A collection of previously unreleased recordings released on what would have been Townes' 75th birthday. The recordings were made in early 1973 with the late Bill Hedgepeth, a journalist, musician, and most crucially a close friend of Townes. These versions of “Pancho & Lefty” and “Rex’s Blues” show these songs as early drafts: raw, sorrowful, and as stunningly moving as he ever was, full of clean flat-picking and adept flourishes in just the right places. In addition to a handful of old favorites, Sky Blue also includes two new songs that have never been heard before—”All I Need” and “Sky Blue”—as well as covers of songs by Richard Dobson and Tom Paxton. There is a smoky version of “Blue Ridge Mountain Blues” and a scarred and scarring interpretation of “Hills of Roane County,” an East Tennessee murder ballad from the 1880s that was popularized by Tony Rice.