Michael Streissguth, “Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris, and the Renegades of Nashville” (It Books, 2013)

In the late 1960s, Nashville’s recording industry was a hit-making machine. A small clique of writers, producers, engineers and session musicians gave sonic shape to the pop-friendly “Nashville Sound” and generated hit after hit for artists like Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline. For up-and-coming artists like Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings, the same rules regarding creative control applied. Decisions about song choices and production teams would be made by executives at big record labels like RCA and not the artists.

By the early 1970s, a rebellion was afoot in Music City. As Michael Streissguth demonstrates in his page-turning Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris and the Renegades of Nashville(It Books, 2013), the commercial ascent of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson coincided with their fierce challenge to the industry’s power structure.

In Kristofferson’s case, his 1970 debut album — nurtured and recorded by a production team independent of the Nashville Machine — offered a range of songs that owed more to Bob Dylan than Bobby Bare. For Willie Nelson, a string of commercially unsuccessful albums for RCA prompted the label to drop him. Nelson retreated to Austin and recorded his declaration of musical independence, the wildly successful Shotgun Willie (1973). And after years of battling with RCA, Jennings convinced the label to let him co-produce one of his albums, the landmarkLonesome, On’ry and Mean (1973).

As a result of these events, the three men experienced significant commercial success as part of country music’s “Outlaw Movement.” While Kristofferson achieved his biggest fame as a Hollywood movie star, Jennings and Nelson churned out a string of hit albums. The careers of all three were boosted by a savvy marketing campaign that saw them packaged as “outlaws” who had successfully rebelled against the Nashville establishment. This image received further assistance, Streissguth points out, from a messy string of divorces, drug busts, and in the case of Jennings, a monumental cocaine habit.

Well researched and written, Outlaw offers an engaging chronicle of the lives of these three men and makes clear that the influence of the Outlaw Country genre has extended far beyond its 1970s heyday.

Michael Streissguth is a professor in the department of Communication and Film Studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY. He is the author of several books including Johnny Cash: The Biography (Da Capo, 2006). He has produced two documentary films: “Record Paradise” (2012) and “Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison” (2008).

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/music