Supplement: 15 Essential Anthologies

1. 40 Greatest Hits, Hank Williams, Sr.




Here's the deal, if you don't have Hank, you don't have a country music collection. There is no way that I can possibly overstate what these recordings mean to country music because they are its very DNA. Fred Rose may have been the one who actually sat down and wrote most of the songs (and for that he deserves sainthood) but it's Hank's voice, the howl of a man who has been skinned alive, that gives them their immortality. Nothing can break the human heart quite like "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," "My Son Calls Another Man Daddy," or "Cold Cold Heart." These are country songs that go straight past beer drinking music to kick you in the solar plexus and leave you in stunned silence as you listen to a man's soul fall apart forty times over. Even the novelty songs (“Kaw-liga”) and the uptempo rock ‘n’ roll prototypes (“Move It On Over”) are laced with a dread that there wasn't even a language for when they were unleashed on the general public. To be perfectly honest with you, I don't care how you start with Hank Sr. just so long as you own at least one of his many anthologies. The Original Singles Collection and The Ultimate Collection are two other highly regarded Hank compilations, but I chose 40 Greatest Hits simply because it was the one I grew up with so there is a greater emotional connection to it than with those other superb collections. Should you fall head over heels for the man's music and perhaps have a birthday coming up, be sure to frequently name check The Complete Hank Williams boxed set in your everyday conversations with loved ones.    





2. Honky Tonk Girl, Loretta Lynn




Jack White was right on the money when he called Loretta Lynn the greatest female songwriter of the 20th century. Honky Tonk Girl is as good a summary of Loretta's career before her stunning Van Lear Rose comeback as you could possibly ask for. It begins with her earliest gems "I'm A Honky Tonk Girl," "Success" and "The Other Woman," which might be more conventional "girl singer" songs than the tough-minded material she would later write, but they are still perfect examples of the form. Ernest Tubb knew right away that she was something special and helped raise her profile with a series of duets, including the unmatched lament "Mr. and Mrs. Used To Be." The end of the first disc finds Loretta growing into her voice as a songwriter with "You Ain't Woman Enough," "The Shoe Goes On The Other Foot Tonight" and "Don't Come Home A Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind)" among the highlights.  The second disc is Loretta at her absolute peak; "Fist City," "Coal Miner's Daughter" (her masterpiece) and "One On The Way" are just three of the best known songs from this period where she seemed to float from strength to strength with the poise and confidence of a veteran. The final disc collects the best of her 70s and 80s material, including "The Pill" and her duets with Conway Twitty. There are a few songs not included here, the duet with Twitty on "Lousiana Woman, Mississippi Man" being number one with a bullet, but it still manages to hold up impressively next to the first two discs even though Loretta's output had started to wane by the end of start of the 80s. I haven't really touched upon her fateful friendship with Patsy Cline or the impact that songs like "The Pill" had on popular culture because I'm pretty sure that everyone who will read this already knows Loretta Lynn's story either through osmosis, the great 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter or at least one of those "Comeback of The Year" articles that everyone was writing when Van Lear Rose hit the shelves.

Still woman enough, Loretta proves again and again on Honky Tonk Girl that there wasn't an iota of hyperbole in Jack White's proclamation.





3. Down Every Road, Merle Haggard




When it's all said and done, Merle Haggard will probably go down as the greatest songwriter country music ever saw, and you have to be careful with Down Every Road because it is absolutely overwhelming and can leave your brain struggling to process how one person could have done all this. To be sure, Merle's long career has seen some valleys and, as is often the case with someone so prolific, he sometimes checks quality control at the door to drop some truly half-assed tripe on us but, as it should be, none of that is to be found on this towering anthology. However, you will find "Okie From Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side of Me" on here; two songs that Merle has never quite been forgiven for which strikes me as hypocritical. Face it, we let it slide when Willie hooked up with Julio Iglesias for "To All The Girls I've Loved Before" which is not only the most morally reprehensible song ever written, it's also adult contemporary which is, quite deservedly, the absolute lowest rung on pop music's artistic ladder. We pretended we didn't see it when Johnny Cash lent his name and image to a mindbogglingly bad Christian comic book back in the 70's and we've completely blocked out the phrase "Starring Bob Dylan" from our everyday language. But there's something about "Okie" that crossed the line for so many intelligent music lovers and Merle has never really connected with the hipster market to any appreciable degree. It’s a crying shame because the author of "Mama Tried," "Footlights," If We Make It Through December" and "White Line Fever" (among so many others) deserves an audience with all those grad students who listen to Teatro while they reread Death On The Installment Plan.

