Already a country music veteran by age 25, Ricky Skaggs wasn"t content to have his passion for traditional country music and bluegrass confined to small independent labels. Between 1979 and 1982, Skaggs was somehow able to force-feed his taste for country"s roots to the Nashville mainstream. Sweet Temptation, his 1979 solo debut for tiny Sugar Hill Records, impressed listeners with its old-school blend of honky-tonk and bluegrass and served as an alternative to the popular Urban Cowboy style of the day. Skaggs followed that the next year with his exquisite close-harmony duet album with Tony Rice, not exactly a move toward the center. Still, Epic rewarded him with a major-label deal and even allowed him to produce his own stuff. Highways & Heartaches, released in 1982, was his second Epic effort, and it spawned three No. 1 singles. Though it deftly fused traditional country with a touch of modern polish, the record wasn"t as much a departure sonically for Skaggs as it was a departure psychologically for mainstream Nashville. Reissued in 2000, it"s now considered one of the first neo-traditionalist triumphs, and it remains Skaggs"s most successful merging of artistic and commercial concerns. --Marc Greilsamer