I don't usually bother with Various Artist albums, but “The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams” is a momentous exception. The background: Hank wrote song lyrics in notebooks that he kept with him in a beat-up suitcase until he filled them up. When he felt the lyrics were complete, he stored the notebooks in a box to save them for the day when he would eventually record them. When the man who defined the genre of pure country music died, there were four such notebooks in his box, which had never been recorded or performed.

Fast forward to present day, when Bob Dylan became aware of these undiscovered songs, and he became the first artist to take an original Hank Williams lyric and write music for it and record it. As detailed in the accompanying booklet (which features actual photos of the original manuscripts), with help from A&R executive Mary Martin, who worked with Dylan's manager Albert Grossman in the '60s, they recruited an amazing array of today's most revered singer/songwriters to take one of Hank’s lost lyrics and write and produce the song.

Alan Jackson, Norah Jones, Jack White, Lucinda Williams, Vince Gill and Rodney Crowell, Patty Loveless, Levon Helm, Holly Williams, Jakob Dylan, Sheryl Crow and Merle Haggard all rose to the occasion and contributed to the album. Each and every one successfully channeled the musicality, the feel, the very spirit of Hank Williams as they wrote the music to the prodigious lyrics that were presented to them. Each of them managed somehow to limit the effect of their own musical style and personality to their interpretations of the songs, writing music that is so authentically Hank that I would challenge anyone to label it otherwise, and the result is nothing short of stupendous.

What these artists have created is, simply put, the most significant, important and wonderful album of pure country music in decades.