Merle's best songs reinforce the Harvey Pekar line about ordinary life being pretty complicated stuff. "I Started Loving You Again" is a still unsurpassed heartbreaker about old habits not dying at all. "I got over you just long enough to let my poor heartache mend/Then today I started loving you again." This is a song that will stand as long as there is a mankind because this story plays out a million times every day and it always will. With the first three discs, Capitol does an exemplary job of cherry picking the best of Merle's most fruitful period and, even more impressively, smartly edits the fourth to where it holds up just as brilliantly in spite of the long fallow period Merle was undergoing during much of its timeline.  Although Haggard's ongoing artistic renaissance begs another box set that encompasses his work from If I Could Only Fly up to the present, this is still one of the most perfectly assembled compilations ever released and it manages the difficult task of hitting the ground running with "The Bottle Let Me Down" and "Sing Me Back Home" and never once letting up all the way till the magnificent "Big City" and "Kern River."





4. The Patsy Cline Story, Patsy Cline




Patsy Cline is your go-to artist when you want to prove that not all 60s countrypolitan was schlock. The term "countrypolitan" is generally used as a putdown to describe the efforts that the country music industry made to crossover to the pop charts by smoothing over its rough edges, adding some strings and an intrusive chorus of backup singers and downplaying the music's firewater roots. Sometimes it was gloop, but it did save country from going under after rock ‘n’ roll became all the rage and it still managed to address issues of the lower middle class and the working poor much as it did before Owen Bradley, Chet Atkins and Billy Sherrill came to prominence as producers. And sometimes, as with Patsy, it was high art. "Crazy" will always be her signature song as it should be, but it's only one of two dozen knockouts on hand here. "Walkin' After Midnight" was her first big hit while "Back In Baby's Arms," "Sweet Dreams," "I Fall To Pieces" and "She's Got You" all bolster her case as the greatest female singer in country music and one of the greatest in all of popular music. Anything I write about Patsy feels superfluous to me because, like Johnny Cash, she is such a universally beloved, revered figure that I am just telling you something you already know when I write about how tremendous she was. Other great Patsy compilations include 12 Greatest Hits and The Patsy Cline Collection, but this one gets it right because it fleshes out her career highlights better than the former and has none of the mediocre dross of the latter. Patsy's early efforts at rockabilly didn't exactly set any rivers on fire and she was often saddled with mediocre material thanks to a screwjob publishing contract. But none of that is to be found on Story and your collection is incomplete without it.





5. The Essential Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Rodgers




Although he faces some stiff competition, The Singing Brakeman might just be the single most influential artist in all of roots music.  "Waiting For A Train," "T For Texas," "In The Jailhouse Now" and "Mule Skinner Blues" are not just monuments to American culture and lore, they are also great pieces of entertainment that have proven very resilient in finding an audience with each new generation. "In The Jailhouse Now" in particular is one that seems capture the public interest in a big way every fifteen or so years, most recently as a Soggy Bottom Boys hoedown on the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Formidable songwriters such as Lefty Frizzell, Merle Haggard and Steve Forbert have cut tribute records to Jimmie Rodgers in part to show respect to an incredible figure but also because his songs are a pleasure to perform. The way Rodgers sings the words "Women make a fool out of me" on "T For Texas" is as good as country music will ever get while "Waiting For A Train" with its tale of a boxcar bum riding the rails tells you everything you ever need to know about The Great Depression. Jimmie Rodgers died at the age of 35 from complications stemming from his tuberculosis. He had fallen on hard times towards the end of his life but the death of country music's first superstar hit his fans hard and many stood by to watch as the train transporting his body back to Meridian, Mississippi passed by, an event Greg Brown so movingly captured in "The Train Carrying Jimmie Rodgers Home." Another Rodgers admirer, Bob Dylan, put it best when he said "Jimmie Rodgers was one of the guiding lights of the twentieth century."




