First off, let me disclose that I've been an Emmylou Harris devotee since 1980. I've built up my stack of her LPs and CDs gradually over the years, but, as with with any collection, there's always a few albums that for one reason or another, you seem to keep putting off getting. "The Ballad of Sally Rose" was one of those albums for me. I just last week received my copy, and have been in country/bluegrass heaven ever since. A lot of previous reviewers have cited the facts and trivia connected to this concept album, so I wont repeat them here, but I just had to write and say how extraordinary this album is, for all those reasons, and probably more. Normally I hate it when people compare one thing in terms of another, but find myself irrestially drawn to doing just that now. If you don't have this one, and you know Emmylou's work a little, it's kind of a cross between "Blue Kentucky Girl" and "White Shoes." If you don't know her work, even though there are a lot of her albums that are better-known and more widely praised, you could not do better than start here. The only thing I will say about this import CD is that when I opened it, it seemed curiously thick, and I had to burn it onto another CD so I could play in some of the players where I wanted to listen. Other than that small thing, it's perfect.