The Highwaymen – the best super group of ALL time.

What do Cream, The Raconteurs, Broken Bells and The Travelling Wilburys all have in common? They’re all super cool amazing super groups! A super group is unsurprisingly compiled of several musicians who tend to be legendary in their own right, combining every ounce of their musical prowess to make one mighty super group to rule the world!

Way back when, four legendary corners of the Country Music scene came together to create one of the most revered groups – The Highwaymen. Johnny Cash was coming into the later stages of an extremely lengthy and successful career and wanted to put the fun and excitement into playing onstage again after so many years of rigorous touring. What better way to do so than by joining together with your talented friends?

Adding in Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and a young Kris Kristofferson – this foursome combined unlimited amounts of talent, skill and experience to create a lasting friendship that helped them produce three albums during 1985 to 1995. They also had chart topping hit with their title track “Highwaymen” in 1985 proving that America couldn’t get enough of their signature brand of Outlaw Country.

To fully appreciate their combined powers, let’s take a look at each of them killing it on their own:

Johnny Cash

An infamous performance here from the Man In Black at the peak of his performance powers, and one of our favourite moments in the long Cash history as he took the daring decision to perform at San Quentin.

Waylon Jennings 

Waylon didn’t actually write this track, it was originally penned by husband and wife duo Ed and Patsy Bruce. However, Waylon’s take on this anthem proved the most popular and won him and his old pal Willie Nelson a Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1979 and furthermore, became a staple in the set of the Highwaymen. Here is performing the track on his solo tour

Willie Nelson

Unfortunately, both Mr Cash and Sir Jennings have since passed on to the big music hall in the sky, but their dear compadre Willie is still flying the renegade outlaw flag high at the ripe old age of 83. Willie’s creative output is nothing short of staggering, having released 117 albums at last count which includes a selection live albums, sound tracks and studio albums. Although, Willie is known for being a bit of a rebel, he can still nail a soft and gentle track as beautifully illustrated here with a cover of Gershwin’s “Someone To Watch Over Me”.

Kris Kristofferson 

The youngest of the famous foursome, Kris Kristofferson had a pretty special journey to fame via sweeping the floors at Columbia Recording studios in Nashville where he happened upon one Mrs June Carter. He gave her a tape to pass onto her husband which contained the track Kristofferson would later win awards for and become synonymous with – “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down”.

This track became a favourite of Cash’s and he can be credited with bringing Kristofferson into the spotlight after several high profile performances of the track. Here we have Kris performing the track at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee .

The Highwaymen Live: American Outlaws is now available on Amazon.