December 1, 2023      —–     Chart #222

Hello Music Friends,

Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. We’re going outlaw today with a great classic. “Good Hearted Woman” is a song written by American country music singers Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.

In 1969, while staying at the Fort Worther Motel in Fort Worth, Texas, Jennings saw an advertisement in a newspaper promoting Tina Turner as a “good hearted woman loving two-timing men”, a reference to Ike Turner. Jennings went to talk to Nelson, who was in the middle of a poker game, about writing a song based on that phrase. Joining the game, he and Nelson expanded the lyrics as Nelson’s wife Connie Koepke wrote them down.

Jennings recorded the song for the first time as the title track of his 1972 album Good Hearted Woman, the single peaked at number three on the Billboard’s Hot Country Singles. Jennings had recorded a concert version for Waylon Live, which served as a basis for the duet with Nelson. “I just took my voice off and put Willie’s on in different places,” he explained. “Willie wasn’t within 10,000 miles when I recorded it.” He also added canned crowd noises to add to the live feel for the album Wanted: The Outlaws!. The album cemented the pair’s outlaw image and became country music’s first platinum album. The song peaked at number one on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles and at number 25 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song won the Single of the Year award in the 1976 Country Music Association Awards, and took Jennings and Nelson to the mainstream audiences, giving them nationwide recognition.

The Outlaw Country Version: 

Keep Rockin’,

Stan Bradshaw