Common Descriptions of the Outlaw Movment

 

out·law (out lô )
n.
1.
a. A fugitive from the law.
b. A habitual criminal.
c. A rebel; a nonconformist: a social outlaw.
2. A person excluded from normal legal protection and rights.
3. A wild or vicious horse or other animal.

 

When established Nashville stars like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson wanted to make records on their own terms at the beginning of the '70s, Outlaw was born. A combination of self-styled writing, production, and a rebellious, anti-Nashville image, Outlaw became one of the most popular styles of Country throughout the '70s.
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Outlaw Country was one of the more significant trends in country music in the '70s. During that decade, many of the most popular hardcore country singers of the '60s -- from George Jones to Merle Haggard -- softened their sound slightly, moving away from their honky tonk roots. While the outlaws weren't strictly honky tonk -- they were as much storytellers in the tradition of folk songwriters as they were honky tonk vocalists -- they kept that spirit alive. Outlaws didn't play by Nashville's rules. They didn't change their music to fit the heavily produced, pop-oriented Nashville sound, nor did they go out of their way to fit into the accepted conventions of country music. Instead, they created an edgy form of hardcore country that was influenced by rock & roll, folk, and blues. Ironically, two of the leading figures of the movement -- Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson -- had their roots in the music industry, but by the time they came into their own as recording artists in the mid-'70s, they had developed a unique, defiant way of performing. Several other musicians -- including David Allan Coe, Billy Joe Shaver, and Tompall Glaser -- followed in their footsteps, and the outlaws were quite popular for a period of three to four years. At the end of the '70s, the urban cowboy movement easily eclipsed the outlaw movement in terms of commercial appeal, but the outlaws had a lasting influence. During the '80s, certain neo-traditionalists owed a bit of their sound to the outlaws, while a whole breed of songwriters, led by Steve Earle, demonstrated a massive debt to the outlaws and their fusion of country, folk, and rock.

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The late 1960s and 1970s saw the resurgence of a more traditional country sound. The Nashville sound, by 1970, was well-worn, and had merged into the pre-British Revolution pop culture in many areas. Aside from the "outlaws" profiled below, new artists such as Charley Pride ("Kiss an Angel Good Morning") and Conway Twitty ("Hello Darlin' ") emerged to break the mold of the Nashville Sound. Southern Country Rockers such as The Outlaws, The Marshall Tucker Band, David Allan Coe, The Charlie Daniels Band, and others took country to a new, higher level. Without a doubt, though, it was the outlaws who defined this era in country music.

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"Outlaw" Country
Throughout the 1950s and '60s, the widespread, crossover success of artists like Patsy Cline led the Nashville-based country music industry to become more and more commercialized, abandoning much of its traditional sound. However, a group of rebellious, but traditionally minded musicians broke this trend in the '70s by developing progressive, or "outlaw" country. The unquestioned leaders of this movement were a pair of Texans: Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Both musicians were deeply respectful of country music traditions, as you can hear on their 1976 duet, "Good Hearted Woman," yet surprisingly open to outside influences ranging from Broadway to Paul Simon. Their music revived the popularity and fading traditionalism of country in the late '70s, and laid the foundation for the "Urban Cowboy" revival of the '80s.
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Outlaw Country by Kurt Wolff

