He started out playing bass for Buddy Holly on that fatal final tour; spent the ’60s fighting the Nashville establishment for a sound of his own and finally persevered and recorded the flashpoint of the Outlaw country movement, 1973’s Honky-Tonk Heroes. Only Waylon Jennings’ untimely death in 2002 could silence a distinctive voice that simultaneously bristled with edginess and glowed with warmth, topping a forthright vision that was unwavering. “I’ve got things to do and things to say in my own way,” he intones on the title cut of this four-disc career retrospective, a song recorded for his starring role in the 1967 B-movie of the same name. “Nashville Rebel”—like his first hit “Stop the World (and Let Me Off)”—came straight from the Music City establishment that would constrict him for six more years, yet they nodded to his future, resonating with all the soulful freedom he’d display when he finally took his own band into a renegade studio and cut Honky Tonk Heroes.

The only low point of this 92-song anthology is that only four songs from his breakthrough album are included. Honky Tonk Heroes married country to rock and managed to keep the soul of both genres intact, something Gram Parsons never quite managed. It’s the album that exposed the songwriting genius of Billy Joe Shaver to the world, and the one that proved that you could go your own way in Nashville and still make it. Omitting “Old Five and Dimers Like Me,” “Omaha” and “Ain’t No God In Mexico” is nearly impossible to fathom. This grave misstep aside, Nashville Rebel is chock full of beautiful music.