What do you get when you bring together one of the most innovative stylists in country music history and Nashville’s most celebrated songwriter? You’re listening to it. Early in his career, the baron of Bakersfield paid powerful, album-length homage to the magical pen of Harlan Howard, who’d already written milestone hits for Owens and would write more. Between Buck’s honky-tonkin’, hard-country feel and Howard’s masterful odes to the mysteries of the human heart, this one set the bar pretty damn high.
- 1961
- Buck Owens & His Buckaroos
- George Jones
- Merle Haggard & The Strangers
- Ray Price
- Ernest Tubb
- Stonewall Jackson
- Willie Nelson & Webb Pierce