Willie Nelson, You Don’t Know Me (Lost Highway)

 

Cindy Walker penned many of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys’ biggest hits, but with Tommy Duncan good-time vocals singing over Wills’ swing, it’s easy to miss her gift for expressing heartbreak. She may have written the rollicking “Miss Molly” and “Cherokee Maiden,” but Nelson’s smart, sensitive performances make the pain of “Not That I Care” and “Bubbles in My Beer” abundantly clear. His band swings throughout, but the brief B3 organ solo that gives way to a fiddle solo suggests there’s little retro about the album. Instead, the album feels like a loving tribute to not just the music that inspired Nelson as a young Texan, but to one of the writers who showed how much heartbreak could be conveyed in a handful of inconspicuous lines.