50 Years Ago: Willie Nelson Drops the “Greatest Country Album of All Time”

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It wasn’t just a country album. It was the country album. It ended one era in country music, and began a new one, while going on to define the era it founded, and to define country music for generations. It revolutionized the country genre, and continues to revolutionize the genre today, still acting as a primary influence and a compass point for countless country artists. It was both groundbreaking in its scope, and aggressively and delightfully simple in its vision.

It was Willie Nelson’s 1975 album Red Headed Stranger. And to many, it’s considered the greatest country music album of all time.

Fifty years ago this month is when the world was first handed a copy of Willie Nelson’s magnum opus, though it’s fair to say that the world didn’t exactly know what to do with it at the start. It would take a while for country music to wake up to the genius of the work. But once it did, something nearing a universal consensuses behind the importance of the album emerged.

Willie Nelson first won a level of creative autonomy by moving on from RCA Records in Nashville to the rock label Atlantic where he released the albums Shotgun Willie (1973) and Phases and Stages (1974). Then Willie moved to Columbia Records where he was given complete creative control, thanks in part to the savvy work of his manager and lawyer Neil Reshen. With that newfound freedom, Willie Nelson wanted to avoid any influence of Nashville on his new album, and decided to record at a small studio in Garland, TX called Autumn Sound.

The first session at the studio was actually free since Autumn Sound was looking to boost its exposure at the time. After five more days of recording and an additional day of mixing, the total studio cost came to $4,000—a fraction of what labels were used to spending at the time. Instead of going with a big production, Willie acted as producer himself, stripped everything back to his singing, his guitar Trigger, sister Bobbie Nelson on piano, and sparse contributions from his backing band of Bee Spears (bass), Mickey Raphael (harmonica), Jody Payne (guitar and mandolin), and Paul English (drums).

When Willie Nelson turned the record into Columbia, they notoriously told him it sounded unfinished, and like a demo. Columbia president Bruce Lundvall sent the album to Nashville producer Billy Sherrill to add additional instrumentation and polish to it. Sherrill remarked, “Did he make this in his living room? It’s a piece of s–t! It sounds like he did this for about two bucks. It’s not produced.”

Manager Neil Reshen and Waylon Jennings traveled to New York City to meet with Bruce Lundvall personally and act as emissaries for Willie and Red Headed Stranger, with Waylon calling Lundvall a “tone-deaf, tin-eared sonofabitch” for not understanding Willie’s vision.


But despite Columbia’s protests, Willie Nelson insisted it was the finished product, and due to his 100% creative control, Columbia had to acquiesce. Red Headed Stranger was released to the public, however reluctantly. Though some pin the release date as May 1st, all we know for sure is that it was released in May of 1975, and perhaps closer to the middle of the month. Promotion wasn’t exactly robust since Columbia was convinced they were sitting on a dud.

A dud it was not. The understated, stripped-down nature of the album stoked the imagination of country fans, offered an alternative to the overproduced “Countrypolitan” sound of country music at the time, and even won an audience beyond country music as well. Though the album is given credit as a landmark release of country’s “Outlaw” era, in total Red Headed Stranger is a decidedly traditionalist album.

Red Headed Stranger wasn’t country music’s first concept album—or even the first concept album in Willie Nelson’s own catalog—but it was the first time many country fans were introduced to a liner story unfolding in a country album. It followed a preacher who found out that his wife had been cheating on him, and so he enacted revenge before finding redemption. Willie dreamed up the concept after a trip to Colorado.

One interesting wrinkle to the album is that Willie Nelson used mostly previously-written material to flesh out his concept. Though he was already famous as a songwriter at that time for writing country standards such as “Hello Walls” and “Crazy,” Willie chose country classics like Fred Rose’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” Eddy Arnold’s “I Couldn’t Believe It Was True,” and Hank Cochran’s song “Can I Sleep in Your Arms” to tell the story. Willie wrote just a few of the album’s tracks.

The results spoke for themselves. “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” became Willie Nelson’s first #1 song. Red Headed Stranger became his first #1 album. Though Willie had been around for many years, the world finally woke up to him through the album, and when Willie had entered his 40s.

In 1986, a film based off of the album starring Willie Nelson was released. It was the production of the film when Willie built his Luck, TX Western town on his property just west of Austin.

50 years later and at the age of 92, Willie Nelson is still releasing records. But arguably none of them have topped Red Headed Stranger, from Willie Nelson or anyone else. Whenever any “Greatest Country Albums of All Time” list is populated, you can count on Red Headed Stranger being at or near the top. And there’s no reason to believe that 50 years from now, this won’t still be the case.

Two Guns Up (10/10)!

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Purchase Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger

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