Can you imagine Johnny Cash recommending a list of country songs to study?!

On my list?

• I’ve Always Been Crazy, By: Waylon Jennings
• Crazy, By: Patsy Cline
• Hey Good Lookin’, By: Hank Williams

What songs would be on yours?

Then, when I was a day out of high school, my father took me on the road. It was something of a graduation gift, and a chance to catch up on some of the time we had lost. Traveling the world, watching him perform, and singing on the bus were also the basis for a serious education. Early on he made a list of a hundred essential country songs, which he instructed me to learn, a wide-ranging selection that ran from old history-lesson songs like “The Battle of New Orleans” to classics like Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” As I was ushered into this treasury of song, it was thrilling to learn more about my father through his great love for the music.

– Rosanne Cash, Composed (Amazon)