Becky Buller and Dark Shadow Recording have presented us with a delightfully fresh and new all-star Christmas record.

The photographs in this book are outstanding, telling their own story that supports Eldridge's recollections all the way through.

Greener Grass by Billy Swinson contains eight original songs and covers of two classics.

Sleeping Dogs is the type of album on which you can hit the play button and go about your business with a smile.

I usually listen to a CD several times before I ever start to write a review, but A Life Well Lived is only eight songs in, and already I have seven favorites.

Her unique, high-frequency vibrato is as tasty and refreshing as a molded Jello fruit bowl on a hot August day; her songs are as light as an April shower and as deep as a long gaze into an old soul.

Something for everyone here, from slow country ballads to instrumentals ranging from fiddle tunes to klezmerish, Western Swing, great songwriting, and a couple of real surprises.

This recording, through Dark Shadow Recording, is superb, sounds great, and I hope is the direction of the music business, with more music that resembles art.

One can hear Jake's influences, and each song on the CD introduces us to a new influence. To say that Jake is an amalgam of Elvis, Cash, Perkins, Scruggs, (Tommy) Hunter, (Faron) Young, (Buddy) Holley, and (Webb) Pierce would not yield the whole story.

These musicians are all over the CD, not all playing at once, but I can’t say I would mind it if I heard the tune with them all. They all did a fine job, but a few caught my ear.

While each individual track on Big Spring is definable, the CD is not easily done.

Even Monroe can’t perform the same two or three sets of music when he plays two sets a day for nine days to the same folks. I can remember that twenty-something Mike Compton seated right there, staring up at the master.