"Outlaw Country" refers to a style of Country Music which originated in the 1970s. The movement developed out of the Progressive Country scene of established singers and songwriters with serious credentials, who had become disillusioned with the sound that was heavily favored by the Nashville establishment and the Grand Ole Opry at the time, which tended to be clean, heavily produced and emphasized string sections and backing singers. They were also frustrated by the tight grip record companies held on the process of creating and distributing music. While Outlaw Country and Progressive Country are sometimes conflated, Outlaw Country emphasized a more stripped-down, grittier style, while Progressive Country was kind of a "Cosmic Cowboy Music". Essentially, Progressive Country was Country's version of Progressive Rock, while Outlaw Country was Country's version of Punk Rock.
Outlaw Country performers were influenced by rock, blues, honky-tonk, and other genres that were decidedly non-mainstream for country at the time. They also tended to move away from the slick, clean-cut look of popular artists like Chet Atkins, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, going for a rough-and-tumble look that often favored long hair, facial hair (especially beards), and performing in street clothes or more traditionally Western-styled outfits as opposed to the Nudie suits
and similar flashy getups worn by mainstream artists. Lyrics were very often based on the artists' real-life experiences and tended to feature themes of using and abusing drugs and alcohol, wrangling with the law and spending time in jail, relationship and marital strife, hardships in life, and social issues such as working class struggles and women's rights. Songs that told stories were quite common.
Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson laid the groundwork for outlaw country in the early '70s with Jennings' albums Lonesome, On'ry and Mean and Honky Tonk Heroes and Nelson's Shotgun Willie, Phases and Changes, and especially Red Headed Stranger. Ironically, Johnny Cash, whose At Folsom Prison and At San Quentin live albums can be considered equally important to the foundation of outlaw country's sound and attitude, was trying to turn his life around at the time that the movement really started to pick up steam. As a result, he tended to not be included with the other outlaw artists and his popularity took a hit as a result.
More than anyone else, Nelson is considered the key figure of the movement. After spending a decade in Nashville catering to the country music establishment but seeing his career stall in the process, Nelson relocated to Austin, Texas in 1971. As the state's capital and the location of the University of Texas, Austin had long had a reputation as a progressive, freewheeling city, and Nelson found a Genre-Busting music community there that freely mixed Country Music, Folk Music and Rock influences, which inspired him to start doing the same with his own music. Austin is viewed as the spiritual home of the outlaw movement, with the PBS concert series Austin City Limits (Nelson was the performer on its 1976 debut episode) often featuring outlaw performers.
The album that made outlaw country an established name in the genre was Wanted! The Outlaws, a 1976 compilation album featuring songs from Jennings, Nelson, Jennings' wife Jessi Colter, and singer/songwriter Tompall Glaser, which spent 6 weeks at #1 on the Billboard country charts (and hit #10 on the pop charts) and became the first country album to be certified platinumnote . However, the movement slowly burned out as the '80s drove on, partly due to it became more commercialized and partly due to Urban Cowboy, as the pop-influenced country on the film's soundtrack became the dominant style until the neotraditional "hat act" movement of the early '90s. Many of the artists also got away from the lifestyles that drove the music, which some of them lampshaded in songs like Hank Williams Jr.'s "All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down" and Jennings' "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out of Hand". However, outlaw country left an indelible mark on the landscape of the genre, and many of the albums and songs released during its run are considered classics to this day.
Alternative Country can be seen as the immediate successor to outlaw country, as it took the ideas behind the movement and ran even further with them in terms of incorporating other genres and running counter to whatever is in the genre's mainstream. There are also several modern-day country artists whose style is very much in the outlaw tradition, such as Waylon's son Shooter Jennings, Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, and Hank Williams III. Additionally, Johnny Cash's American Recordings albums, especially the first, are considered by many to be outlaw country due to their stark, simple production, which was just as against the grain for the country of the time as the original outlaw music was, and the well-deserved boost they gave Cash's career near the end of his life.
Musicians associated with the movement include:
- Johnny Cash
- David Allan Coe
- Jessi Colter
- Charlie Daniels
- Steve Earle
- Kinky Friedman
- Tompall Glaser
- Merle Haggard
- Waylon Jennings
- Kris Kristofferson
- Loretta Lynn
- Willie Nelson
- Johnny Paycheck
- Billy Joe Shaver
- Jerry Jeff Walker
- Hank Williams Jr.
