How Wanted: The Outlaws Redefined Country Music

The outlaw country movement had already been in full swing for a few years when Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and Jessi Colter united to release Wanted! The Outlaws.

But this project did something no country album had done before. Wanted! became the first country album to achieve RIAA platinum certification, meaning it sold one million copies.

The album's success cemented that idea that stars could be commercially viable while still keeping a tight grip on creative freedom — even though, ironically enough, Wanted! The Outlaws was proposed by a major company, RCA Records.

It was also a signal to the Nashville powers that be that it might be time to let a broader range of sounds on country radio than what had formerly been considered the winning formula.

**When Did Wanted! The Outlaws Come Out?**

RCA released Wanted! The Outlaws on Jan. 12, 1976. A reissue with several new tracks followed to mark the 20th anniversary in 1996.

RCA Records

It was an immediate success. In an interview in the 2003 documentary Beyond Nashville, Thompson Glaser recalled that Wanted! "sold a million in two weeks and it went on up to five million."

"People were so hungry for something different than what was on the radio that they just ate it up," Glaser said.

But the bulk of the songs on the album weren't new. Rather, the track list was a sampler's platter of some of the best that had been coming out of the outlaw country movement in recent years. It included both the artists' recordings of their own songs as well as covers of other artists at the forefront of the movement.

What Songs Are On the Wanted! The Outlaws Album?

The original 11 songs included three previously unreleased tracks plus a previously unreleased live version of Nelson and Jennings' "Good Hearted Woman."

Solo material and duets from Jennings and Colter made up Side 1 of the record, including their duet version of "Suspicious Minds," a cover of Billy Joe Shaver's "Honky Tonk Heroes" and more.

Side 2 delivered two solo tracks from Nelson, two from Glaser and two Nelson/Jennings duets. Songs written by Jimmie Rodgers and Shel Silverstein were among that group.

The reissued that came out 20 years later added 10 tracks to the original set, all performed by the original group of artists, minus Glaser.

**How Did The Wanted! The Outlaws Album Come to Be?**

Oddly enough, none of the four artists intended to make a compilation record like this one.

All had been at the forefront of the anti-establishment outlaw country movement that started brewing in the 1960s, with many existing stars and rising artists chafing at Nashville's restrictive industry regulations and creative control over the music-making process.

Each of them had found smashing solo success by side-stepping Nashville's status quo. Nelson relocated to Austin, Texas and used that base to make Red Headed Stranger, an album his label didn't want to release — but which became one of the most iconic country albums of all time.

Jennings had been a top earner for RCA leading up to the ’60s, but in 1972 he hired a new manager, Neil Reshen, to help him reject the label’s re-signing terms and secure greater creative control.

In 1974, he recorded his 1975 Dreaming My Dreams album at Glaser's studio in Nashville. Glaser had also experienced huge success, both in a group with his brothers and as a producer and songwriter; he also had a solo hit.

Colter was married to Jennings and she was also coming off the success of her biggest hit, the No. 1 "I'm Not Lisa," when Wanted! The Outlaws started to gel into place.

Though all were already at the height of their careers in 1976, Wanted! The Outlaws helped propel Jennings and Nelson's stardom in particular, placing them at the very forefront of country music and cementing their status as the two largest-looming symbols of the outlaw movement to this day.

Keep reading for Taste of Country's list of the 30 most essential outlaw country songs, both on the track list of Wanted! The Outlaws and beyond.

30 Outlaw Country Songs That Define The Movement

With its roots in the '60s and the honky-tonk style forged by Hank Williams, outlaw country music began to snowball in the '70s as more and more artists bristled against the genre's commercialism, social conventions and the slick and shiny "Nashville Sound."

Though some artists like Johnny Paycheck and David Allan Coe had served jail time before their success, the "outlaw" label applied more broadly to those artists who rejected the status quo in Nashville. Many of the definitive songs of the movement speak directly to that rebellion, while others simply embody an artist-driven, independent musical vision that sidestepped Nashville's country hit formula of the day.

Keep reading for a round-up of 30 songs that define the outlaw country movement.

Gallery Credit: Carena Liptak