50 Years Ago: Willie Nelson Scores First #1 Song … At Age 42
They like to tell us that music is a young person’s game. By the time you’re middle age, you’re out to pasture and no longer relevant enough to attempt to launch a career, let alone a successful one. That’s the way it is now, and the way it’s always been. But there are rare exceptions to that rule of course, and Willie Nelson is the ultimate one.
By the time Willie minted his first #1 in country music, he’d already written numerous #1’s for others. He’d tried his hand at being a recording artist and performer, but mostly failed to find traction. He’d been hired and fired from the Grand Ole Opry. He’d been married and divorced. He’d retired from music, put on 40 pounds, and become a pig farmer.
Then when Willie’s house burned down in Tennessee on December 23, 1969, he moved back to his home state of Texas, and accidentally became a superstar at the age of 42. Willie Nelson had an entire life and career before the life and career we all know about today ever emerged.
Willie Nelson wrote “Crazy” for Patsy Cline and “Hello Walls” for Faron Young in 1961, both of which became major hits. He recorded plenty of singles and albums himself, but they all stalled, frustrating both Willie and his label. Like many performers of the time, Willie Nelson worked under the often oppressive thumb of producer Chet Atkins at RCA who regularly chose what songs he sang, who played on his records, and how they were produced.
Frustrated at the direction of his career, Willie Nelson wiggled out of his RCA contract, and eventually signed with Jerry Wexler at Atlantic who gave Willie full creative control. This resulted in the records Shotgun Willie (1973) and Phases and Stages (1974). But Wexler’s bid to start a country subsidiary of the rock label lost steam, and Willie moved on to Columbia, recording his magum opus Red Headed Stranger released in 1975.
Many of the stories about Red Headed Stranger are well-known, including how Willie recorded it on a shoestring budget in Garland, TX as opposed to using a big Nashville studio. When Willie Nelson turned the record in, the label told him it sounded unfinished, like it was a collection of demos. Willie insisted it was done, and off to the vinyl press it went.
But Red Headed Stranger didn’t fly off the shelves at first. It was really the single “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” that awoke the world to Red Headed Stranger, and to Willie Nelson.
Just like Willie Nelson, “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” was already well-aged when it was released. It was written by Fred Rose, who was famous for being a writing partner of Hank Williams. As a recording, it was first released by Elton Britt in 1946. Roy Acuff would also record the song in 1947, and Hank Williams did a live version of it in 1951.
Donn Reynolds, Ferlin Husky, Slim Whitman, Gene Vincent, Bill Anderson, John D. Loudermilk, Hank Snow, and Conway Twitty all recorded “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” before Willie Nelson even touched it. It was a country music “standard,” meaning a song many performers of the era would learn, perform, and often record. But it was Willie Nelson’s stripped-down and simplified version that he embedded in the story narrative of the conceptualized Red Headed Stranger that touched a nerve, caught fire, and raced up the charts, mostly under its own volition.
Willie’s “Blues Eyes Crying In The Rain” was viral hit before anyone knew what a viral hit was. On paper, the song should have never worked. Willie Nelson wasn’t just a has-been, he was also a never-was. The song didn’t have the slick production most country hits had at that time. But all of these things are ultimately what allowed the song to resonate with the public who went out to purchase the 45 single, and demanded their local radio stations play it.
Released during the peak of the “Countrypolitan” era, Willie Nelson’s “Blues Eyes Crying In The Rain” was akin to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It broke the overproduced fever, and ushered in an entirely new era. Outlaw country was born. And on October 4th, 1975, it became Willie Nelson’s first #1 song.
Today, few remember the early versions of the song by others, or the failures of Willie Nelson’s career before it was released. Now Willie Nelson is not just a living legend of country music, he’s revered worldwide. But it all started with one simple recording of an old country music standard. Red Headed Stranger is where the world learned about Willie Nelson. But “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” is where the world learned about Red Headed Stranger. And the rest is history.
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October 4, 2025 @ 10:54 am
Willie is the GOAT of songwriting/performers . Yeah sometimes his vocal timing is off and bent but that is Willies signature. Thanks to Willie Nelson I picked up a great writing tool. If you wanna write a great song, drive across Texas with your radio off. The rhythm of the road and your brain will deliver a melody to your head as you drive down the road. Willie had to pull over and write it down, now you can just sing the idea into your phone. The concept still works. While your subconscious is focused on driving, your creative conciseness is allowed to run freely, and it already knows what problems you need to solve. I don’t write all my songs this way, but at least half of the bangers on my new album came from long road trips across the never-ending state of Texas. Great coverage Trigger!
October 4, 2025 @ 12:57 pm
I often marvel at Willie’s attitude. It is so incredibly easy to have a good attitude sometimes. When life hits you in the face and kicks you when you are down, and a tube either drowns you or saves you. If you read what he has put out in written word, it is hard to find anyone anywhere who has a better attitude than Willie. He has lived it.
