He recorded it with Ernest Tubb's band, the Texas Troubadours and Western Swing fiddler-vocalist Wade Ray with studio musicians Jimmy Wilkerson and Hargus "Pig" Robbins.

"[3] Nelson, who had already recorded one album with Chet Atkins for RCA after moving there from Liberty, later recalled, “The Ernest Tubb Show was something else entirely, different from the sparkled-and spangled look of the Opry...My usual outfit was a plain turtleneck and black slacks.

Unlike his previous three albums, Country Favorites: Willie Nelson Style contains no original songs but rather cover tunes by fellow songwriters and singers such as Hank Cochran, Harlan Howard, Leon Payne, and George Jones.

Nelson first started playing "Columbus Stockade Blues" as a "jazzy up-tempo number too fast for the dancers" while touring with wife Shirley Collie and steel guitarist Jimmy Day as The Offenders.

[6] Nelson biographer Joe Nick Patoski notes that the reprisal of the song on this album "would have been better left off compared with the fiery earlier versions he'd recorded with Shirley Collie for Liberty Records..."[7] Although Nelson respected Atkins, he later admitted to being unhappy with the producer's formulaic approach: In 1970, RCA issued an abridged version of this album as "Columbus Stockade Blues" on the budget RCA Camden label (CAS-2444).