Fresh out of Nashville, the red-headed stranger contributed to a new movement in music known as "outlaw country." With the Viet Nam war still raging in the summer of 1972, there was a cultural chasm that seemed too wide to cross in Texas:  Longhairs weren't welcome in honky-tonks, and cowboys didn't mingle with "peaceniks."  But five words built a bridge. "Ladies and gentlemen, Willie Nelson!" On August 12, 1972, a short-haired, clean-shaven Nelson stepped onto the stage of a counterculture haven and changed country music.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Roughly half the crowd of 400 came to the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin that night to see opening act Greezy Wheels, a local favorite, while the other half was split evenly between hardcore country music fans who usually saw Willie at the Broken Spoke and the hippies in cowboy hats curious to see the country Bob Dylan. As soon as he started singing 'Hello Walls' and all his other songs that had been hits for others, it was complete adoration from the crowd. Country acts usually played for between an hour and 90 minutes-but Willie, bassist Bee Spears, and drummer Paul English played for almost three hours. And nobody left. As the divergent groups of people filed out together post-show, drenched in the sweat of satisfaction, they realized they had more in common than they thought.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Willie's first concert at the Armadillo-50 years ago this Friday-was the Big Bang of Austin being known as a music mecca.  The word on this groovy bohemian cowboy scene got out via via dispatches in Rolling Stone magazine from Chet Flippo, a grad student attending University of Texas on the G.I. Bill.  But the groundwork for the comingling of good ol' boys and hippies was laid years earlier by Kenneth Threadgill, who played every Sunday night at the Split Rail Inn from 1965-72. A country beer joint on South Lamar, the Rail was "where the heads meet the necks," an unofficial slogan.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Threadgill was a hardcore country singer, a throwback to Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams, but he often had longhairs in his band. He was known, after all, as the guy who mentored rock star Janis Joplin at his Threadgill's Tavern on North Lamar in 1962.  After his Armadillo bow, Willie became the main force and spiritual guide of what this new musical movement has become. He was always a different kind of Nashville artist, singing around the beat and playing gypsy jazz guitar. But after years of wearing a suit, trying to fit in, Willie moved to where his true audience was. His new best friend Leon Russell, a former studio musician who had gone through a similar cultural transformation, was a model for the country outlaw look.