We then move onto his songwriting. Even though he somehow times away to trivialize the difficulty in writing songs, he puts out banger after banger decade after decade. Tiatro was one of my most listened to albums of all time. Spirit is the best break up album ever and I promise you that I am not being hyperbolic here. Then we move on to the fact that he has stayed after shows for about 200 years to shake hands and get pictures. we have the farm aid aspect and what a giant of a man he had become in that regard. We then can see how he handled the IRS issues and that was freaking amazing.
In summary, if we don’t give him a Nobel peace prize posthumously, get rid of that price forever! I recently mentioned on these streams how incredibly rad Waylon’s autobiography was, but I highly encourage every single person that reads this to check out the Dao of Willie. It outlines the way to think and live close to How to make friends and influence people.
October 4, 2025 @ 4:04 pm
One more little known but interesting story about Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain. On the very last day of his life, inside Graceland, Elvis Aaron Presley was in his rec room and sat down at the little electric piano he had ( still there by the way) and played and sang what would be the last songs he would ever sing, Unchained Melody and Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain. He got up, walked back into the main part of the house, and was found later dead in the bathroom. And yes, Elvis was an admirer of Willie.
If you tour Graceland, you can see that little piano yourself, still unmoved and waiting to be played again. Of all the things I saw in Graceland, that story got me the most.
October 4, 2025 @ 4:36 pm
And like fine wine,Willie ages superbly !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 4, 2025 @ 6:12 pm
I think it was also with “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” that Willie started cementing his reputation not only as a unique singing stylist, but also as a country music icon who was admired way beyond the restrictions of the genre. Not only was he an “outlaw” (undoubtedly one of the most overused phrases there is), but he was a true individualist; and of course he remains so to this day.
As a footnote, “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” also got up to #20 on the Hot 100.
October 4, 2025 @ 7:28 pm
On Ken Burns’ country music docuseries, Billy Sherill talked about how Columbia let Willie release Red Headed Stranger because they would let it die a quick death on the charts. Then Columbia would dictate the terms to Willie on whatever he released going forward. That day never came and we’re all better off for it.
October 4, 2025 @ 8:19 pm
@TP–I always wonder about those sorts of stories. Record labels have record pluggers whose JOB is to push records up the chart. They have contacts at radio whom they schmooze and lobby on behalf of their singles (In some years, payola was involved.)
It’s romantic to believe that the public spontaneously called DJ’s demanding that the song be played and DJ’s and radio stations on their own made it a #1 hit, but I don’t buy it. I’m sure that there were some pros at Columbia Records who worked hard to make that record a hit.
BTW, not only did “Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain” make it to #21 on the Billboard Hot 100, but. it was the first single that Willie had that appeared on the main chart at all. Somebody was working it.
October 5, 2025 @ 6:27 am
Of course Columbia worked promoting the record. In the documentary, Billy Sherill said Columbia was expecting the album to flop because of what Trigger said in the article. Billy Sherill was “Mr. Countrypolitan” putting string sections in records looking for crossover appeal.
Columbia pushed it, but thought that it would ultimately be for naught because they belived people didn’t want stripped down, plaintively sung recordings. Charlie Rich, Ronnie Milsap and Conway Twitty were the standard bearers of the Nashville sound. Willie was the exact opposite. They were proven wrong and Billy Sherill said so himself on heavily viewed documentary.
October 5, 2025 @ 7:24 am
I pulled this quote from Taste of Country:
“It sounds like a bad demo,” producer Billy Sherril (an agreeable antagonist throughout the series) says later, speaking of Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger album, a project produced for just $4,000 under an agreement with Columbia Records similar to Jennings’ with RCA. It was released at nearly the same time as Jennings’ Dreaming My Dreams, and the two projects stand to get a big boost in sales in the near future.
“I said, ‘Let’s do this,'” the late Sherril adds. “‘Lets appease Willie by releasing the record. It will die a quick death. That way he’ll be more receptive to what everybody wants him to do. So we put it out and we were wrong as hell.”
Read More: Recap: ‘Country Music,’ Episode 7 — Here Comes Texas | https://tasteofcountry.com/recap-country-music-episode-7-here-comes-texas/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral
October 5, 2025 @ 8:21 am
I have no doubt that as soon as “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” and “Red Headed Stranger” began to take off, Columbia did start promoting it like crazy. But it was only after it created momentum on its own.
As I tried to illustrate in the article, Willie Nelson was a virtual nobody when the album first came out. It’s hard for us to quantify that, because we all know his name now. But there was every indication the song and album would be a flop.
October 5, 2025 @ 11:22 am
Yes, how could they NOT promote it, unless they were ripe for the funny farm? That project of Willie’s likely sold far more than most country albums of any kind at that time. Somebody out there sure as hell liked it (LOL).