6. Look What Thoughts Will Do, Lefty Frizzell




Lefty Frizzell's impact on every country singer to come after him is incalculable. He refined its phrasing to something light years beyond anything greats like Roy Acuff and Ernest Tubb could ever dream of doing with their voices. He introduced things like subtext and shading to the form and there was a sensitivity to his phrasing that was completely unique for its time.  Not even Hank could compete with what Lefty was doing as a singer. He was also a hell of a songwriter whose best work; "If You've Got The Money (I've Got The Time)," "Mom and Dad's Waltz," "Always Late (With Your Kisses," and "I Love You A Thousand Ways" are required learning for anyone pursuing a career in music. His song "Look What Thoughts Will Do" is perhaps country music's first existential ballad while, as an interpreter, Frizzell gave us unmatched versions of "Long Black Veil" and "Cigarettes and Coffee Blues." This anthology expands upon the excellent Very Best of Lefty Frizzell and includes some of his lesser known, but equally great songs like "Sick, Sober & Sorry" and "Forbidden Lovers" and is the best budget-minded alternative to the staggeringly comprehensive Bear Family box set.





7. Anniversary: Ten Years of Hits, George Jones




The arc of this record is breathtaking as you hear Possum go from a euphoria that few of us will ever experience on songs like "Loving You Could Never Be Better" and "What My Woman Can't Do Can't Be Done" only to spiral into an abyss that, hopefully, none of us ever get acquainted with on "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)." The fall of George has a cinematic quality and the smart way each track is selected gives Anniversary a narrative thread that is rare for a country artist's best-of. Billy Sherrill, for all his great genius, could overwhelm his artists and smooth away their rough edges like he did with Charlie Rich and Johnny Paycheck when they worked with him. After all, what is "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" next to "Who Will The Next Fool Be?" But he was perfect for George Jones and understood better than anyone what kind of material George was best at singing and fed it to him again and again. As far as the lush arrangements that were Sherrill's calling card, instead of straight-jacketing a wild man, they complimented the high drama of Jones' vocals and the songs on Anniversary have an operatic grandeur that exists nowhere else in the genre.  “I'll Take It Out In Love" is as good as countrypolitan ever got outside of Patsy Cline. It's the squarest song in the world and it's all the better for it because you really believe in the man and woman that George sing about since you are either already one of the two characters or you will be down the line. It's about a man who works very hard to be the best lover, friend and confidante to his partner that he can be as well as helping to raise her kids and when the woman says she owes him for it, he waves it off and says he'll take his payment in love. If you think that sounds cheesy, you haven't heard George lay it down. I'm not really old enough to get away with statements like "as I get older" but as I get older, I find myself more drawn to a song like "I'll Take It Out In Love" than all the murder ballads and dead baby songs put together.





8. Can The Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music's First Family, The
Carter Family




The Carter Family dominated country music in the 20th century.  Beginning with A.P., Sara and Maybelle and on through Helen and June Carter and ending with Johnny Cash, who kept their spirit, songs and name ringing in our ears through his marriage with June and his great love of their music. And even with the passing of Johnny & June, we still have the alt. country movement which has drawn heavily from The Carters.  Their song "There Will Be No Depression In Heaven" (not on this anthology, sadly) was the famous inspiration for Uncle Tupelo's first album title, No Depression, and is now the name of a magazine that is something of a bible for roots music fans. Although you would have to go back to their earlier recordings for Victor to get the original versions, the renditions here of "Can The Circle Be Unbroken," "Keep On The Sunny Side" and "Wildwood Flower" are still the ones to beat. They've been covered by every artist who ever felt the need to pay respect to their roots or prove his or her credentials with the Americana crowd. A.P. Carter was the band's songcatcher and ringleader, not to mention a great baritone, while Sara strummed the autoharp and Maybelle, in her own less flashy way, proved to be every bit as influential a guitar player as Robert Johnson and it is from her that we got the "Carter picking" guitar style. Their exquisite harmonies were a long way from the primitive stylings of Uncle Dave Macon and it's safe to say that bluegrass would have sounded a whole lot different if it hadn't been for their enormous influence on Bill Monroe. I can't imagine what country music would sound like if The Carter Family hadn't existed nor do I even want to.





