Listening to country music in times like these is always ironic. Here are all these middle-American housewives listening to freaky Top Forty million sellers by gays and blacks, while the Number One album on the entire country chart probably won't go gold if it hangs in there all month. Does the fact that black popular music has a better chance of crossing over than white working-class music say something healthy about America? Naw — it just means we're all still a crazy bunch, unable to remain consistent in any form. (A lot of those housewives wouldn't be especially eager to have Donna Summer move next door, or have their son date even the cop in the Village People. But then, they'd probably rather not have their daughter running around with Waylon Jennings either.)

The real reason country music rarely crosses over is because, in its heart, there's a belief in restriction. Nobody ever has a good time in a country song without paying a heavy penalty, which is antithetical to the rampant hedonism that rules the pop charts. Dolly Parton is an aberration, and her crossover hits aren't any more country than "Life in the Fast Lane." And Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger doesn't count, since Willie is Willie and not subject to rules applicable to everyone else.

Yet country is able to persist on its narrow path because the rewards are there. They might not show up immediately, but once someone is established with a couple of hits on the country charts, the money and recognition are there forever. The audience is incredibly loyal, which is great for business over the long term, but a little restrictive for artists with the potential to bend boundaries, damn the torpedoes and cut loose.

Take Gary Stewart, a man with a voice big enough for rockabilly and a loose-jointed sense of rhythm that always threatens to drag him over the edge. Somehow, Stewart never quite makes it across, maybe because a full-fledged rock-out could be the one thing that kills his bird in the hand. Still, no one listening to his albums could help but wonder what's in the bush. On Gary, he's got a fine love song, "Mazelle," that'd be absolutely perverse in the hands of somebody like Nick Lowe. Yet Stewart keeps the tune firmly in tether, singing it like he means it. There's no sense of irony, or too much realism — however you choose to put it. Given a shove in the right direction, Gary Stewart could be the Roy Orbison of the Eighties, a full-blown rockin' paranoid. When he sings something like Jack Tempchin's "Walkaway," he's halfway there already.

But Stewart is clearly more comfortable with songs about guilt: "I've Just Seen the Rock of Ages" and "Lost Highway" surround "Walkaway" like a pair of plainclothes men. Considering that his career began with a great piece of bluster about honky-tonk Saturday-night adventures, this kind of stuff amounts to self-abuse. Which is one reason why the barfly cowboys of Hollywood like to identify with country music — it justifies the hangovers, man's greatest excuse ever for self-pity.

That's not quite the wisecrack it seems. With their penchant for self-promotional effacement, British rock heroes such as Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend have lately taken deep bows in the direction of Don Williams, all the while siphoning his ideas and songs with as much regularity as they ever used in copping Muddy Waters licks.

The Best of Don Williams, Volume II contains the originals of "Till the Rivers All Run Dry" (which Townshend did as a duet with Ronnie Lane on Rough Mix) and "Tulsa Time," a recent Clapton pop hit. Both Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton have been accused lately of somnambulism, but compared to Williams, Clapton's version of "Tulsa Time" is "Tales of Brave Ulysses."

In Bob McDill's "Rake and Ramblin' Man," Don Williams has a song with the same theme as Jackson Browne's "Ready or Not": unexpected fatherhood. Since Williams can sing rings around Browne, and since "Rake and Ramblin' Man" is a lot more universal, it's a mystery how Browne's song comes off so much better. My guess is it has something to do with the utterly awful—yet completely compelling—sense of resignation Williams brings to everything he sings.

Maybe this explains part of the reason why country singers like Don Williams and Gary Stewart are so fascinating to rock & rollers. Country music doesn't just accept the conditions of life: it's resigned, even devoted, to all the petty slights that rock refuses to surrender to or take for granted. And this is chilling, because country has been more than merely a regional form of music for many years now. It's really the voice of the American working class. Most American males, one suspects, would regard the unplanned pregnancy in "Rake and Ramblin' Man" with the same horror that Williams does. They'd feel just as trapped and make the same deadly compromises. It's only when you realize how universal such statements still are that you can fully appreciate the miracle of rock & roll, which dares to speak to the same people in a harsher voice.

There's no joy in Williams' universe. His "Till the Rivers All Run Dry" lacks the sense of exultation that the discovery of perfect love always brings to a pop vocalist. He accepts his romance as an aspect of fate—like getting up in the morning and going to work. True, there's a wistful beauty to this perspective—if such people knew what to do with the magic of such moments, what a world this could be — but there's something scary about it, too. If true love can't bring even momentary happiness, you might as well tighten bolts for the rest of your existence. The singer says it perfectly in these lines from another McDill composition: "Falling in love, falling in love/When'll I learn, I bet I get burned." You don't have to be a raving sentimentalist to be struck by the tragedy of that outlook.

The most perfect expression of Don Williams' resignation is "Amanda," a song on his first Best of collection. "Amanda" does appear, in a stronger version, on Waylon Jennings' Greatest Hits, a record which does more than anything so far to justify Jennings' reputation as country music's great lost rock & roll star.

"Amanda" was a hit for Williams five or six years ago, but Jennings' version is just now climbing the charts. Which is appropriate, because more than anyone, Waylon Jennings has paid the price for the restrictive formulas of country music. He has a great band, a big voice and a guitar style that's blistering and twangy — Duane Eddy in the smokehouse!—yet he's never had a rock hit.

Jennings likes to bluster about his outlaw stature and his defiance of country's regulations. Greatest Hits is filled with such songs, from "Honky Tonk Heroes" and "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way" to the original outlaw number, "Ladies Love Outlaws." But somehow, the music always hauls him back to earth. There's a sense that if he ever let go, he'd be dangerous — and it's a shame Buddy Holly never got a chance to produce him. As it is, he's grounded, without that one song, that one moment that soars and becomes transcendent. That's why "Amanda" is so perfect, because it takes the measure of Waylon Jennings' loss—and ours—in terms that any aging rocker might understand all too well. These lines are for everyone who ever made one compromise too many:

I've held it all inward, God knows I've tried

But it's an awful awakenin' in a country boy's life

To look in the mirror in total surprise

At the hair on my shoulders, and the age in my eyes.

In a way, Jennings' triumphs, as much as his failures, are mirrored in those mournful lyrics. He has become, after all, a great country singer, almost on a par with Willie Nelson and Hank Williams, his idols. The point isn't even that he's missed out by not scoring a rock hit — it would be more apt to say that rock & roll misses an American performer with his power, conviction and honesty. What's interesting to me is that Fifties rockers like Jennings and Jerry Lee Lewis, who turned their backs on rock to plow the narrow field of country, may have been wise to make their peace with conventionality. "I got my first guitar when I was fourteen/Now I'm over thirty, and still wearin' jeans," Waylon Jennings sings with elemental weariness. These lines cut home as a symbol of futility and foolishness, not because they're applicable to rockers as well as country boys, but because there isn't anyone in rock & roll today with enough guts to admit the truth in them. (RS 296)

DAVE MARSH