October 5, 2025 @ 12:02 pm
This album wasn’t the album that CBS wanted because nobody made albums like that. At the time, he was a songwriter with a regional following in Texas as a singer. It cost nearly nothing to make, so if it flopped, the losses would be minimal. Then they could start molding Willie into what they though he should be. But that never happened…
October 5, 2025 @ 2:55 pm
That makes sense.
October 6, 2025 @ 4:56 pm
In Michael Streissguth’s book “Outlaw”, CBS New York head Bruce Lundvall actually passed on the record. Willie’s manager Neil Reshen called Dan Beck, CBS’s Nashville head of promotion and asked if he could do something.
Dan called a half dozen press people who had been to Willie’s second Picnic/Festival in Dripping Springs, TX, gathered them into the Exit/In club early in the morning, and played the record for them. They ALL loved it. Lundvall then took the record. Dan said he always believed Bruce needed something to validate taking the record.
So, if it was up to Columbia, Red Headed Stranger may never had been released.(This must be how record companies operate. In 1964, Capitol Records only pressed 5000 copies of “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, at first, because they were sure it would be a flop.)
October 6, 2025 @ 7:49 pm
Neil Reshen worked hard on getting that record out. He also managed Waylon at the time and got Waylon the artistic freedom from RCA that Nashville didn’t allow its artists.
October 4, 2025 @ 8:33 pm
This was interesting and, for anyone over 40, a little inspiring. Thanks Trigger.
October 5, 2025 @ 4:41 am
Really well-written article, Trigger.
October 5, 2025 @ 8:14 am
Nicely done, Trig.
If I remember correctly, Willie said his sense of rhythm and singing style came from Floyd Tillman, and you can really hear it. Like Lefty Frizzell, Floyd pushed and pulled, scooped notes, all the rest of it. Not “straight” singers, more like jazz singers. And of course WIllie revered Django Reinhardt, which you can also hear. So yes, simplified stripped-down production was necessary and good, but let’s not forget the riches of the other stuff. Even a simple song like “Blue Eyes” has some hip passing chords that definitely don’t come from folk country.
Another thing: Willie’s early records, the ones drenched in reverb and strings, are beautiful. “And Then I Wrote” is full of songs and atmosphere that are pitch-perfect for the world of well-dressed lonely people in sour-smelling bars with ashtrays and red leather booths. Chet was a great musician and kept a lot of fellow musicians employed during those years. For that we can be grateful, too.
Willie needs no defense from internet nobodies like me. He’s already on Rushmore with a big mischievous grin.
October 5, 2025 @ 12:09 pm
2;18 is good length for a single too.
October 6, 2025 @ 2:35 am
“hired and fired” by the Grand Ole Opry may rhyme, but is it accurate? I’ve always heard Willie quit the Opry because he didn’t want to come back to Nashville for the required performances (although I don’t think it’s strictly enforced these days). Maybe just semantics to some, but I think it’s an important distinction.
October 6, 2025 @ 6:59 am
Perhaps he quit. Maybe he was fired for not making the required appearances back in the day. I’ve seen it portrayed both ways, and neither is exactly inaccurate. He joined the Opry, and then was no longer a member. But I appreciate the desire for specific detail.
October 6, 2025 @ 12:22 pm
Unbelievable! Unique! … but it’s true!
Thank You Willie for playing many times in Switzerland!
October 7, 2025 @ 7:46 am
Your characterization of Willie’s RCA tenure that he “worked under the often oppressive thumb of producer Chet Atkins at RCA who regularly chose what songs he sang, who played on his records, and how they were produced” is a bit misleading.
Chet Atkins by most accounts was not an evil taskmaster but ran RCA in a similar manner to most other record labels of that era. The primary goal was to sell records. Producers looked for the most commercial material available and they often selected songs from writers with a successful track record. Studio musicians were mostly used rather than the artist’s band because they were disciplined, knew the system and could more efficiently record songs within the time allocated for a session (usually 3 hours) Time in the studio = $$$.
Willie clearly had some input as he continued to record many of his own compositions while at RCA including one full album of his own songs. Many of his RCA recordings were not “over produced” with lush orchestration although some were. To be fair, Willie was an artist searching for his own niche in country music.
One major factor was that Willie’s somewhat unusual voice and singing style was not yet widely accepted in the 60’s. He was truly an acquired taste for country fans used to the mainstream artists. That was an obstacle that Willie would not fully overcome until the next decade.
If you truly examine Willie’s RCA singles there was an ongoing evolution and an attempt to find a formula that would be successful. Stylistically country music also continued to evolve during that era. Willie was definitely a talent a bit ahead of his time and It was not until 1975 that the public’s taste and Willie’s style found a successful intersection.
As for Billy Sherill, it should be pointed out that an artist that recorded an album outside of Nashville, chose their own material and used their own pickers meant that there was no $$$$ for Billy. So there’s that.