"Willie Nelson's cracked-leather voice is a national treasure, and an instrument he applies to everything from Gershwin to reggae. But he's never better than when he's singing lonely-Texas-cowboy songs, and on this album he draws from the best writer of those songs not named William Hugh Nelson:

the forgotten but legendary Cindy Walker, whose songs formed the hit parade of Nelson's teenage years. In the Forties, Walker wrote dozens of songs for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, including standards like "Cherokee Maiden." Her hometown (Mart, Texas) is just forty miles from Nelson's (Abbott, Texas); when Nelson sings on "Bubbles in My Beer" about "a road paved with heartaches and tears," he sounds forlorn, but he also sounds like a man who has come home."

 GAVIN EDWARDS