Personnel: Waylon Jennings (vocals, guitar); Chip Young, Jerry Reed (guitar); Pete Drake (steel guitar); King Curtis (saxophone); David Briggs , Floyd Cramer, Hargus "Pig" Robbins (piano); Norbert Putnam (bass guitar); Kenneth A. Buttrey, Ritchie Albright, Sonny Curtis (drums).

Waylon Jennings rightfully deserves to have his name listed alongside artists like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson in the pantheon of country. As an interpreter, performer, and innovator, Jennings was an original, bucking against the traditional Nashville channels with his lean, rootsy sound and blazing the trail for the outlaw country movement. A comprehensive account of Jennings's evolution and achievement is finally available in the four-disc box set NASHVILLE REBEL.

Reaching all the way back to 1958 and his slightly rock-&-roll, slightly folky early work, NASHVILLE REBEL does a grand sweep of Jennings's career through the '60s, into the epoch-defining '70s, and straight through to the mid-'90s and his recordings with the Highwaymen. Included are duets with Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Jessi Colter, as well as some surprise covers of tunes by Los Lobos, Neil Young, and others. Attentive sequencing and assembly, and a lengthy, lavish booklet packed with photographs caps off this box, which deserves a place in any country-music library.

No Depression (p.91) - "Waylon was out there, edgy and experimental and playing off tradition..."

Mojo (Publisher) (p.110) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[With] rock'n'roll, folk-country, honky tonk blues, psychedelic cowboy, outlaw country and tough but tender songs..."