The deal meant Capitol obtained nearly two albums worth of material, including the recordings Haggard had made with Bonnie Owens.

The song made it to number 19 on the Billboard country singles chart in 1963, but Haggard's first Top 10 hit was the Liz Anderson-penned "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers."

She was a pleasant enough lady, pretty, with a nice smile, but I was all set to be bored to death, even more so when she got out a whole bunch of songs and went over to an old pump organ...There they were.

Haggard wrote or co-wrote half the songs on the LP, as he had been developing his own skills as a songwriter under Owen's tutelage at the time.

The song, written by friend and mentor Tommy Collins, was not one of Haggard's favorites, with the singer recalling in his 1999 memoir My House of Memories, "I'm glad 'Sam Hill' wasn't a big hit.

"[5] Critic Steven Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic calls it "an impressive debut," conceding that "there is some filler on Strangers, but that was the case for nearly every country album recorded in the '60s.