Bringing Outlaw Country To The Masses: The Origins of Austin City Limits (Part 1 - Oct 20, 2024)

by Scott Sosebee

This will be the first of a multi-part series on the origins and growth of the iconic television program “Austin City Limits,” which played a large part in shaping Austin’s—and Texas’—unique musical scene that continues today.

For many of us of a certain amount of “seasoning,” especially those of us lucky enough to grow up in Texas, the 1970s were a time of musical awakening. While much of the rest of the nation was getting lost in the inanity that was disco, in Texas—as David Allen Coe once sang—“the thoughts turned to outlaws.” The one place one was guaranteed to see that genre every week was on Saturday nights (if you were lucky enough to have a local PBS station that broadcast it live) when  KRLU and PBS brought you a unique show, “Austin City Limits,” which certainly showcased the burgeoning “outlaw country” movement. Over the years, the show also brought diverse acts—for example, Elvis Costello, Mos Def, and Pearl Jam—to the stage alongside even more conventional country acts, among whom Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn, in addition to Texas artists such as Lyle Lovett. Even the iconic Canadian songwriter-singer-poet-novelist Leonard Cohen once appeared on the show, a man who certainly defied being “pigeon-holed” into a specific genre. He may have been the perfect guest for such an eclectic program.

Austin City Limits, the program, was the result of almost a decade of development of a specific “music scene” that grew up around the Texas capital city. Spurred by the student population at the University of Texas—many of whom were caught up in the spirit of the decade’s counter-culture, the unique blend of the state business that becomes so pervasive in a capital city, and the somewhat “weird” vibe that often accompanies both elements, the late 1960s and 1970s Austin began to cultivate an inimitable small-venue, live music scene that attracted artists such as Michael Martin Murphey, Willis Allan Ramsey, Jerry Jeff Walker, and—most visibly—a country crooner who could never find a place in the traditional Nashville environment, Willie Nelson. These new artists congregated in Austin and began to build a new sound, one that eschewed the “slickness” of the “Nashville Sound” that record executives clamored for, but also combined elements of traditional “honky-tonk” country, old-time “rock-and-roll,” elements of blues and—with Nelson particularly—jazz, the tiny little added spice of “acid” rock, and even Latin sounds. Michael Martin Murphey deemed it a “cosmic cowboy movement,” while others called the mostly young people who loved the new compositions “hickies,” city dwellers who could be “country and rowdy” one or two nights a week. A music journalist eventually called the movement “outlaw country,” which became a name that stuck.

There is a big part of the revolution that could only have happened in Texas. Texans are notoriously iconoclast, a culture that, correctly or incorrectly, tends to revel in the notion that “we’re just not like every place else.” Texas music has always represented just such an attitude. Texas bars and other musical outlets were laboratories for tradition-breaking musical stylings such as ragtime, boogie-woogie, western swing, and even elements of modern jazz. A huge part of that is Texan’s tendency to break cultural norms. Some have attributed it to Texas’ stubborn adherence to its mythical past as a place of “rugged individualism.” Others ascribe it to the state’s lack of a “place” within the larger regional area of the U.S. Is Texas western? Is it southern? Or is it something “else?” Still, others call it a part of Texas’ and its musicians’ isolation, which creates creativity. To those who ascribe Texas culture and identity to such elements, they often cite the stark distances and rural aspects of the state. Whatever it is and whatever its cause, Texas has a culture—which often includes music—that is different and is frequently more authentic, more real, and larger than life. That was certainly the case with the growing “outlaw” genre in the 1970s.

The Austin music scene in the 1970s certainly fit that part. It was part “hippie,” part rural “redneck,” and part fascination with the mythical American West. Like the counter-culture “hippie” movement, the Outlaw Country musicians rejected corporate-generated commercialism or the “slick” production of a recording studio. It also snuck in jabs at the American “establishment” that had led the nation into Vietnam and continued to tolerate racial segregation. At that same time, it also displayed symbols of American freedom and some traditional values associated with the rural environs of the country and then covered it all with the veneer of the mythical American West as the performers on stage donned Western hats and boots and often sang of cowboys. It was very Texan but also very American.

Austin accommodated the new musical variety with various venues and activities that grew up around the new sound. The Kerrville Folk Festival, staged in the small city a hundred miles to the west of Austin, began in 1872 and gave a stage to a number of upcoming acts such as Bill Hearne, Bob Livingston, and the ubiquitous around the area in those days Michael Martin Murphy. There were music festivals held at Zilker Park and the famed Chequered Flag folk music club, as well as the numerous honky-tonks and dance halls in the city, such as the Broken Spoke, as well as in the small towns scattered around the adjacent Hill Country such as Gruene Hall in New Braunfels. But none of these new institutions were as influential as the Armadillo World Headquarters, housed in a former National Guard armory that became the epicenter and foundation of the “progressive country” movement that would become known as “Outlaw Country.”

The music and vibes of the era were spreading from live music halls to playtime on some Texas country radio stations, but it possibly needed to conquer another frontier to truly go “national.” Television was the medium of fame and reach at the time, and country programming of the day was dominated by the “country pone” humor of Hee-Haw, the Pop sound style of the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and the overly produced Nashville sound of the syndicated That Good Ole Nashville Music. The new sounds coming out of Austin needed a different kind of exposure, and the local public television station, KLRU, was looking for new programming. It would prove to be a match made in heaven.

Next week, “Austin City Limits” debuts and immediately brings a fresh approach to how country music is presented on TV.

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.