While country music is full of outlaws - many who have done real jail time - the term "outlaw" also refers to a period during the early-to-mid-1970s. It was a time when the Sixties generation began to take its effect on the Nashville establishment, and the long reign of the staid, crooner-oriented Nashville Sound finally came to an end.
The term "outlaw" began as a nickname for the music (and lifestyles) of Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser, Willie Nelson, and their compatriots and hangers-on, but it soon became a marketing and publicity tool that helped RCA and other major labels cross over into the rock and roll market and sell more albums than the country industry ever had before. Nonetheless, the work these artists produced during this period is some of the freshest and most viscerally exciting in modern country music history.
The origin of the name more or less originated with a song by Lee Clayton, "Ladies Love Outlaws," that became the title track of a 1972 Waylon Jennings album. Jennings soon after grew a beard, his hair got longer, and coupled with his penchant for denim and leather clothes, he certainly looked the part. Journalists picked up on the catchy name, and publicist Hazel Smith also used the term to promote the Glaser Brothers.
To many Music Row executives, "outlaw" meant an unwanted infusion of self-important long-haired singers - roughnecks who mixed dope with their drink and wore biker gear instead of Nudie suits - into the comfortably conservative establishment. But as record sales quickly showed, singers like Jennings, Nelson, Glaser, Kris Kristofferson, and Billy Joe Shaver were loaded with talent, and they possessed exactly the kind of youthful energy the stiff-collared industry needed. These and others of the outlaw ilk not only reinforced the bridge that was beginning appear between country and rock and roll audiences - magazines like Rolling Stone began paying serious attention to Nashville for the first time - but showed an honest love and reverence for country music's history. Despite their ragged lifestyles and rock and roll associations, the music these artists created was far more traditional - more "country" - than almost anything that had come out of Nashville during the previous decade.
That's because the outlaw movement wasn't about long hair and cheap drugs, it was about creative control for the artists in the recording studio. This was fairly standard practice for rock musicians, but in the world of country music, under the guidelines of the Nashville Sound, producers were in the driver's seat; they hired the band and picked most of the songs. All a singer needed was his or her voice, which was often shaved of its rough edges to fit the mold of the smooth, pop-oriented countrypolitan sound that was the radio-friendly norm of the time. So when Waylon Jennings, fed up with being told what to play and how to play it, argued for the right choose his own producers and bring his road band into the studio, he was attacking an entire industry standard.
He struck, though, at the right time. Not only was the industry ripe for a shake-up, but Waylon himself was a successful singer-he'd been so since the mid-1960s. He was also becoming more and more outspoken about his beliefs, so rather than lose this lucrative artist (and probably also to shut him up), his longtime label RCA eventually met his demands. His 1973 album Lonesome, On'ry and Mean was the first featuring his own production work (the title track, written by Steve Young, became something of a theme song for the genre), and it's marked by bigger beats, an absence of background choruses, and arrangements that feel loose and raw.
However, it's really the following collection, Honky Tonk Heroes, that is Waylon's landmark "outlaw" album. Featuring nine out of ten songs written by up-and-coming Texas songwriter Billy Joe Shaver, the record's informal production and spare, simple arrangments brought the lyrics and melodies out into the open air in a way that country fans had rarely heard in well over a decade. (The album cover, which featured Jennings, Shaver, and their shaggy cohorts in the studio, also caused a stir.) The catchy, rock-inflected song "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" on Waylon's 1975 album Dreaming My Dreams-the second masterpiece of his career, co-produced by the legendary Jack Clement (who founded the first independent recording studio in Nashville)-is as clear a statement as any he made of his struggle to break free of the industry's countrypolitan confines.
Thanks to the critical acclaim of Honky Tonk Heroes, as well as the support of his friend Kris Kristofferson, Billy Joe Shaver got the chance to record his first album, Old Five and Dimers Like Me, in 1973 for Kristofferson's label, Monument. Shaver, for various reasons, never saw the financial success of his contemporaries - a rambling cowboy by nature, he wasn't so good on self-promotion - but his records remain classics of the genre. Kristofferson himself was never really an "outlaw" by name, but when he took the podium in long hair and jeans to receive his songwriter's award from the Country Music Association in 1970 for "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down," he signaled Music Row that the new generation's musical revolution was underway.
