Outlaw

Michael Streissguth traces the rise of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, three performers who reshaped country music from the inside. In the late 1960s and early 1970s they were struggling songwriters in Nashville, competing for recording contracts in a city that had its own firm expectations about how songs should sound and who should make them. Refusing to play by those expectations, they became the figureheads of a movement that eventually altered how records were made and sold. The book also widens its view to the wider Nashville outlaw scene, with a supporting cast that includes Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell, Kinky Friedman and Billy Joe Shaver. Archival photographs appear throughout, and the result is a detailed account of a turning point in country music and of the three musicians who led it.