Willie Nelson was better known as a highly successful composer of some of Nashville's most deeply personal songs ("Hello Walls," "Crazy" "Night Life") and as one of the Texas-based "outlaws" of country music when, in 1978, he undertook what seemed a most unlikely project. Nelson (b. 1933), with his superlative band in tow, elected to record an entire album of some of the Tin Pan Alley classics with which he'd grown up. The results were phenomenal -- Stardust, produced by Booker T. Jones (of Booker T. and the MGs fame) was an instant smash, eventually going quadruple-platinum. Suddenly, the singer-guitarist with the singular, just-ahead-of-the-beat delivery was seen as, a wonderful "new" interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Stardust, continues to suggest the elegant simplicity of pearls set against black velvet. And Willie Nelson remains an American Musical Treasure.

H I G H L I G H T S

• New liner notes from album producer Booker T. Jones
• Additional liner notes from Nelson's longtime harmonica player, Micky Raphael
  
• Previously unreleased tracks from the original sessions: Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now," and "Scarlet Ribbons"

JOHNNY CASH - At Folsom Prison

It was a sunny cool day on January 13, 1968 when Johnny Cash performed a concert at Folsom Prison. Cash's imposing bass-baritone is in front of the bumping, "boom-chicka-boom" two-beat that was the hallmark of the Tennessee Three, led by his longtime guitarist Luther Perkins (who died that same year in a tragic fire). Also on board for the crackling set were June Carter, The Statler Brothers quartet and the legendary Carl Perkins. There had never been a recording session quite like the one that produced this album. Playing to 2000 inmates -- and, of course their well-armed guards -- at a notoriously tough California penitentiary, Cash tapped right into the tension in the hall. Having been through a scrape or two with the law in his younger, wilder days, he offered a number of songs that resonated with this audience. But then he broke that tension with the gallows humor of "25 Minutes To Go," the comic vignette of his "Dirty Old Egg-Sucking Dog," and a tale of woe concerning how he got the big kiss-off "(Flushed From The Bathroom of Your Heart.").

H I G H L I G H T S

• Previously unpublished photos by reknowned photographer Jim Marshall
• Cash's original, hand-written, Grammy-winning liner notes
• Additional liner notes by Nashville maverick Steve Earle
• Three previously unissued bonus tracks: "Joe Bean," and "The Legend of John Henry's Hammer," and the Harlan Howard-penned "Busted."

TAMMY WYNETTE - Stand By Your Man

When Tammy Wynette died in April 1998, a month shy of her 56th birthday, country music lost not only its "First Lady" but its Once and Future Queen of Brave-Faced Heartache. Born Virginia Wynette Pugh in Mississippi's cotton country, she'd known more than her share of hard times. These, along with the troubles she'd seen in her ill-starred marriages, informed her double-tracked vocals to their very core. Though Wynette's plaintive domestic dramas spoke with a special acuity to her countless female fans, the hurt in her voice was universal. Released two days before Christmas in 1968, the album garnered Tammy her first Grammy Award and both the ACM and CMA voted her Female Vocalist of the Year in 1969. The song "Stand By Your Man," which Wynette co-wrote with album producer Billy Sherrill, was the first of her 20 number one country hits and sold six million copies while also establishing Sherrill as Nashville's foremost record producer. On this remastered and expanded edition of the album Tammy Wynette truly sings her heart out.

H I G H L I G H T S

• Previously unissued bonus tracks: "I'm Only A Woman" and "There's Quite A Difference"
• Liner notes excerpted from journalist Holly-George Warren's "Standing By Tammy Wynette" which originally appeared in The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, (Random House/1997)
• Additional new liner notes from producer Billy Sherrill