9. Storyteller, Poet, Philospher, Tom T. Hall




I have more respect for Tom T. Hall than I do any other figure in country music. Not even taking all of his great art into account, just the way he conducted himself throughout his career, never stooping to pander and the great pains he took to broaden the political sensibilities of a staunchly conservative medium while honoring its tradition at the same time. And the songs that he wrote were a helluva lot more than the "story songs" they are so often categorized as being.  Story songs are, almost without exception, boring and don't hold up to repeat listening. A song can be as rich in detail as a short story, but it can't actually be a short story or it turns into one of those slightly silly "historical" songs that poor Johnny Horton got saddled with after "Bismark." Tom T. could give you something like "Margie's At The Lincoln Park Inn" where a once wayward husband returns to the family fold while his former mistress still haunts their old palace of sin and with just the right detail, like the father fixing his son's bicycle while thinking about his cheating ways, he shows you an entire world with a few tightly crafted lines. Nowhere is his genius as a songwriter more evident than on "I Hope It Rains At My Funeral." The song is a bittersweet account of one man's journey from a childhood of looking at dirty books under the covers to his first heartache, and even a little time in county jail for acting a fool. In just a few, tightly edited verses, Tom T. Hall gives you this guy's entire life before he destroys the world with the last line; "If I've got one wish, I hope it rains at my funeral/For once, I'd like to be the only one dry."

Even his sentimental fare, "Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine," "A Million Miles To The City" and "The Year Clayton Delany Died" have a depth of character that most songwriters would kill for. Hall could also get weird on songs like "Turn It On, Turn It On, Turn It On," a twisted saga of how a town's black sheep goes on a killing spree and he was capable of sidestepping all the minefields of political songwriting with "The Monkey Who Became President" which shames ninety-nine percent of protest music by actually being a good song first and a smart, common sense statement second.  Never a slave to the spotlight, once he became too famous to travel around the backroads and observe people in anonymity, he sensed it was time to pack it up and he now lives a comfortable life of semi-retirement on his farm in Tennessee.  Occasionally putting out an album when he feels like it or publishing a novel or book on songwriting, Tom T. Hall knew exactly when to make his exit and managed to have a rich career in music, keep his dignity intact and keep his private life private. We should all be so lucky.





10. King of The Honky Tonk, Webb Pierce




Webb Pierce is strong stuff and, depending on the crowd you're running with, you could either clear out the party using this record or start the mother of all drunken bashes with it. The honkiest and the tonkiest of the honky tonkers, Webb's nasal, perpetually off key voice could shred like the nastiest steel guitar solo and when it got a hold of the right material (like, say, every song on this collection) it reduced everything outside of Paycheck's Little Darlin' material to cinders. Soft rock feminist crap cinders. Something of a groundbreaking artist, Webb's songs tackled alcoholism ("There Stands The Glass") and marital infidelity ("Back Street Affair") with great candor before either subject became tried and true jukebox fodder. Country music wasn't that far removed from when Floyd Tillman turned heads with "This Cold War With You" and "Drivin' Nails In My Coffin," so Webb Pierce singing "There stands the glass/That will ease all my pain/That will settle my brain/It's my first one today" could be classified as shocking for its time.  Webb loved stardom and after the hits dried up, he could still be counted on for a headline or two with his guitar-shaped swimming pool that drew thousands of tourists every week to his neighborhood to scope out the garish watering hole. His neighbors, including Ray Stevens, filed a suit against him to get the tourists out of their neighborhood. Now, while I side with Ray and the neighbors on the whole thing, you gotta love Webb's response which was "That's what he gets for living next door to a star!" They don't make 'em like Webb Pierce anymore. 





11. Angel Band: The Best of The Mercury Years, The Stanley Brothers




Like Hank Sr., it don't really matter where you start with The Stanley Brothers just so long as you have them in your collection.  Compilations of their work for Rich-R-Tone, King, Columbia and Starday are just as great and, save for the more expansive Starday and King sets, pretty easy on a student's pocket book. I chose Angel Band because, without trying to be some kind of gothic backwoods horror story, it is eerie and unsettling beyond compare. Although, as Ralph Stanley himself has often pointed out, The Stanley brothers were always about "old timey mountain music" they are still considered a bluegrass band. You can hear some of that in all their music, especially here, but there's something so ancient and ghostly about the way these two harmonized that it really belongs to the mountains like Ralph said. If you're not in the right frame of mind, Angel Band can be impenetrable, but if you are willing to give it a little extra effort and attention, the rewards are great.

