For the Sake of the Song is the debut album by country singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt, released in 1968. The majority of the songs, including the title track, "Tecumseh Valley", "(Quicksilver Daydreams of) Maria", "Waiting 'Round to Die", and "Sad Cinderella", were re-recorded in more stripped-down versions for subsequent studio albums.

For the Sake of the Song would be the flagship release on Poppy Records, a label operated by Keven Eggers, with whom Van Zandt would have a long and complex professional relationship. According to John Kruth's book To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, Eggers first heard Van Zandt's song "Tecumseh Valley" when producer Jack Clement played a demo of it recorded at a Houston recording studio in 1966, with Eggers marveling, "I thought it was an absolute classic song. When I heard it I said, 'This is a brilliant songwriter.' I told Jack right then and there that I would sign Townes and make a record with him. Townes was brilliant from day one." Clement, who had been an engineer for Sam Phillips at Sun Records and an established songwriter himself, offered to produce the album with Jim Malloy. Van Zandt, who had gained a small but devout following among the folk "purists" who attended his shows in coffeehouses and dive bars, agreed to travel to Nashville for the recording sessions. Although Nashville had become known as the epicenter of commercial country music, by the late 1960s it had also produced hit albums by artists in rock, pop, and folk circles, such as Blonde On Blonde, John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline by Bob Dylan, Bookends by Simon and Garfunkel, and Sweetheart of the Rodeo by the Gram Parsons-led incarnation of the Byrds.

For listeners who had seen and heard Van Zandt perform his poetic songs solo with just an acoustic guitar, For the Sake of the Song came as somewhat of a shock, with John Kruth observing, "Instead of being the focal point of the album, Townes and his songs were lost in a Phil Spector-like 'Wall of Sound.'" Van Zandt's voice - already unconventional for mainstream country fans - is drenched in echo and surrounded with ethereal organs, medieval recorders and harpsichords, and the overproduction would lead the singer to record many of the songs on his subsequent albums. In his biography on the singer, Kruth quotes producer Clement, who later recalled, "Townes was so different. He didn't fit the country profile. He was a unique songwriter, very poetical. 'The Silver Ships of Andilar' was more like a movie than a song...That first album was experimental. It's just how it fell into place at the time. I wasn't tryin' to do anything different from what I usually did. Townes wasn't too flappable. We just made everything work around him. I dunno...Maybe I overproduced it a little bit." Throughout his career, Van Zandt would maintain a flippant attitude towards recording, always more interested in songwriting itself, and was likely overawed by the charismatic Clement, who had produced Jerry Lee Lewis's smash hit "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and written "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" for Johnny Cash. In the foreword to I'll Be Here In The Morning: The Songwriting Legacy of Townes Van Zandt, Clement wrote, "Townes was fun to work with, but he didn't think much of the recording process. He just wanted to have some action going." In the 1993 Rhino Records reissue of the album, Van Zandt is quoted, "I was awe stricken when I first went to Nashville. A young Texas folk singer suddenly surrounded by the best players, producers and engineers in the world. I sat in a chair and sang when they told me to. I love the record because it was my first." In the spring of 1994, Van Zandt elaborated to Aretha Sills: "Got a publishing company, made a record, For the Sake of the Song, and it’s now been re-released under the title The First Album. I like it, but I had to re-record about four of the songs, because I was just totally taken — not on purpose — but totally taken off guard. I was surrounded by ten of the best musicians in the world. Boy, and I’m a hick from Texas, you know? I’m a cowboy hippie from Texas and all of a sudden I’m playing these songs and I was just showing ‘em how they went and just playing. And then I realized toward the end of the record that that’s not how the song goes. That’s not how it was written, so on the next record I had veto power and listened and took equal charge." Before overdubs, Van Zandt recorded the basic tracks "live" at Bradley's Barn on a three-track recorder.

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