His most recent album, Make Way for Willie Nelson, had produced the Top 20 single “One In a Row,” but his sales paled in comparison to other country stars like Marty Robbins and Johnny Cash.

I was playing beer joints.”[1] Nelson was becoming increasingly unhappy with RCA, feeling the label did not promote his records enough and kept him around so his stable mates could pillage his poor-selling albums for material.

What time I wasn't in the studio, I was off somewhere playing my guitar...It hurt Willie a lot to have a guy with my attitude about sales as the one who was supposed to push his product.

The title track had been written years earlier when Nelson had been living in Houston and was part of a two week songwriting spurt that saw him also write "Funny How Time Slips Away", "Crazy", "Mr. Record Man", and "I Gotta Get Drunk".

[6] "I'll Stay Around" was co-written with Hank Cochran, who helped get Nelson a job writing for Pamper Music when the Texan first arrived in Nashville in 1960.