A lot of what little is left of country music is based on guys copying guys imitating other guys who sang as much like Lefty Frizzell as they could manage. What they never seem to notice is that Lefty’s vocal style wasn’t a style at all but an echo rising out of an endless well of remorse. Son of a nomadic oil well driller, raised to be a rambler, Lefty Frizzell was the hottest star in country music just as Hank Williams flamed out -- he and Hank used to flip a coin to see who would open the show -- but a life lived out in pine-floored honkytonks was a dance-card of woe. A singer-songwriter long before anyone ever got called one, Lefty spent most of his life climbing out of a hole so deep that no one else could see it. Not until he began to sing.