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Try to get the original Jerry Jeff album with "LA Freeway," because it's got lots of great stuff, like "Charlie Dunn" on it. Of course, you should also have "Viva Terlingua" and the more recent sequel, "Viva Luckenbach," containing the great "You Ask Me What I Like About Texas?"

By the way, what killed modern country music was Garth Brooks, or more precisely, his financial success. Garth proved that a guy with a hat, a flashy rock-style stage show, vaguely pop-country songs, and chiched faux-country lyrics (described by Joe Queenan as sounding like they were written by the "Drugstore Cowboy 1.0 software") could sell a gazillion records. When the major labels saw that country didn't have to be a niche market and could pile up huge sales, they fired or demoted all the Nashville execs who had been in the business their whole lives and really knew the music, then replaced them with pony-tailed, coke-snorting record weasels from L.A. These carpetbaggers moved into Nashville and immediately imposed their "formula": young artists who look hot in videos, crossover-aiming songs with almost no detectable country elements, and totally non-controversial pop cliche lyrics. Country songwriters were told not to even sumbit a song about drinkin' anymore because it was politically incorrect!

Only a group like the Dixie Chicks, that already has tons of power and popularity, can get away with doing a song like "Goodbye Earl," which is considered really scandalous because it sticks out like a buoy in a sea of pap, due to the fact that it actually says something. But all country music used to say things about serious adult subjects: alcoholism, infidelity, unemployment, even murder of a lover (I can play you a great 60-year-old recording of "Banks of the Ohio" if you don't believe me).

Want to improve country music? Run the L.A. record company weasels out of Nashville and back to L.A. Then sign Merle Haggard, Don Williams and Jerry Jeff Walker back to major label contracts again.

Wow, I'm flattered. As to the Buck Owens album, there's one, kind of difficult to find, called the Instrumental Hits of Buck Owens and his Buckaroos. No vocals at all, and Don Rich does almost all of the lead guitar, fiddle, and I think steel guitar. He got killed in a motorcycle wreck shortly after that, but I still like his version of Orange Blossom Special better than any other. Very polished work, and you never feel like there's a sound that comes out of his instrument that wasn't exactly what he wanted it to be.

As to Jerry Jeff, well

Pack up all your dishes, make note of all good wishes,
Say goodbye to the landlord for me, those sons of bitches always bore me,
Throw out those LA papers, moldy box of vanilla wafers
Adios to all this concrete, gonna find me some dirt road back streets

Let me know how you like them