Try to think back to a time when the country charts were dominated by slick crossover hits. Most of them were made by artists who burned bright and then disappeared. Great music was made, most of it by two guys named Haggard and Owens.
Unfortunately, there was too much forgettable crap that represented less than zero in terms of artistic statement. Even Johnny Cash seemed past his prime. Sound familiar? It should because late 1960s Nashville was an awful lot like the current scene, populated by faceless hit factories who shunned anyone unwilling to play their game.
Waylon Jennings didn’t play Nashville’s game. By breaking in with Buddy Holly’s band and barely avoiding the plane crash that took the singer’s life, Waylon languished in the mainstream for most of the 1960s. He released forgettable albums in which the country-music machine attempted to turn him into a ballad-singing Johnny Cash rip-off. Despite Waylon’s obvious talent, this failed.
Fed up and pissed off, with his fiery soul struggling to escape, Jennings quit the game. He refused to record with the town’s established producers, songwriters and musicians. Instead, he recorded songs by young, unproven songwriters, like Kris Kristofferson and far more importantly, a fellow Texan named Billy Joe Shaver.
The story, possibly apocryphal, is that Jennings and Shaver met in a bar. Both were drunk and the young songwriter apparently convinced Jennings, who was already developing his “outlaw” persona, to record a full album of his songs.
Jennings agreed, probably to get the notoriously bullheaded Shaver off his back. Then Jennings forgot about it; Shaver didn’t. The result was Honky Tonk Heroes, a masterpiece that fully established Jennings as the rocking, soulful, shit-stomping maverick that would become his trademark.
Shaver’s songs are brilliant: moving, hilarious and riddled with the “jagged grain” blues reality articulated by Ralph Ellison, the great black intellectual who almost certainly didn’t have either Jennings or Shaver in mind.
Not that it matters. Any artist who gives the world the truism, “The devil made me do it the first time, the second time I done it on my own,” (amen to that) certainly deserves a place in the highest poetic leagues. (That lyric is from “Black Rose,” the album’s highlight.)
Waylon kept it real for the next twenty years, refusing to compromise and giving the world some of the best hard-edged honky-tonk ever lain down. He joined Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and Jessi Colter to form The Outlaws, the coolest thing to hit country music since Merle and Buck first rolled in from California. The group’s album became a huge hit. Waylon and Willie would ride again later, this time accompanied by Cash and Kristofferson as The Highwaymen.
Jennings was essentially a country punk, slamming a system he condemned and ridiculed. He lampooned the Country Music Association with the hilarious “The CMA Is Watching You.” He refused to attend award shows, condemned competition among musicians, and, in what might be his most audacious act of defiance, refused to play at the Grand Ole Opry, the pinnacle of country music, until they allowed his drummer to play a full drum set.
In songs like “Luckenbach, TX” or “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?” he stared down the establishment–and NEVER blinked. He seemed a gentle soul, too, with “Amanda,” a career highlight, and his appearance in the Sesame Street movie was pleasantly memorable. Then there’s “I’ve Always Been Crazy,” which may boast his defining statement: “I’ve always been crazy, that’s what keeps me from going insane.” Again, amen to that.
Waylon Jennings was a true rebel, not bound by stylistic trend (hello, Courtney Love) and remained an individual, for better or worse. Whether he was weeping, laughing, or giving the sons-of-bitches the finger, he was always Waylon, the country gangsta, the honky-tonk hero. Although he’s gone too soon, I’m sure we’ll still feel his spirit when the thunder rumbles and in the howl of the real country soul.
