Old No. 1

Old No. 1 is the 1975 debut studio album from Texas songwriter Guy Clark, recorded at RCA Studio B in Nashville and released that November on RCA Records. By the time it came out, Clark was already known inside the industry as a songwriter, since Jerry Jeff Walker, Rita Coolidge, David Allan Coe, and others had already cut his songs. The album let listeners hear the writer perform his own material for the first time.

The sessions drew from the community of songwriters and musicians orbiting Clark and his wife Susanna, whose East Nashville home had become a gathering place for a new generation of Americana-leaning writers. The cover featured a painting by Susanna Clark, and Jerry Jeff Walker wrote the liner notes. Background vocalists included Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, and Steve Earle, alongside session players like fiddler Johnny Gimble and harmonica player Mickey Raphael.

Old No. 1 was received as an immediate classic, drawing five-star retrospective praise from AllMusic and a B+ grade from Robert Christgau. The record includes several songs that became staples of the Americana and outlaw country songbooks, among them "L.A. Freeway," "Texas - 1947," and "Desperados Waiting for a Train," and it helped establish the plainspoken, narrative style of songwriting that Clark would mentor in younger writers for the rest of his career.