If Connie Smith wanted to impress, she'd have hired Jack White. Instead, Smith, who made her name when Nashville, Tenn., queens wore cotton-candy hair and Tammy Wynette headed the pack, teamed with Marty Stuart for pure, rich, no-frills country music in which love and life are played out in three-minute two-steps ("Anymore") and the occasional belly-rubber ("I'm Not Blue"). ***

By Margaret Moser