Willie Nelson was in a bind similar to Waylon's. He'd been a hugely successful songwriter since the early '60s ("Night Life," "Crazy"), but as a singer, his career had failed to take off. While it's hard to comprehend that a man who's today considered one of country music's finest singers would have such trouble getting attention, the blame again goes to the era's production methods, which downplayed the personality of his dusty-sweet baritone voice.
As a performer, though, Nelson, a native Texan, always did well in his home state. His eventual move in 1971 from the Nashville area to a ranch outside of Austin was another signal to the establishment that change was in the air. Fate had played a hand here: Nelson's Nashville house had burned down a few months earlier, and his second wife, Shirley, had left him. Combined with the seeming lack of support for his singing career, Nelson decided to move to where he was better appreciated. What he found in Austin - an audience of both longhaired hippies and rednecked cowboys who were wild for the kind of rock- and folk-influenced country that became known as "progressive" ( Jerry Jeff Walker, Michael Martin Murphy, Commander Cody) - reinvigorated him.
In 1972, Nelson put together the first of several infamous outdoor music showcases in Dripping Springs, Texas, which mixed young and old country singers and fans. These Woodstock-like Fourth of July picnics also served as grass-roots promotion machines for Willie and his pal Waylon's brand of country music, showcases for countrified rockers like Leon Russell, and launching pads for singer-songwriters like Shaver.
RCA finally dropped Nelson in 1972, but soon after he was signed to Atlantic's new country division by legendary R&B producer Jerry Wexler. The results included the albums Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages, two of the finest works of his career and the beginning of the turnaround of his sales figures. In 1975, he switched to Columbia Records and released The Red-Headed Stranger. This became his landmark album for two reasons: first, he argued for creative control to keep the mostly acoustic arrangements sparse and quiet, and he got it; second, it sold massively, and turned out two Number One hits.
It's ironic that the most outgoing outlaw of them all, Tompall Glaser, is the least remembered today. Not only was he a successful singer and songwriter at the time, but the studio he ran with his brothers, Chuck and Jim - dubbed "Hillbilly Central" - became the meeting hall and focal point for all things "outlaw" in Nashville. Several years earlier, the brothers had caused a stir by forming their own publishing company; Nashville's old boy network got a hearty shake when one of their songs, John Hartford's "Gentle on My Mind," became a smash hit. Now, the Glasers had their own fortress.
When the Glaser Studios opened in 1969, Tompall had been the lead voice in the folk/country singing group Tompall and the Glaser Brothers for more than a decade. When the brothers split up in the early 1970s, Tompall began recording as a solo artist, and "outlaw" became his badge of honor. He, too, had been fed up with Nashville's old-fashioned attitudes and old-boy networks. His way of fighting was to take a businessman's angle and start his own production company, a tactic that worked wonders for him financially and allowed him the creative control he desired. Tompall made several excellent albums in the 1970s, but his first, Charlie (1973), is his undisputed best, deserving a history-book spot alongside Honky Tonk Heroes and The Red-Headed Stranger.
Ex-con singer David Allan Coe didn't wait for an invitation to jump onto the outlaw bandwagon, even writing a song called "Willie, Waylon and Me." Many of Coe's ragged, rocked-up songs, however, deserve greater recognition. Johnny Paycheck also joined the club when he grew a beard and renamed himself "John Austin Paycheck" on his 1976 album 11 Months and 29 Days.
Further singers and songwriters associated to varying degrees with the era include Guy Clark, Sammi Smith (her version of Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night" was a major hit in 1970), Kinky Friedman, Johnny Rodriguez, and even Jimmy Buffett. Two other songwriters-turned-singers, Mickey Newbury and Tom T. Hall, may have been clean-cut Music Row favorites for the hits they'd written, but they associated aesthetically and philosophically with what the outlaw movement stood for.
The movement culminated in the 1976 album Wanted! The Outlaws, which compiled previously recorded material by Waylon, Willie, Jessi Colter (Waylon's wife and the voice behind the hit "I'm Not Lisa"), and Tompall. Waylon's record company (RCA) had decided the time was right to exploit the outlaw moniker, and they were right: less than a musical landmark, the album is best remembered for being the first country album to sell over a million copies. After the success of Wanted! The Outlaws, however, "outlaw" quickly became an overused label. And when Waylon was, in 1977, arrested for cocaine possession, he reacted by recording the song "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit Done Got Out of Hand?" The party, it seemed, was finally winding down.