Ralph Stanley has outlived older brother Carter to become a monumental figure on his own and his justly celebrated tenor is that of an Old Testament prophet so it can be a little bit surprising to hear him in more of a supporting role to Carter. Painfully shy, it wasn't until ill health began to limit Carter's ability to stay front and center that Ralph pushed himself out as a leader which makes his great achievements since Carter's passing all the more remarkable. Rich, honest and possessing an emotional complexity that was light years ahead of most of his contemporaries, Carter owns "I Long To See The Old Folks Home," "A Voice From On High" and "Calling From Heaven" (see a pattern emerging?) and, even after O Brother introduced it to college dormhouses across the nation, the song "Angel Band" has lost none of its power to send chills up the spine. Harrowing and absolutely essential.





12. King of The Road: The Genius of Roger Miller, Roger Miller




Although the third disc goes slack up till Miller's comeback with Big River, this is a dizzying ride through the career one of country music's most outrageously gifted songwriters. By all accounts, Roger Miller was the kind of songwriting machine who could pepper even his everyday conversation among friends and colleagues with so many great lines that other writers would follow him around with pen and paper just hoping to catch him on a good day. Bill Anderson commented that Miller was incredibly generous about it all and would often turn down a cowriting credit no matter how many times Anderson offered to cut him in. We'll never know just how many of the great songs that came out of Nashville in the 60s owe their existence to Roger Miller's endless creativity but, considering the riches on this set, he kept more than enough for himself. Disc one begins with Miller as he tried to stick to a standard honky tonk mold on "Poor Little John," "When A House Is Not A Home"  and"Lock, Stock & Teardrop" before he started getting adventurous with his wordplay on the likes of "Dang Me," "Reincarnation" and "Atta Boy Girl." Miller sensed that this new direction was paying off and so he refashioned himself as a more sophisticated raconteur and was a big part of country's move from its rural roots to the bright lights and big city of pop music. With "King of The Road," Miller reached his zenith as a country songwriter who, rather than being compared with Hank or Lefty, was often getting mentioned alongside the Gershwins and Cole Porters not only for his brilliance as a wordsmith but also for his impeccable melodies. Miller's string of perfect songs continued with "England Swings," "The Last Word In Lonesome Is Me," "One Dyin' And A-Buryin'" and the immortal "My Uncle Used To Love Me But She Died" before the insane touring and recording schedule began to catch up with him at the close of the 60s.

After a long dry spell of covering other artists' songs, rerecording his own and doing a vocal turn in that animated version of Robin Hood, Miller's comeback began in the 80s with Old Friends, his duet record with Willie Nelson. Nelson, in a stunning display of generosity, recorded a series of duet albums with some of his peers who were not doing so well commercially at the time; guys like Webb Pierce, Hank Snow and Roger Miller.  Featuring a guest appearance by Ray Price, the song "Old Friends" was a mid-sized hit as was Miller's "Alabamadama" and the exposure was a welcome reminder of his great talents. But Miller's true renaissance came with the terrific batch of songs he wrote for the Broadway musical Big River including "Guv'ment" which is just as inspired as his peak 1964-66 era.  For country and "depressive jazz" fans alike.





13. The Essential Ray Price 1951-1962, Ray Price




Ray Price was the smartest of the classic honky tonk generation. He nurtured relationships with the best songwriters (Bill Anderson, Roger Miller, Don Gibson, Harlan Howard and Mel Tillis) whose material dominates this collection and, thanks to his epic voice and inspired bandleader skills, gave "Heartaches By The Number," "Wasted Words" and "Invitation To The Blues" their definitive readings. As you can probably gather from those three titles alone, Price kept his focus on love gone wrong which never goes out of style. But what makes Price's music so special, aside from the brilliance of the songs themselves, is the expansiveness of his sound. These records have a sophistication to them that someone like Webb Pierce couldn't even guess at and, far from watering down the music's undeniable vitality, it's because of how Price throws in a little big band and western swing into the mix that distinguishes him from the pack. You could see Glenn Miller doing something like "Crazy Arms" a lot easier than "Honky Tonk Song." And unlike his two great peers, Hank and Lefty, Ray Price's story is not one of demons and martyrdom. Always a feet-on-the-ground professional, Price took Willie Nelson's slow, bluesy "Night Life" and used it to launch a different path for his music, that of a countrypolitan crooner. It's a move that alienated some of his hardcore fanbase but it has paid off for the man because it gave him a longevity, and larger audience, that he could have never achieved if he hadn't mixed things up with his sound. Like Tom T. Hall, Ray Price is one of country's truly happy stories to tell.  He worked hard, made great music, shot straight to the top, stayed there, gave the right people their big breaks (Nelson, Kristofferson, Tillis, etc.),  took himself out of the rat race when he knew it was time and now he's this giant figure whose body of work is an inspiration to a whole new generation. Best of all, he's still alive and kicking to not only enjoy the hosannas, but also to continue showing everyone how it's done with Time, his most recent solo album, and his inspired duet record with ol' Willie, Run That By Me One More Time.





