Good Times is the eighth studio album by country singer Willie Nelson, released in 1968. Arrangements were by Anita Kerr, Bill Walker and Ray Stevens. 　　After recording an LP of cover songs, Good Times contains almost all Nelson compositions, including three written with his wife Shirley. It is very ballad heavy, with Jim Worbois of AllMusic noting, “This is kind of an odd record. One side is very sparse instrumentally, while the other side has three different people providing arrangements.” Two older songs, "Permanently Lonely" and "Did I Ever Love You," had been covered previously by Timo Yuro, the latter as a duet with Nelson. Tellingly, one of the two covers songs on the album was “Sweet Memories,” a song composed by Mickey Newbury, a singer-songwriter who, like Nelson, would express dissatisfaction with his debut RCA album Harlequin Melodies and blaze a trail of independent recording in defiance of Nashville that would serve as a template for the Outlaw movement in the seventies. Like Nelson, Newbury wrote atmospheric, poetic songs, which were at odds with the slick hit singles that Nashville manufactured. As Streissguth asserts, “In late 1967, Willie, in his bleating, wistful way, had recorded a set of starkly beautiful ballads, including the classic ‘Sweet Memories,’ written by Mickey Newbury, but RCA appeared flummoxed in response, slotting them in an album called Good Times next to syrupy Nashville Sound material recorded at earlier sessions.” 　　Regarding songs on the second side of the Good Times, Nelson later lamented that his vocals were “drowned in a pool of overly sweet string arrangements and syrupy backgrounds by the Anita Kerr Singers.”The first single, “Little Things,” climbed to number 22 on the country singles chart, while “Good Times” stalled at number 44, while the LP itself limped to number 29 on the country albums chart. As Nelson later recalled, “I was still caught up in a system – the Nashville music assembly line – where conformity was mandatory, and where it seemed to come with string sections and choirs of angels.” 　　The album cover is one of Nelson's most bizarre: the singer in golf clothes on a putting green smiling his arms around a pretty girl in sandals and a short skirt, showing her how to putt. The cover, which contrasted sharply with the calculated sophistication of Glen Campbell’s smash albums and the danger of Johnny Cash’s At Folsom seemed to highlight just how absurdly out of touch Nelson was with the market.