At an age when most would be content to relax and reflect upon past achievements, 74-year-old Hank Thompson looks to expand upon his legacy. The title of his HighTone Records debut "Seven Decades" alludes to the longevity of Thompson's hall of fame career.

Thompson is pleased that HighTone let him do things his way.

"I want to be happy with the way it sounds. I'm not compromising doing this because someone says this is the way to do it in today's market. I said, 'No, I want to do this like I do things, the way I want it done.' That's the first time I'd really done that since I left Capitol. So, I'm very well pleased with what we did and the way we did it, the sound we got. Everybody had a good time doing it. I think it reflects in the music."

HighTone united Thompson with producer Lloyd Maines, who in recent years has established himself amongst the elite producers in alternative country. The band includes guitarist Thom Bresh, carrying on the tradition of his father Merle Travis, who played with Thompson. Also on hand are fiddlers George Uptmor and Billy McBay, pianist Mark Jordan, bassist Ronnie Ellis and drummer Gene Glover. The album also features some of the last work of steel guitarist Gary Hogue, who died shortly after the recording was completed.

Thompson kicks it off with the light-hearted "Sting In This Ole Bee," which takes a humorous look at the aging process. "A boy in Missouri sent me that song, that idea," says Thompson of co-writer Joe Nelson. "I liked the appeal of it because of my age and the fact that I'd had very good success with a song called 'The Older The Violin, The Sweeter The Music.' I rewrote the song and kind of adapted it to what my thoughts were on things, and it turned out to be a cute little ditty."

Another tune with an age related theme is "New Wine In Old Bottles." "That's a very unusual idea," says Thompson. "A lady named Ann Tygart, who's sent me several songs through the years, sent me that one a while back. I pretty much wrote the song, but I used her idea, and she had a pretty good melody line. I thought that fit along with 'Sting In This Ole Bee,' and a lot of people could listen and identify with that."

"Condo In Hondo" is the tale of what Thompson describes as an "old cowboy that's become disillusioned with riding the range" who decides to settle down. "That would be the reason he would get the condo. And being in that area, I wanted the Tejano music sound to it. When I was writing the song, I was down in Mexico. The condo that we had was right there on an area where a lot of mariachi bands would play in the evenings. So, I'd sit out there and hear that music so I kind of wrote it with that in mind."

"Lobo the Hobo" was originally going to be a song about Thompson's home town. "I always wanted to write a song about Waco, being from there. I never did get around to it and then, of course, that bad thing of the Branch Davidians came up, and Waco became kind of identified with that."

Thompson feared that a song with Waco in the title would bring that tragedy to mind, so he opted to mention Waco only within the song as a jumping off point for the title character."

"We needed just an old blues boogie song for this album so the musicians could have some fun picking courses on it," Thompson says of the arrangement to "Lobo." "Something that's easy and has a good beat to it. So, it flowed real well, and we had a lot of fun with it, and a lot of folks say it's their favorite song on there."

Thompson also does several cover tunes, including the Jimmie Rodgers classic "In The Jailhouse Now." "I remember singing that one when I was a little boy."

Cindy Walker's "Triflin' Gal," a hit for Al Dexter, also gets the Thompson treatment. "It was a number one country song. I used to sing it back then, during the

war, in '44 or '45."

Thompson slows it down for the jazzy ballad "Dinner For One, Please James." "I learned that off a Nat King Cole album. I heard it on the radio one morning when I was in a motel room. I said, 'Boy, that's a pretty song.' So I went down and bought the album."

Thompson goes way back with the song "Abdul Abulbul Amir." "That's an old traditional number. I remember hearing that when I was a kid, and it was a traditional number then. Obviously, it must go back a long way because they're talking in there about the Czar. So, this song had to be of a vintage of around the turn of the century."

Another clever tune is "The Night Miss Nancy Ann's Hotel For Single Girls Burned Down," a hit for Tex Williams in the early '70's. "People for some reason or another got me confused and thought it was my record. I don't know that Tex Williams and I sounded a lot alike, other than the fact that we both did the western swing music with a beat and maybe our voice enunciations were similar. But I used to have people come up and ask me "Do that Nancy Ann's Hotel.' So, I said, 'We're going to do 'Nancy Ann' on this thing, and that way, when somebody comes up and says 'Nancy Ann' I can say, 'Yes, I did record it.'"

Thompson knew early on that he was going to be a musician. "I had the idea that I could sing," the Texan recalls. "I'm sure I wasn't that good but I thought I could. I listened to Jimmie Rodgers records and learned a lot of his songs. Of course, I listened to some others - the Carter Family and some of the people on the border stations."

It was film star Gene Autry who had the biggest impact on the young Thompson.

"He sang exactly like Jimmie Rodgers," says Thompson. "You could close your eyes, and you couldn't tell the difference. I never got to see Jimmie Rodgers, but I could see Gene Autry up there on that screen, and it gave me an animation. He was picking that guitar, and I said, 'By golly, I think I can do that.' But it wasn't as easy as it looked."

Thompson first enjoyed regional success in the early '40's on the radio in his hometown of Waco. After a stint in the Navy during World War II, he returned to Waco in 1946 and had a local hit with "Whoa Sailor" on a small California label.

Thompson's big break came when another screen cowboy heard his recording of "Humpty Dumpty Heart." "Hal Horton had the 'Hillbilly Hit Parade' on KRLD in

Dallas," recalls Thompson. "That thing went to number one on his hit parade, as had my earlier recordings. It became so popular that it came to the attention of Tex Ritter, who was on tour down here at the time, and he mentioned it to Capitol. And sure enough they came down to Dallas, and we cut the record and started out an 18-year association with Capitol Records."