14. The Real Mr. Heartache, Johnny Paycheck




Honky tonk music at its most primal and desperate. Best remembered as a sort of poor man's Waylon Jennings for his "Take This Job And Shove It" era, Paycheck had a brief, shining moment in the late 60s where he was the most fascinating artist in all of country music.  You've got the dark stuff like "(Pardon Me) I've Got Someone To Kill," "The Ballad of Frisco Bay," "(Like Me) You'll Recover In Time" and "The Cave" which have a strong cult following among those who like their country twisted and evil.  And that stuff's great but what tends to get overlooked in favor of songs about nuclear holocausts, insane asylums and killing sprees are the songs more standard in subject matter (romantic despair, infidelity, etc.) but no less striking in terms of performance. "Wherever You Are," "Touch My Heart," "Motel Time Again," the title track and even borderline novelty like "He's In A Hurry (To Get Home To My Wife)" all tell the familiar story of a jilted man scraping by after his woman has left him but they have an intensity about that them sets them apart from what everyone else was doing.

Much of the credit goes to Paycheck himself who, before the cartoonish stuff set in, was a scary good singer who invested real drama into his performances. On Hank Cochran's "A-11," he really does sound like someone so unstable that he could come unhinged if you played a song on the jukebox that reminded him of his former flame.  Paycheck also had a real gift for songwriting that never developed much after his time on Little Darlin', probably because he never had another Aubrey Mayhew (Little Darlin's cofounder) to help him finish the songs or indulge his idiosyncrasies. And if you are a steel guitar enthusiast, this record is a must because of Lloyd Green's still unsurpassed work on these sessions where he was given free reign to match the craziness of material with titles like "Don't Monkey With Another Monkey's Monkey." Since Johnny Paycheck's death in 2003, there has been a renewed interest in his music that has seen the release of a stunning tribute album, the Robbie Fulks-produced Touch My Heart, as well an ongoing Little Darlin' anthology series that looks to make all of his music from that era available to the public for the first time in decades. Still, this is the one to beat because it spans the whole run and remains one of country music's wildest, darkest and most thrilling chapters.





15. Honky Tonk Heroine, Jean Shepard




The coolest, smartest woman in country music, Jean Shepard stuck to her guns when the industry switched over from two-fisted hillbilly music to the more urbane country pop that was created in response to rock ‘n’ roll kicking its ass up one side and down the other.  Shepard knew what she was doing was good and that there was no sense in watering it down or outright altering her course, so she kept right on tearing it up just like her more famous Bakersfield peers; Buck Owens, Wynn Stewart and Merle Haggard.  Tough and determined, she was right there with the rest of the boys loading and unloading equipment, fighting sleazy bookers, eating bad truckstop food, making those sixteen hour drives between gigs on a nightly basis and all that glamorous stuff that could kill you if you didn't have a marathon runner’s constitution. Fiery, sexy and confident, Shepard wasn't taking any crap from men on "Two Whoops And A Holler" and "Act Like A Married Man" but could still be all breakable heart and soul with "I've Learned To Live With You (And Be Alone)" and "Don't Fall In Love With A Married Man." Shepard's records were as vibrant and full bodied as her voice and it's worth mentioning that Speedy West, arguably the greatest steel guitar player of them all, played on many of these tracks with his trademark quicksilver flourishes. Overshadowed by Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells, Jean Shepard has still managed to carve out a magnificent career for herself and I can think of no better way to close out this list than by paying due respect to her.

Missed something? Click here for Part 1 or here for Part 2 of Heartworn Highways.