More a Legend than a Band,' recorded in Nashville in 1971 and unavailable domestically until now, is notable both for its compelling version of the "high and lonesome" country style and for the band's creative core – Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock, a musical family of great depth and resolute individuality.

The album's acoustic approach (guitars, Dobro, mandolin, fiddle and string bass) and the loping rhythms of this short-lived septet, which was based in Lubbock, Texas, mix lead singer Gilmore's expressive voice and Steve Wesson's quavering musical saw for a plaintive sound that is beautifully evocative of prairie vistas. The songs, chiefly written by Gilmore and Hancock, revolve around escape from and return to the unrelenting uniformity of the West Texas landscape and small-town life.

Gilmore's writing has a spiritual quality (evidenced in "Tonight I'm Gonna Go Downtown," an enthralling glimpse of existential rootlessness) wholly reinforced by his eye for telling, unpretentious images ("Have you ever seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night?/Well, Dallas is a jewel, oh yeah, Dallas is a beautiful sight"). Hancock's pithy compositions, such as the melancholy "You've Never Seen Me Cry" and the guttersnipe bluegrass of "One Road More," provide a fitting, earthy complement. Except for his distinctive lead vocal on Willie Nelson's "One Day at a Time," Ely's contributions are primarily as a guitar and Dobro player, but his blues and rock roots add to the music's contemporary feel.

In the years since More a Legend Than a Band was recorded, Ely, Gilmore and Hancock have developed into independent-minded artists and arresting performers who always appear to be on the verge of some sort of stardom: Ely as a dyed-in-the-wool roots rocker and versatile singer; Gilmore as a honky-tonk troubadour in the best Lone Star tradition; and Hancock as a Dylanesque folkie and movingly poetic songwriter. They have all played important roles in one another's careers, as well as inspiring cult audiences.

Perhaps this somewhat crudely recorded album, as staunchly outside country's slick mainstream today as it was nearly two decades ago, will confirm the Flatlanders' "legendary" status to openeared contemporary listeners. That would be terrific, because these songs deserve to be much more than a historical footnote to the lives of three important but largely unrecognized Texans. (RS 585)

DAVID WYKOFF