Fifty years ago, an album came out with a title and a lineup of artists that seemed calculated to capture and capitalize on a moment. They were country artists, giving a kind of musical middle finger to the polished Nashville scene.
On the cover of the album were the faces of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser. Printed in western typeface across the top: “Wanted!“
While the album would go down as the first in country music history to go platinum, selling one million copies, it was in a sense just a sampler of a much bigger musical movement behind it — centered mostly in and around Austin, a community of like-minded musicians who refused to play by the industry’s rules…