Willie Nelson became a success as a country music tunesmith long before he broke through as a genre superstar in the mid-1970s. His appearance in Ace’s Songwriter Series this month is both long overdue and most welcome.

Years before he had any hits of his own, Willie forged his reputation as a front tier writer, thanks to songs like ‘Crazy’, Night Life’, ‘Hello Walls’ and ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’. Others made these songs hits initially, but it was Nelson’s skill as a lyricist and composer that truly ‘made’ the songs.

Written over a period of more than 30 years, you can hear all of those and 20 others on “One In A Row” which demonstrate the breadth and depth of his catalogue and shows why so many of his biggest copyrights continue to be revived and revisited decades after Nelson first put pen to paper.

Some of these have been covered literally hundreds of times in all genres of music, others just once or twice. But all of them reinforce the fact that Willie Hugh Nelson is one of the most important songwriters of the 20th Century inside or outside of country music – and would have been one even if he had never sung a note.

A most valuable addition to Ace’s unofficial ‘series within a series’ featuring the songs of Nelson’s country peers Dolly Parton and Merle Haggard, and a solid testament to the talents of a man who is still singing many of them and others live in concert at the age of 91…