Various Artists - Heartworn Highways

This is a soundtrack that very much stands on its own. Doesn't matter if you've ever seen (or even heard of) the movie - it's a great collection of Americana from some of the best artists recording then (or now), including the late, great Townes Van Zandt. It includes some of the first recordings by Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, and John Hiatt. And it's just some of the best music you'll hear anywhere.

Some time in the middle of the 70's, there was a movement in music. Specifically country roots music, although many of those who played and sang it were eventually tagged as "rock" or "folk" singers, such as Gram Parsons, The Byrds, Michael Martin Murphy, The Eagles, etc. Of course, many of them jumped back and forth across that line with such skill and grace no one was really sure which genre they were, and spoke accordingly. There was no "Americana" genre then, and country-rock is what it became. They made a movie about some of these guys, how they lived and played and worked, and called it "Heartworn Highways." This is the soundtrack of that movie.

The 70's is often discounted as a bad decade for music, but really, once you drop out the treacley mainstream "country" crap and excise the disco, there's a wealth of tremendous roots-based country-flavored rock (or rock-laced country). There was no way to get even a tenth of it onto this disc, but the producer of the film, Graham Leader, and editor Phillip Schopper, managed to cram in some of the best, bringing together names that weren't famous yet, but would be soon. Legends in the making. Brilliant songwriters. Talented guys.

Containing some of the first recordings from Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, and John Hiatt, as well as favorites from Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, and Gamble Rogers, as well as David Allen Coe, this disc is an important chronicle of those "early" Americana days, as well as a plain good listen.