43 Albums for the 43 Days Until the Election to Make America Cosmic Again and Unfuck Your Mind (Musically)
#16 Willie Nelson Shotgun Willie
Willie Nelson's career has had so many phases and changes that it's difficult to pinpoint one definitive album. About the best one can do is examine each of the periods of his life and career, and try your damnedest to figure out where one begins and one ends. With such an immense and eclectic body of work, it's tempting to treat Willie like Picasso or Miles Davis, and assign him "periods," which is stretching his artistic merit (or is it?).
No one can dispute that Shotgun Willie marked a definite change in Willie's style and attitude (both personally and musically). Recorded after a bitter contract dispute with his former label, RCA, Shotgun Willie marked the first of two releases on Atlantic Records before a similar falling out (aided, no doubt, by poor sales).
Shotgun Willie didn't sell, but it became one of the cornerstones for the Outlaw movement that would produce Country's first platinum albums. Gone was the slick Nashville production that always seemed out of place on his recordings, and in its place a warm and loose sound seldom--if ever--heard on a Country record (which actually highlights the dexterous musicianship). The arrangements and lyrics pointed the way toward the future (at least for the 70's), but with a boot heel dragging in the past courtesy of not just one, but two, Bob Wills standards.
If all that wasn't enough for country fans to try to make sense of, Willie's Atlantic debut also premiered his new image--long hair and a beard (helping him make inroads with the counter culture). At 39, with precious little success outside of his songwriting, it was a daring move. It was also a move that didn't immediately pay off. The still stranger Phases & Stages followed, and also failed to break Willie into the mainstream or Nashville's good graces. Atlantic decided it had indulged enough of Willie's artistic whims and abruptly let him go--a year before he released his most defiant and brilliant creative gesture, Red Headed Stranger, which reached number one on the Country charts and crossed over to make him a pop success as well.
Shotgun Willie is the pivotal point where an artist is out of every option except to follow his muse. And it's the album that made Willie Nelson "Willie". Other of his albums have sold more and produced more hits, but Shotgun Willie may be his most reckless and perfectly executed record.