On July 4 -- a date chosen to coincide with Willie Nelson's annual picnic -- the next five historic country music albums Sony Legacy's American Milestones series became available in stores. Last year the series kicked off with expanded and enhanced CDs of Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, Willie Nelson's Stardust, Merle Haggard's Big City, Tammy Wynette's Stand By Your Man, and Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs. This summer's selections are the 25th anniversary edition of Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger, Johnny Cash at San Quentin (the complete 1969 concert), The Spectacular Johnny Horton, George Jones' I Am What I Am, and the Original Carter Family's Can The Circle Be Unbroken.

The series features historically significant material that enjoyed both commercial and critical success at the time of its original release, and claims to explore six decades of country music history -- even though there is a 19-year gap in recordings from 1940 to 1959.

All the releases have been digitally remastered, and each includes bonus tracks of previously unreleased material, rare photographs, and new liner notes.

I was ten years old when I purchased my first album at the Music Mart in downtown Homewood, Illinois. I can still remember trying to decide if I wanted Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits or his previous release, The Spectacular Johnny Horton. Columbia Records wasn't making my choice easy: Both LPs featured the same photograph of Johnny in a bright red jacket, but the Greatest Hits included "North to Alaska," "Sink the Bismark," and "The Battle of New Orleans," plus a full-color souvenir photo (the cover picture yet again). I wasn't even aware that Horton had died tragically that November, killed by a drunk driver in a terrible accident he'd been dreaming about for weeks.

I now wish that I had purchased The Spectacular Johnny Horton, because his Greatest Hits only shows the side of him most people know through the novelty historical songs that became his million-sellers. This new CD features rockabilly songs, along with country classics like Leon Payne's great "Lost Highway," previously recorded by Hank Williams Sr., to whose widow, Billie Jean, Horton was married at the time of his death.

Johnny Cash's live concert from San Quentin shows him at the top of his form, but once again it was a novelty song -- Shel Silverstein's "A Boy Named Sue" -- that brought Cash to the top of the pop charts as the Woodstock Festival took place in upstate New York. The medleys of his early hits are alone worth the price of admission.

Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger includes his hit version of "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," but it's his own masterful songwriting and storytelling skills that make this a classic. The additional unreleased tracks feature his sister Bobbie and her parlor piano stylings, which don't really add to the original concept of the album.

George Jones' I Am What I Am is the one reissue that sounds the most like what you'd expect to hear on country radio today. Unfortunately, today's artists can only wish they could make a record like this. Billy Sherrill's production takes a song like "He Stopped Loving Her Today" and turns it into one of the greatest country recordings ever made. In the hands of any other artist or producer this could easily have been a morbid novelty song. And, of course, Jones' voice is a national treasure.

The Original Carter family collection is a textbook of songs that have become a canon for bluegrass and old-timey musicians. "Wildwood Flower," "Worried Man Blues," "Keep on the Sunny Side," and "Black Jack David" are all standout cuts that should appeal to fans of Gillian Welch, Bob Dylan's Good As I Been To You, and Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music.