Purists will object to the inclusion of rock, country, and singer/songwriters on Partners. But Jimenez is comfortable with his guests, and ultimately they deliver an album that expresses the richness, uniqueness, and contradictions of South Texas' Mexican-Anglo culture. It's an odd land -- culturally neither the United States nor Mexico -- where Latino men wear cowboy hats and dance the two-step while Anglos curse fluently in Spanish and are familiar with the subtleties of border cuisine. So, it makes perfect sense that the leading practitioner of a Mexican music form influenced by German polkas should join forces with Stephen Stills, Emmylou Harris, Los Lobos, John Hiatt, Dwight Yoakum, and Linda Rondstadt, each of whom draws their own cultural and artistic roots. When Jimenez doesn't step in front for solos, he pushes the music along with a gentlemanly modesty that belies how thrilled each of his guests must have been to serve and as his front man or woman. It's all good, but Hiatt's poignant reading of "Across the Borderline" supported by Jimenez' plaintive according deserves special mention: It captures perfectly the hopes and fears of those who head north in search of a better life only to find more poverty and rejection. Highly recommended.