Willie Nelson: Red Headed Stranger (50th anniversary, gold vinyl) [LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This 50th anniversary edition comes on gold vinyl in a gatefold jacket with a die-cut cover. Red Headed Stranger went multi-platinum, gave Willie his first No. 1 hit with "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" and topped CMT's list of the 40 greatest albums in country music.

This edition

• 50th anniversary edition
• Gold vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Die-cut cover
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

When Willie Nelson signed with Columbia, the deal came with total creative control, and he used it. Back in his Fort Worth disc jockey days he used to play an old song called Tale of the Red Headed Stranger, and on a drive home to Austin from Colorado he worked out how to turn it into a whole album. He cut it cheaply at Autumn Sound in Garland, Texas, with little more than his guitar, some piano and drums.

The story is a western: a preacher on the run after killing his wife and her lover, told through short, spare songs and older tunes woven in between. "Time of the Preacher" sets the scene and keeps coming back as a theme, "Denver" and "Hands on the Wheel" carry the story toward peace, and the album borrows Fred Rose's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," "Down Yonder" and "O'er the Waves" along the way. The arrangements were so bare that Columbia's executives first took the tapes for a demo, and Willie, with control in hand, left them exactly as they were.

It went into the National Recording Registry in 2010, inspired a 1986 film starring Willie himself and gave him a nickname for life. Fifty years on, the demo is doing rather well.

Also at Kops: more Willie Nelson on vinyl · browse Country

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia / Legacy (cat# 19802947981), a reissue of the 1975 album.