Willie Nelson's cracked-leather voice is a national treasure, and an instrument he applies to everything from Gershwin to reggae. But he's never better than when he's singing lonely-Texas-cowboy songs, and on this album he draws from the best writer of those songs not named William Hugh Nelson: the forgotten but legendary Cindy Walker, whose songs formed the hit parade of Nelson's teenage years. In the Forties, Walker wrote dozens of songs for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, including standards like "Cherokee Maiden." Her hometown (Mart, Texas) is just forty miles from Nelson's (Abbott, Texas); when Nelson sings on "Bubbles in My Beer" about "a road paved with heartaches and tears," he sounds forlorn, but he also sounds like a man who has come home.

“All Along the Watchtower”

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."