Bobby Bare & Donnie Bowser

Bobby Bare fought to secure control of his own recordings years before Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson pulled their outlaw coup, and, after Johnny Cash, he was among the first country artists to look at the album as a thematic collection rather than simply a hodge-podge of hits and throwaway tunes. In the 1960s, he concentrated on folk-tinged country, and in the 1970s he mixed novelty songs, rowdy honky tonkers and casual working-class tributes -- occasionally on the same album, like 1973's Lullabys, Legends and Lies, his most successful LP. He helped Jennings get his first ...