Outlaw Country

Outlaw country is a subgenre of country music, most popular during the late 1960s and the 1970s (and even into the 1980s in some cases), sometimes referred to as the outlaw movement or simply outlaw music. The focus of the movement has been on "outlaws", such as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings (for reference, Waylon Jennings despised the term "Outlaw"), Merle Haggard, David Allan Coe and his Eli Radish Band, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Leon Russell, Hank Williams Jr., Townes Van Zandt and Billy Joe Shaver. The reason for the movement has been attributed to a reaction to the Nashville sound, developed by record producers like Chet Atkins who softened the raw honky tonk sound that was predominant in the music of performers like Jimmie Rodgers, and his successors such as Hank Williams, George Jones and Lefty Frizzell. According to Aaron Fox, "the fundamental opposition between law-and-order authoritarianism and the image of 'outlaw' authenticity... has structured country's discourse of masculinity since the days of Jimmie Rodgers."