Ken
Burke:
March,
2002

None of his peers – not Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, nor Hank Williams Jr., blended country, folk, blues, and good ol’ rock’n’roll with more honest heart than Waylon Jennings.

Jennings came up through the ranks, sharpening his craft every step of the way. He paid his dues and then some as a disc jockey, played bass for his good pal Buddy Holly prior to his death, and lit a fire under drunken honkytonkers and impossibly fresh-faced sock-hoppers alike. All the while he strained to make music -- some great, some bad for upstart labels ala Trend 61 and A&M. Burning his vital essences night after night, Jennings learned to put a beat to the paradoxes of humankind while developing a pretty reliable bullshit detector.

When he became a star at RCA, Jennings didn’t forget what he had learned, and was eager to tell us about it as he did in this self-composed ditty from the 1966 film Nashville Rebel.

I’ve been chasing the big wheels all around Nashville,
Waitin’ for my big break to come.
Livin’ on ketchup soup, homemade, crackers and Kool-Aid.
I’ll be a star tomorrow but today -- I’m a Nashville Bum.

Well now here’s a song I wrote, by myself note-for-note,
With a lot’ve help it might make Number One.
You could change a word or two and I’d give half of it to you.
I’ll be star tomorrow but today -- I’m a Nashville Bum.

All the hallmarks of Jennings style were there – the self-mocking humor, the cynicism, and the desperate need to communicate some sort of truth. Candor, no matter artfully applied, is not exactly Nashville’s stock-in-trade. It took years for him to eschew the chunky constraints imposed by producers Chet Atkins and Danny Davis, and embrace more pointed material.

As the heart and soul of the 70s "Outlaw Movement," Jennings was the first major Country artist to demand that Nashville bigwigs just leave his music the hell alone! Did he make artistic compromises? Sure he did – after all, he liked selling records, but he also created a signature style that sounded raw, expressive, and pure by today's standards. We didn't like everything he did, but by standing up for himself, the leather-clad singer-songwriter made the whole genre more vital and interesting.

Jennings transformed the works of such great songwriters as Billy Joe Shaver ("Honky Tonk Heroes"), Chips Moman ("Luckenback, Texas"), and Ed Bruce ("Mamas Donut Let Your Babies Grow Up To be Cowboys") into resonant anthems of his era. However, the songs he penned himself, those kick-drum fueled explorations into his own psyche ("Good Hearted Woman," "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way," "I've Always Been Crazy," "Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit Done Got Out Of Hand," etc.) proved he was a major contemporary artist with something important to say.

Between 1965 and 1991, solo or with notable partners Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Jessi Colter, Hank Williams, Jr., The Crickets or the execrable supergroup The Highwaymen, Jennings racked up an astonishing eighty-nine Country Top-40 hits. During most of that run, Ol’ Waylon was on drugs –- pep pills, smoke, and cocaine. (None of which stopped him from winning a whole raft of Grammy and CMA awards.) By the time he got sober, radio had purged itself of their veteran acts in favor of largely flavorless pop singers with vague country accents. As a result, the hits dried up for the chief Waylor, though he recorded rather prolifically, on his own terms, whenever he felt like it.

When asked if he might change his style in order to get back on the charts, the fallen superstar typically replied, "I won’t record modern Country music. I don’t like it and they can’t make me." But the absence of his voice, that haunting, cathartic baritone, made a statement more damning than any quip or pronouncement -- Country music and Waylon Jennings no longer had any use for one another.

Jennings got the final laugh when he teamed with fellow middle-aged outcasts Bobby Bare, Mel Tillis, and Jerry Reed. Employing the ironic folk tone that became his trademark, he provoked big laughs when singing "Nashville is rough on the living – but it really speaks well of the dead."

If he were around to witness the fuss being made about him, eleven years after his last hit, the puckish Jennings would probably laugh and say, "I told you Hoss, I told you."

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