Although the artwork ties in with the 1987 movie of the same name, this is the original classic Willie Nelson album from 1975.

Personnel: Willie Nelson (vocals, guitar); Jody Payne (guitar, mandolin); Bucky Meadows (guitar); Mickey Raphael (harmonica); Bobbie Nelson (piano); Bee Spears (bass); Paul English, Billy English (drums).

Producer: Willie Nelson.

Reissue producer: Al Quaglieri.

Recorded at Autumn Sound Studios, Garland, Texas. Includes liner notes by Chet Flippo.

Digitally remastered by Joseph M. Palmaccio (Sony Music Studios, New York, New York).

This is part of Legacy's American Milestones series.

Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger perhaps is the strangest blockbuster country produced, a concept album about a preacher on the run after murdering his departed wife and her new lover, told entirely with brief song-poems and utterly minimal backing. It's defiantly anticommercial and it demands intense concentration -- all reasons why nobody thought it would be a hit, a story related in Chet Flippo's liner notes to the 2000 reissue. It was a phenomenal blockbuster, though, selling millions of copies, establishing Nelson as a superstar recording artist in its own right. For all its success, it still remains a prickly, difficult album, though, making the interspersed concept of Phases and Stages sound shiny in comparison. It's difficult because it's old-fashioned, sounding like a tale told around a cowboy campfire. Now, this all reads well on paper, and there's much to admire in Nelson's intimate gamble, but it's really elusive, as the themes get a little muddled and the tunes themselves are a bit bare. It's undoubtedly distinctive -- and it sounds more distinctive with each passing year -- but it's strictly an intellectual triumph and, after a pair of albums that were musically and intellectually sound, it's a bit of a letdown, no matter how successful it was. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Willie Nelson stopped shaving, grew his hair, ditched his suits and found acceptance with the hippies who bought the country rock of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Like TOMMY, RED HEADED STRANGER was a concept album, this time about a murderous preacher. His laid-back voice-and-guitar revival of "Blue Eyes Cryin' In The Rain" was a surprise US hit single, and Richard Thompson says, "I like the fact that he plays these terrible solos and leaves them alone, which takes a lot of guts these days."