Who originated the Willie Nelson classic ‘Red Headed Stranger’?
Country music aficionados will know that some of Willie Nelson’s greatest contributions to the art form came during his time as a young, behind-the-scenes songwriter in the 1950s and ‘60s, when stars like Patsy Cline and Roy Orbison scored hits with his original tunes (‘Crazy’ and ‘Pretty Paper’, respectively).
When he eventually achieved fame in his own right, Nelson remained one of the revered songsmiths of his generation, making it all the more surprising to learn that one of his own signature recordings, 1975’s ‘Red Headed Stranger’, was actually a cover.
The original single, written by the songwriting team of Edith Lindeman and Carl Stutz, was recorded by proto-rock-and-roller Arthur ‘Guitar Boogie’ Smith in 1954, and followed the lyrical tradition of the classic country murder ballad. The narrative follows a mysterious ginger cowboy who rides into town on a stallion, with the bay horse of his dearly departed wife by his side. The sorrowful stranger promptly shoots a local woman in cold blood, but gets off scot-free in court by claiming the woman had tried to steal his dead wife’s horse.
It’s a not-so-heartwarming tale with a simple message: “Don’t cross him, don’t boss him / He’s wild in his sorrow / He’s riding and hiding his pain / Don’t fight him, don’t spite him / Just wait till tomorrow / Maybe he’ll ride on again.”
At the time of the song’s release, a 21-year-old Willie Nelson was working as a disc jockey at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas, and was instantly drawn to the record.
“I played the song every day on my show,” Nelson told the Corpus Christi Times in 1987. “The song itself was a little miniature movie . . . I’ve been singing it for a long time.”
In classic Nelson fashion, when he finally decided to record a proper cover of ‘Red Headed Stranger’ in 1975, it went well beyond a simple homage. Having had a deep, personal connection to the song for over 20 years, often singing it to his daughter as a rather unusual lullaby, Willie decided to expand on its story by writing an entire concept album around it, resulting in what many people consider to be the finest of the 150-or-so studio albums he’s released in his career.
Red Headed Stranger, the album, featured a cover of the original tune along with a mix of other covers and original compositions that constructed a larger universe for the titular character, the proverbial “man on the run.”
Along with topping the country charts in the US, it became a crossover success on the mainstream Billboard album chart, as well, solidifying Willie’s legendary status as one of the central figures of “outlaw country.” It also inspired a film adaptation in 1986, which Nelson produced and starred in himself.
“I’ve always felt that I was supposed to be the guy that played the red-headed stranger,” Nelson said at the time, “because I knew more about him than anybody. . . . Back when I was first thinking about it, I’d never done any acting before in my life, but I felt like I could do that one because I knew it that well.”
Willie did his best to bring the character to the screen, but due to an extremely limited budget, the Red Headed Stranger movie fell a bit short of expectations and was a commercial and critical failure. Nonetheless, the film further connected Nelson to his signature song; a fascinating case of a songwriter loving another person’s song so much that they fully inhabit it and make it their own for a lifetime.
