motive.

Though My Very Special Guests seems to promise duets, there's really only one: "I Gotta Get Drunk." Willie Nelson's and George Jones' voices bring out the best in each other, like beer and barbecue. These guys whoop and holler as if they couldn't help it, and the constraint and smarmy showbiz manners that dampen the other cuts are forgotten. There's nothing sure-fire about famous voices blending, or about an afternoon of short takes resulting in anything like collaboration. In fact, Jones and his companions are lucky if they get their signals straight: "It Sure Was Good" is almost over before someone remembers to turn up Tammy Wynette's mike.

A brief survey indicates that tunes are slightly punchier when guests bring their own musicians, that Jones and Waylon Jennings sound a lot alike, that Linda Ronstadt sings louder than anyone. But you were wondering about Elvis Costello, right? It turns out that "Stranger in the House"–a provocatively incongruous vehicle for Costello – is pretty ordinary C&W when you sing it straight. It must have been his distance, his cultivated anger, his menacing delivery that suggested depths and implications behind lines like "Nobody's seen his face."

On My Very Special Guests, the distance is of the pettier kind. Costello sings his verses in the third person while Jones sticks to the first, and if the pronouns don't get you, dig Jones' sepulchral tone when he says, "Thank you, Elvis." Hugh Downs or Mike Wallace couldn't have done the patronizing, I-wouldn't-touch-it-with-a-ten-foot-tong bit better.

The worst thing about an album of guest shots is that nobody – including George Jones – risks a thing. They know there'll always be someone else to blame if the record's a dog. (RS 311)

ARIEL SWARTLEY