid Rock on CMT or VH1. Still, it's impossible to begrudge the greatness of this record or the way that "The Living Proof" can make your spine shiver even though it's now as overly familiar as "Coal Miner's Daughter" and "On The Road Again."

Click here for Part 3, the 15 Essential Country Anthologies.  Or here to return to Part 1.