The great, tender, plain-spoken, big-hearted Don Williams, "gentle giant" of a Zen country music of grace and soul, has died at 78. Yeah, we know: country music? But Williams stood out from what was often dreck, and it's a grievous loss for those of us who used to listen to him on 8-track in our pick-ups gliding through the beatific woods. In scores of No 1 hits starting in Nashville in the '70s through his 2010 inductment into the Country Hall of Fame until his retirement last year, he crooned ballads of love and loss in a deep smooth voice "that walked the seam of a porch-front baritone and stage-ready tenor."