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Podcast: The Music Show
Episode: Red Headed Stranger: how Willie Nelson's obsession spawned a classic country album
Description: Willie NelsonĀ first encountered the song Red Headed Stranger in the 1950s, working as a DJ at radio station KCNC in Fort Worth TX. It was a jaunty number, sung by Arthur āGuitar Boogieā Smith and His Cracker-Jacks, about a less-than-jaunty subject. The stranger of the title rides into town on āa raging black stallionā leading a second horse, a bay, that had belonged to his dead wife. He meets a woman who tries to steal the bay and shoots her. Willie not only played the song on his radio show but sang it himself. Eventually, he made an album to...