At the time, Nelson was under contract to Liberty Records, and though he scored a hit in 1962 with his debut single "Touch Me," the label simply didn't consider the wildly eclectic artist, who adored the lush pop standards performed by Frank Sinatra as much as the honky-tonkin' output of Ernest Tubb, to be commercial. So it cut him loose, and Nelson retreated to land outside Nashville to write.

"I look at it if it's a good song or not," Nelson says, explaining his legendarily eclectic taste. "I don't really try to put it like, 'Well, if it's this kind of song I won't do it, if it's that kind of song I won't do it.' I just like to sing music, a good song. It's a problem that there is a category for this and a salesman for that."

For a brief time in 1964, Nelson became a regular on the Grand Ole Opry, and then he signed on as a weekly performer on Ernest Tubb's syndicated TV show; the latter provided the 31-year-old Nelson the chance to perform with one of his heroes. But the trouble he'd later encounter with Columbia Records in the '90s was foreshadowed during his stints with RCA in the late '60s and with Atlantic in the early '70s. Even though Chet Atkins, a Nelson fan, signed him to RCA, he became increasingly frustrated by his inability to sell this nasal-voiced man to the masses. "Willie was ahead of his time," Atkins says in the booklet accompanying the Rhino set. "He was hot in Texas, and that was the only place we could sell him."

Jerry Wexler, the mastermind behind the careers of Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, was the man who brought Nelson over to Atlantic, where he recorded the concept albums Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages. The Rhino set includes five songs recorded for Shotgun Willie that never made it to the final album (including the devastating "Both Ends of the Candle" and a solo acoustic rendition of Leon Russell's "My Cricket and Me") and three alternate takes of songs from Phases and Stages. But the boxed set's true revelation is the 1974 Live at the Texas Opry House, which was produced by Wexler for Atlantic and never released. It ranks with Neil Young's Live Rust and the Who's Live at Leeds as great live representations of an artist.

It kicks off with "Whiskey River" and runs through a set list that includes the Bob Wills standards "Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer)," the George Jones hit "She Thinks I Still Care" and Nelson standards such as "Crazy." It's a frenetic and unrelenting performance, one that defines the so-called "Outlaw" movement of the time, every song splitting the difference between a good buzz and a hangover. The disc reeks of pot and whiskey, with Nelson and the band turning Western swing into Southern rock.

"That was a wild night," Nelson recalls. "I thought it turned out real good, and I hated that it didn't come out before. It's another one of those frustrations where you knew you had something good and it didn't come out, and this is how many years later? Ten? Twenty?"

Released from Atlantic not too long after that concert, Nelson came to Garland in February 1975 and cut Red Headed Stranger, which cost $20,000 to record and wound up going double platinum. Nelson, not surprisingly, points to that album and the subsequent success as the only period during his career when he was happy with both the business and artistic ends.

Yet even with the success of Red Headed Stranger, Columbia never gave Nelson the artistic control it promised. By the mid-'80s, the label began exerting control over his output, quashing the release of Sugar Moon -- an album of jazz and pop standards meant as a successor to Stardust -- and Willie Sings Hank Williams. Both of those albums, in their wonderful entirety, make the boxed set.

The Williams disc, which covers the hits ("I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry") and the obscurities ("Why Should We Try Anymore"), is the masterpiece of the Rhino collection. Nelson proves himself the link between Williams' tradition and the modernist movement Nelson himself led; he assumes Williams' lyrics, embodies their meaning, stays true to the original arrangements but never merely mimics.

"I love that album, I really do love that album," Nelson says. "Jimmy Day was very instrumental in helping me do that album. You know that click sound in the back -- the old Hank Williams rhythm guitar? Sammy Pruitt used to play that, but Jimmy Day used to work with Hank Williams and he learned how to do that. So when we did this album, I said, 'I want it to be just as Hank Williams as it can be.'"