Which Waylon Jennings album helped launch the outlaw country movement in 1973?

Waylon Jennings’s 1973 album “Honky Tonk Heroes” helped launch the outlaw country movement.

The record was built largely around songs by Billy Joe Shaver, whose writing supplied rough, direct stories about outsiders, hard living, and independence. Jennings’s recording approach also challenged the polished Nashville production conventions that had dominated much mainstream country music.

“Honky Tonk Heroes” was not the only album connected with outlaw country, but it became one of the movement’s key artistic statements. Its importance lies in both the material and Jennings’s insistence on greater control over his sound.

The album is sometimes confused with “Wanted! The Outlaws,” a 1976 compilation featuring Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser. That later release popularized the movement’s name commercially.