Unlike his previous three albums,
Country Favorites: Willie Nelson Style contains no original songs but rather cover tunes by fellow songwriters and singers such as
Hank Cochran,
Harlan Howard,
Leon Payne, and
George Jones. Like his second Liberty album, the recording made in mid-December 1965 had a strong
western swing flavour, and the pairing with the Troubadours made musical and commercial sense, since they knew Nelson's work from the television show and tours and were regarded as an ensemble with enough appeal to make their own records for Decca without Ernest.
Country Favorites was arguably Nelson's finest artistic achievement up to that point, with Lang Thompson of
AllMusic observing, "Nelson had already learned how to handle his unconventional voice effectively, giving these songs the honest freshness and sharp sense of rhythm that would characterize his later work." Nelson first started playing "Columbus Stockade Blues" as a "jazzy up-tempo number too fast for the dancers" while touring with wife
Shirley Collie and steel guitarist Jimmy Day as The Offenders. Nelson biographer Joe Nick Patoski notes that the reprisal of the song on this album "would have been better left off compared with the fiery earlier versions he'd recorded with Shirley Collie for Liberty Records..." Although Nelson respected Atkins, he later admitted to being unhappy with the producer's formulaic approach: :I was patient. I went along with the same process on my second RCA record,
Country Favorites: Willie Nelson Style. This time it was all covers, no originals, including "
San Antonio Rose," the calling card of my idol,
Bob Wills. I still found the production heavy-handed and wondered why Chet was so adamant about putting the word "country" in the title. "If we're going for that mainstream audience, doesn't 'country' restrict me?" I couldn't help but ask. "One step at a time," Chet answered..." "Whatever you say," I said, but I remained unconvinced. In 1970, RCA issued an abridged version of this album as "Columbus Stockade Blues" on the budget
RCA Camden label (CAS-2444). ==Reception==