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Hank Williams
 
 

40 Greatest Hits  (contributed by John Wareham) These songs are the template for almost every singer-songwriter that's ever come along.  When you strip away the songs of Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen -- to name a few -- you are left with what Hank Williams wrote and sang about all those years before: longing, heartbreak, happiness and a devastating lonesomeness that has never been captured better.  The songs are spare and simple but beautifully funny and clever, heartbreaking and haunting.