Thompson first went to Nashville in 1949. "I did a network show on Mutual called 'Smoky Mountain Hayride,' and then I did an early morning show on KLAC," says Thompson. "Then, Ernest (Tubb) got me on the Grand Ole Opry, but I could see this wasn't my bag. It wasn't the way I wanted to go in the business. At that time, I would not have been able to develop the kind of music I wanted to play in Nashville because, in the first place, there weren't the musicians to play it and, in the second place, they wouldn't allow you to have all the electric instruments and drums and all that stuff anyhow.

"So, it was just not a place for somebody like me who wanted to do the southwestern swing and honky tonk type music. The Grand Ole Opry at that time was strictly acoustic guitars, banjos and fiddles and the mountain music. Although I was a part of all this, I had a different view of how I wanted to do my music."

Disillusioned with Nashville, Thompson returned to Waco to pursue his musical vision with his own band called the Brazos Valley Boys. "Waco is in the Brazos Valley," says Thompson. "Back then it was customary to identify with your part of the country. You know, like Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. It kind of came natural and easy."

The Brazos Valley Boys were highly acclaimed for their instrumental prowess, taking home several band of the year honors. In 1953, they were joined by legendary picker Merle Travis. "I was a big fan of Merle's," says Thompson. "I'd listen to his records, and I was singing a lot of his songs."

It was actually a chance meeting that brought Thompson and Travis together. "I'd gone out to record and just happened to intercept him on a motorcycle with his girlfriend. They were headed for the mountains for the weekend, and we hailed him down and got acquainted."

Prior to adding Travis, Thompson had rarely featured the guitar prominently in his music. "I never did care for just straight, standard guitar. I lean more toward fiddles and steel. But I liked his style of playing, so that Merle Travis guitar thing became associated with my music, too."

Thompson's biggest hit came in 1952 with "Wild Side Of Life," which Thompson had heard on a regional recording by Jimmy Heap. "A boy named Perk Williams was the singer on that record - a good singer," Thompson remembers. "They were out of Taylor, Texas, close to Austin. It was very popular on the juke boxes, and a lot of the radio stations were playing it."

Though Thompson was initially unimpressed with the song because the melody was borrowed from "I'm Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes" and "Great Speckled Bird," his wife at the time, Dorothy, was intrigued by the line about "honky tonk angels" and encouraged Thompson to record it.

After rewriting the second verse and condensing the song, Thompson brought it to producer Ken Nelson, but Nelson was also bothered by the unoriginal melody. Thompson convinced Nelson to cut the song and make it the B-side of "Crying In The Deep Blue Sea."

"It took a couple of months or so before it really began to take off," recalls Thompson. "We already had another record scheduled."

When radio stations began to focus on "Wild Side Of Life" as the emphasis track the record shot to number one and stayed there for 15 weeks.

"It had just about peaked out and was on its way down when Kitty Wells came out with the answer to it," says Thompson. "For her record to make any sense, you had to hear mine. So, they would go back and play mine right before they played hers so it brought my record right on back up. I got about another three or four months ride out of it because of Kitty's record."

In 1961, Thompson made history with the first live album by a country artist. "Live At The Golden Nugget" was inspired by the success of a live album by the Louis Prima band recorded on stage in Las Vegas.

"I used to go out there and watch them when I got off work," Thompson says of Prima and company. "They were the entertainer's entertainer because they put on

such a fast moving, high energy type music show. It was so electric that they got the idea to do a live album."

Capitol was eager to duplicate the success they had enjoyed with Prima and agreed to do a live Thompson record. "It turned out to be a big hit," says Thompson. "The biggest album that I'd had at that time. We were the only ones in the business that could have done that. We were the only ones playing a venue like that in country music and the only one that had a standing band. So, we did what we were able to do that nobody else could do."

Through the '60's and '70's, Thompson continued to have chart success, but by the mid-'80's, the hits dried up. Thompson stayed active, however, and in the early '90's became popular amongst younger fans of alternative country.

"Everybody's always label conscious," Thompson says of being considered "alternative" at this point in his career. "I guess it's a way of defining it as not being something. What they call country music today is a far cry from 'country.' So, 'alternative' would be to say this is the alternate, and it is not that - this is something else. So, I'm glad to see that we have that market because we have many people that like country music - like the tradition of it, and they do not like what Nashville is putting out and calling country music. Including me. I never listen to it because I don't care for it."

Fellow Texan Don Walser recently recorded Thompson's "Here's to Country Music" which reflects Thompson's view of the current country music scene. "He does a good job on it," Thompson says of Walser. "He's one of my favorite singers in today's 'alternative' or 'traditional,' whatever you want to call it. He's a damn good yodeler and he sings good songs."

In 1997, Thompson released "Hank Thompson and Friends" on Curb Records, which paired him with such artists as Lyle Lovett, George Jones and Junior Brown. Despite the success of the single "Gotta Sell Them Chickens" with Brown, Thompson was disappointed with Curb's handling of the project.

"Curb did not do a whole lot with that album of ours. They just threw it out there without any promotion or push," says Thompson. "But, of course, they have LeAnn Rimes selling millions of records, and Tim McGraw. So, obviously, you're gonna dance with the one who brung you, so I don't blame them. So, that wasn't good for me. but I can understand it.

After having completed the new album, Thompson needed a title. "The album is not a theme album - it's just a bunch of songs," says Thompson. "There was nothing in there - any songs, any themes - that suggested any type of a title. So, the best thing we could come up with was 'Seven Decades.' This, in the year 2000, means that I'd recorded in 7 decades."

In his research, Thompson found that there was one other artist to record in seven decades. "The only other person we could find that had recorded in seven decades was Frank Sinatra. He recorded in 1939 with Harry James," says Thompson. "So I've got a shot at eight."