• Track Listing

Bear Family already put out a set of Hank’s Capitol recordings. Now, they chronicle what followed: two decades of music on Dot, ABC, MCA, Churchill and Warner Bros. The country-music marketplace changed a lot in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, but Hank—even as he experimented with new sounds and conceived creative theme albums—always returned to the honky-tonk-infused Western swing that made him famous (he sure had a way with a romantic ballad, too). A 124-page hardcover book contains a complete discography from the period plus dozens of photos from Hank’s scrapbooks and an in-depth essay drawn from nearly 20 interviews with those close to Hank. The magical Thompson touch reaches across all 246 tracks: every hit and album cut of the era plus dozens of rarities debuting on CD including an album’s worth of great truck-driving songs that, inexplicably, were shelved and never released ’til now. Along with his LPs that pay tribute to the Mills Brothers and Nat King Cole, you’ll hear his album of songs about Oklahoma and the instrumental recordings he made with his incomparable Brazos Valley Boys. Even if we just go by hits alone, there are too many to list: Where Is the Circus; He’s Got a Way with Women; On Tap, in the Can, or in the Bottle; Smoky the Bar; Oklahoma Home Brew; The Pathway of My Life; I See Them Everywhere; But That’s All Right; One of the Fortunate Few; Next Time I Fall in Love (I Won’t); I’ve Come Awful Close; Cab Driver; Glow Worm; The Mark of a Heel; Roses in the Wine; Kindly Keep It Country; The Older the Violin, the Sweeter the Music; Who Left the Door to Heaven Open; Mama Don’t ’Low, and more! Bear Family.