Willie Nelson: Red Headed Stranger Vinyl LP

Why you'll love it

This Columbia reissue comes with a download card and a custom inner sleeve. Red Headed Stranger went multi-platinum, topped CMT's 40 Greatest Albums in Country Music and was added to the National Recording Registry in 2010.

This edition

Download card included
Custom inner sleeve

About the album

Some of the best albums ever made started out as bedtime stories. Willie Nelson used to sing Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith's "Tale of the Red Headed Stranger" on his Fort Worth radio show and to his children at night, and on a drive home to Austin from a Colorado ski trip, his then-wife Connie Koepke suggested he build a whole album around it. He wrote the story as they went, she took down the lyrics, and Columbia, his new label, had given him complete creative control.

He cut it in five days at Autumn Sound in Garland, Texas, with his sister Bobbie on the studio's Bösendorfer grand, and kept the arrangements to guitar, piano, drums, harmonica and mandolin. The tale of a preacher on the run is told through his own songs like "Time of the Preacher" and "Denver" and well-chosen older ones, from Fred Rose's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" to Hank Cochran's "Can I Sleep in Your Arms" and the waltz "O'er the Waves."

Columbia's executives first thought the tapes were demos. Thanks to that contract nobody added a thing, and the title has been Willie's nickname ever since, which is quite a return on four thousand dollars of studio time.

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

Tracklist

Side A
1. Time Of The Preacher
2. I Couldn't Believe It Was True
3. Time Of The Preacher Theme
4. Medley: Blue Rock Montana / Red Headed Stranger
5. Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain
6. Red Headed Stranger
7. Time Of The Preacher Theme
8. Just As I Am

Side B
1. Denver
2. O'er The Waves
3. Down Yonder
4. Can I Sleep In Your Arms
5. Remember Me
6. Hands On The Wheel
7. Bandera