Live Country Music Concert

This 1966 concert document is one of Willie Nelson’s most underrated LPs and one of the greatest live country music albums period. Panther Hall was Willie’s home away from home in the early to mid-‘60s, when he would regularly play to a packed house in the 32,000-sqare-foot hall in east Fort Worth. It's where Willie perfected his craft, and grew from being a worthy successor to Ernest Tubb and Ray Price to a distinctive artistic voice in his own right. Despite its deceptively anonymous title, Live Country Music Concert is a faithful document of a very specific place and time — namely, Panther Hall on July 5, 1966. Save for a few minor overdubs, what you hear here is what the patrons at the long tables heard on that hot night. Nelson’s band is cracking and the crowd noise is authentic. Over the course of this short set you can hear Willie alter the rules of what a country performer should be. Rather than deliver the same old dance music, he challenges his audience to listen to story songs and Beatles covers. Country music was changing and they were rapt. Close to fifty years later, so are we.