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Reviving outlaw country

By Jim Patterson, Associated Press writer

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Remember country music's outlaw movement? Waylon and Willie, long hair and beards, drinking and drugs, and Southern rock crashing the clean-cut Nashville scene?
Well, 25 years have passed -- more than enough time for Nashville to digest and elevate the likes of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson to grand-old-man status. So where does outlaw music go for an encore?
Well, it can try Montgomery-Gentry, a duo that only months ago was a club act in Lexington, Ky., and is now being pushed by Sony Records as the next generation of outlaw musicians.

"Hillbilly Shoes" sets their snarling tone: "Ain't too much these boots can't do/Might even kick a little sense into you."
Eddie Montgomery, 35, dresses in black leather for an interview. He sports a goatee and shaves his head. Troy Gentry, 32, pulls up to Sony Records on an American Eagle motorcycle. Both men are large and imposing.
But if an outlaw is supposed to be surly or distant, Eddie and Troy don't make it.
An outlaw isn't supposed to sound excited when his album sells. Montgomery is. "It's pretty wild, man," he says of the duo's debut album, "Tattoos & Scars," selling more than 8,000 copies a week, according to SoundScan.
Gentry says he still isn't used to being recognized by audiences when he gets on stage.
Montgomery-Gentry's musical ambition is unmistakable: to emulate the heroes of the movement that incorporated Southern rock and brought country music a younger audience 25 years ago.
Outlaw music was "real-in-your-face, telling you stories about life," Montgomery said.
It was Jennings singing "Ladies Love Outlaws (Like Babies Love Stray Dogs)," or teaming up with Nelson to sing "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys." It was Tompall Glaser's self-mockingly sexist "Put Another Log on the Fire," and Hank Williams Jr.'s defiant anthem, "A Country Boy Can Survive."
The "outlaw" tag is generally credited to country music journalist Hazel Smith, who used it in the early 1970s. In 1978, RCA Records capitalized with "Wanted! The Outlaws," a compilation of old material by Jennings, Nelson, Glaser and Jessi Colter. It became the first country music album to sell more than 1 million copies.
The original outlaw movement had an element of rebellion against the Nashville power structure. Artists like Nelson and Jennings got so popular that no one could stop them from wearing -- and playing -- what they pleased. And if Jennings brought a gun into the studio and threatened to shoot the fingers off any musician who didn't play with feeling, nobody was about to argue.
Two decades later, Nelson and Jennings are in their 60s, younger performers have moved to center stage and mainstream country music is largely clean-cut once again.
Travis Tritt is one of the few exceptions. Confederate Railroad revived the outlaw image in the early 1990s, but treated it humorously (dressing in drag for one video), and didn't last.
Enter Montgomery-Gentry.
Their rebellion doesn't extend to performing their own songs. Everything on "Tattoos & Scars" was written by others, although that's not unusual; some of the greatest outlaw hits were written for stars by less-than-household names.
"We write, but we'll never put a song on an album if it's not good enough," Montgomery said. "We want the best songs representing us."
That includes the gruffly wise title song "Tattoos & Scars," written by Tony Lane, in which a youngster shows off his tattoos in a bar, and an older man responds by displaying his scars and explaining the difference. "Daddy Won't Sell the Farm" is about a farmer fighting urban sprawl.
Montgomery and Gentry got their first taste of the big time in an early band called Young Country with Eddie's brother, John Michael Montgomery. John Michael kept them on as backup when "Life's a Dance" made him a hot solo singer in 1992.
When Eddie decided to develop his own act, he teamed with Gentry because they liked the same music and Gentry's rough tenor contrasted nicely with his own earthy growl.
Daniels gave them some instant credibility by performing on their recording of his anthem to partying, "All Night Long." Daniels said their album was "like a breath of fresh air."
Long ago, Jennings asked in song: "Don't you think this outlaw bit's done got out of hand?" Now it's up to the Montgomerys and Gentrys of Nashville to prove him wrong.

