Highwayman Super Hits

Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson released two albums together on Columbia Records, 1985's chart-topping Highwayman and 1990's Highwayman 2. (For the sake of convenience, the quartet itself was sometimes referred to as Highwayman or even The Highwaymen, though they were never actually billed as such.) Three songs from those albums reached the country charts, "Highwayman," "Desperados Waiting for a Train," and "Silver Stallion." So, one wishes a better title than Super Hits could have been used for this budget-priced ten-track compilation, which draws five tracks from each album. Nevertheless, the combination of the four country superstars remains amazingly comfortable, as they trade off vocals on songs such as Cash's "Big River" and even harmonize. The first album, which used standards, was superior to the second, for which new material was written, but many of the songs on the first album did not feature all four singers, so the balance of tracks from the two albums here is reasonable.