Throughout the 60s, Missouri-born singer-songwriter Willis David Hoover, aka Hoover, was part of the original outlaw country music scene and a late-night, neon-campire associate of Kinky Friedman, Waylon Jennings, Billy Joe Saver and Tompall Glaser. He wrote songs for the likes of Tina Turner, Eddy Arnold, and Jennings, as well as Ralph Nelson’s 1970 American crime drama, Tick, Tick, Tick. That same year, his own self-titled album was released on Epic records. 

Before kissing country music and Nashville goodbye and riding off into the sunset soon after serving his time in the music business slammer, Hoover cut one last album at what was known as Outlaw Headquarters. Though he considered the album his best work, it was never released, and the master recording was lost after Outlaw Headquarters studio ceased to exist.

Time passed and Hoover, and his lost album, were forgotten. One fan who didn’t forget was Cathy Flanagan, who, acting swiftly on a telephone tip in the spring of 1977, literally retrieved Hoover’s master tapes from a Nashville dumpster moments before they would have been hauled away for good. 

Although most of the documentation for the album was not recovered, the following is known: The album was recorded in 1971–1972. Three cuts, “Unwanted Outlaw,” “Subjectively Speaking,” and “The One You’re Thinkin’ Of” were not found. Except for “I’m The Loneliest Man I Ever Met,” which was written by Friedman and Hoover, all songs were written by Hoover and published by Famous Music.

With Hoover’s blessing, Anthology makes his heartbreaking, breathtaking The Lost Outlaw Album available in a wider, wilder way.

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