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
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
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. ~ William Ruhlmann