Vinyl:  VG Play Graded.  Sounds Very Good!  Columbia Labels are Clean and Bright.   This is the 1975 Columbia 1ST PRESSING! KC 33482.  This is Willie's much renowned Concept album!  allmusic gives it 5 stars!!!
See Review Below!
In the Dead Wax:  Matrices, stamped.  Complete Dead Wax information cheerfully provided upon request.

Cover: VG+ (see photos)   SIGNED BY WILLIE!!!  High gloss on cover. Front and back of cover artwork and text are rich, clear and bright, with minor shelf wear. Seams and spine are solid and clean, with minimal wear.  No splits.  Spine print is clear. 

Goldmine Standards.   I play grade every record that I sell on eBay as I have found you can't rate an LP accurately by just visually inspecting an album.  I wipe the dust off of every cover with clean, unscented baby wipes.  I professionally clean the vinyl.  (I also operate a Vinyl Record Cleaning business for your dusty/dirty records--if interested, send me a message).

U.S. Shipping:  FREE domestic shipping! Includes tracking.  Combine any additional items and they're also shipped FREE!  If you wish to take advantage of my COMBINED SHIPPING deal, simply select your items by clicking on "ADD TO CART" on the main listing page.  Do this for all of your selections and then go to your cart to checkout.  Your combined shipping discount will be computed automatically.

All records are packaged securely with the vinyl outside the jacket (to avoid seam split in transit). The vinyl and jacket are sandwiched between two cardboard stiffeners and shipped in a custom cardboard record mailer box. 
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Why buy a first or early pressing and not a re-issue or a ‘re-mastered’ vinyl album? 
First and early pressings are pressed from the first generation lacquers and stampers. They usually sound vastly superior to later issues/re-issues (which, in recent times, are often pressed from whatever 'best' tapes or digital sources are currently available) - many so-called 'audiophile' new 180g pressings are cut from hi-res digital sources…essentially an expensive CD pressed on vinyl.  Why  experience the worse elements of both formats?  These are just High Maintenance CDs, with mid-ranges so cloaked with a veil as to sound smeared.  They are nearly always compressed with murky transients and a general lifelessness in the overall sound.  There are exceptions where re-masters/re-presses outshine the original issues, but they are exceptions and not the norm. 

First or early pressings nearly always have more immediacy, presence and dynamics. The sound staging is wider.  Subtle instrument nuances are better placed with more spacious textures. Balances are firmer in the bottom end with a far-tighter bass. Upper-mid ranges shine without harshness, and the overall depth is more immersive.  Inner details are  clearer.  

 On first and early pressings, the music tends to sound more ‘alive’ and vibrant.  The physics of sound energy is hard to clarify and write about from a listening perspective, but the best we can describe it is to say that you can 'hear' what the mixing and mastering engineers wanted you to hear when they first recorded the music.

AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

's perhaps is the strangest blockbuster country produced, a concept album about a preacher on the run after murdering his departed wife and her new lover, told entirely with brief song-poems and utterly minimal backing. It's defiantly anticommercial and it demands intense concentration -- all reasons why nobody thought it would be a hit, a story related in 's liner notes to the 2000 reissue. It was a phenomenal blockbuster, though, selling millions of copies, establishing as a superstar recording artist in its own right. For all its success, it still remains a prickly, difficult album, though, making the interspersed concept of sound shiny in comparison. It's difficult because it's old-fashioned, sounding like a tale told around a cowboy campfire. Now, this all reads well on paper, and there's much to admire in 's intimate gamble, but it's really elusive, as the themes get a little muddled and the tunes themselves are a bit bare. It's undoubtedly distinctive -- and it sounds more distinctive with each passing year -- but it's strictly an intellectual triumph and, after a pair of albums that were musically and intellectually sound, it's a bit of a letdown, no matter how successful it was.