"These albums contain some of the greatest songs ever recorded on Epic and Columbia Records. If you look at sales, awards and critical acclaim, they represent some of the best music in the country genre, period," said Dale Libby, Vice President, Sales for Sony Music Nashville.

Each of the five initial releases will feature the original front cover art with expanded liner notes, additional photos and re-mastered, audiophile quality sound. Although each of the albums has been available on the CD format almost since the configurations was created, the prior packaging consisted only of the front and back cover of the original vinyl album. No liner notes, no listings for musicians, songwriters, band members and no additional photographs were included.

"Record companies rushed to make catalog releases available at the onset of the CD age," said Libby. "This series is an effort to pay homage to some of the benchmark releases from Sony Music Nashville's amazing history and in partnership with Sony's Legacy division, we've gone to great lengths to substantially improve the audio quality and packaging to bring them up to par with the musical significance of these recordings."