On this day (December 2) in 1975, Willie Nelson was at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart with Red Headed Stranger. The LP, which originally reached the top of the chart in October, spent five non-consecutive weeks at No. 1. More importantly, it helped shape the future of Outlaw Country, making it one of the most historically important releases of the decade.
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Today, Nelson is hailed as a country music legend. More specifically, he’s widely regarded as one of the founders of the Outlaw Country movement that dominated the genre in the 1970s. Red Headed Stranger marked the beginning of both the movement and the most successful period of his career.
The story of this album truly begins years before Nelson recorded it. He spent years on the RCA Victor label. Then, after releasing The Willie Way in 1972, he left the label for Atlantic Records. That deal produced Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages.
Those releases were successful. However, after more than a decade in the business, Nelson wanted creative control. He found that with Columbia Records. His contract with the label stated that he had full control over his output. Red Headed Stranger was the world’s first look at Nelson making the music he wanted to make.
Willie Nelson Helped Create Outlaw Country
Waylon Jennings, the other major player in the creation of Outlaw Country and Willie Nelson’s longtime friend and collaborator, defined the movement in his 1996 autobiography. In it, he wrote that “outlaw” had nothing to do with criminality. Instead, it was about going against the grain and creating art instead of pumping out a product for record labels. This put them outside of and against the country music system at large.
Nelson seemingly attempted to push the limits of his creative control with Red Headed Stranger. He left backing vocalists, string sections, and complicated, lush arrangements behind. Instead, he chose to go with sparse arrangements, letting the melodies and lyrics do the heavy lifting.
The arrangements on the album were so stripped-down that label executives originally thought he had sent them a demo of his new album. That wasn’t the case, though. It was the finished product. Bound by their contract, the label released the album as-is in May 1975. A few months later, it became Nelson’s first No. 1 album. It also produced his first chart-topping single, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”
Featured Image by Tom Hill/WireImage
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