Twelve songs that reshaped country music in 1973

THE OUTLAWS

Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were well-established Nashville names by the early 1970s. Waylon had played with Buddy Holly and Willie had written “Crazy,” country goddess Patsy Cline’s signature song. But neither saw eye to eye with the countrypolitan mainstream that came to the fore in the ‘60s. So they left, setting out for Austin. They took some like-minded songwriters with them – some old vets, some new kids – and they founded a new path for country music to follow.

“Shotgun Willie” by Willie Nelson

By the time he released the album Shotgun Willie in the summer of 1973, Willie Nelson had already put out 15 studio albums. This one was different. He was no longer the funny-looking clean-shaven red head who smiled from the cover of so many Nashville albums. Now he was scruffy. That smile had turned into a mischievous smirk. And the first cut, the title track, horrified the blue bloods.

“Shotgun Willie sits around in his underwear – Bitin’ on a bullet and pullin’ out all of his hair – Shotgun Willie’s got all of his family there.” There was a twangy guitar accompaniment but the pulsing bass line sounded more like the blues. Countrypolitan didn’t mention unmentionables – like underwear. But outlaws did.

Willie makes his manifesto more specific in the second verse: “You can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothing to say – You can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothing to say – You can’t play music if you don’t know nothing to play.” The second song on that album, “Whiskey River,” became a hit, but I always think that opener spelled out the new musical ethos best of all.

“Honky Tonk Heroes” by Waylon Jennings

A few months after the release of Shotgun Willie, Nelson’s best frenemy Waylon Jennings made good on a promise to a sketchy-looking drifter who played guitar despite missing a couple fingers on his right hand and was trying to make it as a songwriter. His name was Billy Joe Shaver and Jennings was so taken with the songs he wrote that he promised to record some. When nothing happened for a while, Shaver grew impatient, but Waylon came though.

That album, Honky Tonk Heroes, helped push outlaw country further into the public consciousness. Shaver wrote nine of the ten tracks and the title track opened up the proceedings. It begins with a gentle rock beat, carried by Jennings’ honeyed baritone singing about “them lovable losers and no account boozers and honky tonk heroes like me.”

Then, he repeats the same verse two more times, growing progressively more electric and cranking up the rockabilly. The man who was playing bass for Buddy Holly the day he died in 1959 was now rolling harmonica solos, electric guitar solos, and fiddle solos into one kick-ass piece of country rock, written by some newcomer who seemed to have outlaw in his blood.

“Old Five and Dimers Like Me” by Billy Joe Shaver

Shaver wasn’t just waiting around for Jennings to put his songs over. He released his own debut in ’73. Its title track "Old Five and Dimers Like Me," also showed up on Waylon’s Honky Tonk Heroes. Waylon was a better singer. But Shaver had an authenticity that could not be denied. It’s a classic country message about how the love of a good woman can bolster an old five and dimer – and maturity rests in the knowledge that that’s just fine for most of us.

Many of Shaver’s songs tell great little stories, but “Old Five and Dimers” also expands the musical palette with an Hawaiian vibe, provided in part by a young keyboard player named Mike Utley. Utley had only been in Nashville a couple of years but was already much in demand. That same year, Utley would play on an album by another up-and-comer named Jimmy Buffett.

That relationship would last another fifty years, with Utley eventually becoming musical director of Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band. And Shaver’s album was produced by one of the other founding outlaws, Kris Kristofferson, who, by the way, released his own album in 1973.

“From the Bottle to the Bottom” by Kris Kristofferson & Rita Coolidge

Kristofferson was always a better songwriter than a singer and all of the seminal outlaw songs he wrote and performed on his debut album in 1970 were bigger hits for other singers. By 1973, he was preparing to leave Nashville for LA to pursue a very promising career as a movie star. He was also getting married for the second time. He and his new wife, Rita Coolidge, had been singing together for a few years.

In ’73, they released Full Moon, a full-fledged duet albums. Kristofferson wrote a couple of the songs, and they co-wrote a few as well. About half of the album was comprised of songs written by others. It was recorded in LA with Coolidge’s producer David Anderle, and all those factors led some in the country music community to conclude that Kristofferson was no longer country. He had become a pop singer.

But “The Bottle to the Bottom” was just a good old-school rollicking country duet that spoke of heartbreak in the easy manner that Kristofferson had made acceptable in his earlier songs. Coolidge sings first and she sings better, but the clever, evocative wordplay is pure Kristofferson. “Did you ever see a down and outer – Waking up alone without a – Blanket on to keep him from the dew.”

“Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers” by Jerry Jeff Walker

In the same way that Waylon Jennings helped break Billy Joe Shaver, another veteran – Jerry Jeff Walker – helped a different young songwriter get on the outlaw map. Ray Wylie Hubbard was only a few years younger than Walker, but Walker had gotten a lot of attention for his own “Mr. Bojangles” in the late ‘60s.

Walker began singing Hubbard’s raucous ode to all those momma’s boys who were “Thirty-four and drinking in a barroom – kicking hippie’s asses and raising hell.” His audiences, even the redneck members, ate it up. When he put a live version on his seminal album Viva Terlingua recorded in the heart of outlaw country, the Luckenbach Dancehall in Luchenbach, Texas, it helped Ray Wylie get his own deal.

Ray Wylie would continue poking at country stereotypes when he began to release his own albums starting in 1975. That same year, another of the songwriters Jerry Jeff covered on Viva Terlingua, Guy Clark, also released his debut album. The fuse was lit and the outlaws were not to be denied.