Krauss joined him on “The Late Show With David Letterman” last week to sing “Make the World Go Away,” taking his tribute to the masses. But he said the most powerful experiences for him were the songs he sang with Krauss, Emmylou Harris and Lee Ann Womack _ “humbled is the word that comes to mind,” he said. Johnson cut two tracks with good friend Nelson, who got his first paying job in Nashville thanks to Cochran, and other iconic singers like Merle Haggard, Ray Price, Vince Gill, Bobby Bare and Kris Kristofferson. “And the icing on the cake was the artists that stepped up and not only agreed to do it, but we were getting death threats from artists if we didn’t put them on this album, you know? There would be hell to pay and we wasn’t gonna have that.” “There’s not a writer I think any more deserving than Hank Cochran to have an album done in the way that we did this one,” Johnson said. Johnson could think of no better reason to bring them back. Once a fairly regular staple in Nashville _ one of his favorites is Waylon Jennings’ tribute to Harlan Howard, “Waylon sings Ol’ Harlan” _ they’ve pretty much disappeared. He carried that tribute a step further by making a rare modern example of a country performer saluting a songwriter’s body of work. Johnson sang at Cochran’s bedside the night he died of pancreatic cancer in 2010 at age 74. The album cements the friendship of Johnson and Cochran in Nashville lore and represents another creative left turn for the fiercely independent 37-year-old Alabama singer-songwriter.