Honky Tonk Heroes

Country music's long slide into pop-pap drool was arrested for one glorious moment when this wonderful album came out more than two and a half decades ago. It felt like fresh air, and if anything, the air it exudes now -- when nearly all of Nashville music seems hellbent on a grotesque race to the bottom -- is even more invigorating. There was a time when country music and folk music were nearly synonymous, and Honky Tonk Heroes, with its spare arrangements, melodies cut close to the bone, and wide-open landscapes, tells you what might have happened if the two genres had kept company and learned from each other. This is American music as good as it gets. "Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me" and "Ride Me Down Easy" are the deeply moving anthems I remember them to be, back in the days when I was playing the vinyl version down to the grooves. And now, many years later, I finally get the wornout-shoe wisdom of "Old Five and Dimers (Like Me)." If...Read more

After a tough contract renegotiation, Jennings was truly free of the Nashville machine. Free to produce his own records, free to say what he wanted, and free to record what and where he pleased. The full fruition of these freedoms can be found on this landmark 1973 release.

It's surprising to find that this most un-Nashville album was recorded at the very heart of all that Jennings was rebelling against musically: RCA's "Nashville Sound" studio. That it sounds absolutely nothing like the prevailing Nashville pop is a tribute to Jennings, his co-producer (Tompall Glaser), his band (The Waylors), his songwriter for this album (Billy Joe Shaver), and the sympathetic players Jennings brought in for the sessions. A further surprise is the lengthy list of musicians, given the relative spareness of the productions.

Whether or not the legend of a drunk Jennings promising Shaver he'd record his songs is true, it's clear that no other songwriter of the day so vividly captured the singer's...Read more

Period. This is the best country album I have ever heard. It was good in 1973 when it came out and it is good in 2000. Good music doesn't go bad because of time, and this is the best country album ever recorded. It is complete. These songs are so much more developed, so much more emotional, so much more REAL than the tripe you hear today. Country singers today can't fathom making a country record with this much guts.