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The following information on Outlaw Country is courtesy of: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/x.dll?p=amg&sql=C2685

Some Important Albums
Kris Kristofferson: Silver Tongued Devil and I [1971] Billy Joe Shaver: I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal [1981] Tompall Glaser: Outlaw [1977] David Allan Coe: For the Record: The First 10 Years [1985] David Allan Coe: Penitentiary Blues [1968] Kris Kristofferson: Songs of Kristofferson [1977] Waylon Jennings: This Time [1974]

List of Key Artists
John Anderson
Ed Bruce
Guy Clark Lee Clayton
David Allan Coe
Jessi Colter Joe Ely
The Flatlanders
Kinky Friedman Tompall Glaser
Waylon Jennings
Kris Kristofferson Willie Nelson
Mickey Newbury
Johnny Paycheck Johnny Rodriguez
Billy Joe Shaver
Sammi Smith Jerry Jeff Walker
Hank Williams, Jr.

Complete Artist ListRelated Essays
Outlaw Country by Kurt WolffMusic Maps
1970s: The Outlaws - from: "Country & Western Music" map The Outlaws - from: "The Outlaws" map The Outlaws - from: "Roots-Rock/Alternative Country-Rock" map 1970s - from: "Evolution of Country Music" mapList of Most Frequently Accessed Artists
David Allan Coe ( 1180)
Willie Nelson ( 1113)
Hank Williams, Jr. ( 806) Waylon Jennings ( 587)
Kris Kristofferson ( 572)
Guy Clark ( 550) John Anderson ( 524)
Jerry Jeff Walker ( 379)
Joe Ely ( 258) Billy Joe Shaver ( 191)
Johnny Paycheck ( 161)
Mickey Newbury ( 125) Kinky Friedman ( 106)
Tompall Glaser ( 92)
Steve Young ( 87) Chris Knight ( 70)
Jessi Colter ( 68)
Johnny Rodriguez ( 67) Lee Clayton ( 31)
Ed Bruce ( 22)
Jack Clement ( 18) Sammi Smith ( 17)
Marijohn Wilkin ( 14)

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Outlaw Country
Tired of the anodyne Nashville sound of the 60s many artists decided it was time to get back to grass roots and get "real" again by returning to a more Honky Tonk sound that incorporated folk and rock as well. In the late 60s Wynn Stewart had pioneered what became known as the Bakersfield Sound. Popularised by Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, this was Country played with primarily electric instruments such as Fender Telecaster guitars and was a huge influence on both Outlaw and Country Rock. Ironically two of Outlaw's leading lights, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings were old Nashville establishment figures (Nelson wrote "Crazy", while Jennings, a former bass player for Buddy Holly, had hits produced by Chet Atkins at RCA)). Another figure associated with this hardening of the Nashville sound was Johnny Cash who, though initially successful as a rockabilly star who had recorded with Sam Phillips' Sun label in Memphis, turned to a more introspective style following a series of personal tragedies. In fact, besides Outlaw's unwillingness to play by Nashville's accepted rules, one of the prime sources of notoriety was the general unwillingness of its heroes to conform in any way. This was a Country star's way of behaving like a rock star. Other adherents included David Allen Coe and Billy Joe Shaver. By the 80s a more commercialized genre had emerged from the self-destructive wreckage; Urban Cowboy (named after the dreadful film with John Travolta) fused pop with Honky Tonk mythology to produce a smoother sound that sold in bucketfuls. Stars included Hank Williams Jr, Mickey Gilley, Juice Newton and even Dolly Parton.

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