These have a lot more country authenticity than a lot of contemporary mainstream pop country and both rock and punk - early punk in particular - trace back to the raw 1950's rockabilly.
Last edited:
Country Music
- Thread starter Mitchell Madness
- Start date
- Tagged users None
These have a lot more country authenticity than a lot of contemporary mainstream pop country and both rock and punk - early punk in particular - trace back to the raw 1950's rockabilly.
100% these guys may venture to other genre's but at core country. Heck Waylon/Willie and accused in the day of not being country .
American Aquarium early days was a blend of rock/punk but as BJ Barham has got older/ sober he become more country.
I think Zach Bryan is possibly the best contemporary country singer-songwriter ATM -
I love zach but getting to the point where majority of his songs start sounding very similar
Childers is another example of the most authentic country artists being now rarely found at the top of the charts, with the record companies ensuring the country chart is now a very thinly disguised pop chart aimed at the pop market, while genuine country music has been relegated to so-called "Americana". Tyler himself had something to say on this at at the 2018 Americana Music Honors & Awards, saying in his acceptance speech - "as a man who identifies as a country music singer, I feel Americana ain't no part of nothing and is a distraction from the issues that we're facing on a bigger level as country music singers. It kind of feels like purgatory."
Last edited:
This history now heads back to Texas (from now onwards, Texans will tend to dominate this history) to find an artist who broke through with his first big hits in 1974. His straightforward yet smooth bass-baritone voice, soft tones, and imposing build earned him the nickname "The Gentle Giant". A crooner, influenced by Eddy Arnold (see posts # 189-190) and Jim Reeves (see posts # 383-386), and a domesticated country lover man, à la Reeves and Arnold, too, but, in contrast to those 2, who between them possessed the smoothest, most precise pitch perfect vocals of country music history, our new artist scuffed up the complete smoothness of their vocals with his own gentle brand of cautious. His songs and delivery style have in turn influenced a range of artists, from The Who's Peter Townsend and blues rock great, Eric Clapton right up to Joe Nichols to Keith Urban.
Don Williams was born in 1939 in a small town on the high plains of West Texas, but the family moved to the large South Texas city of Corpus Christi when he was still a young child. His father was a mechanic, but his mother was musical and taught him how to play the guitar by the time he was 12. Though he always enjoyed country music, Williams, as a teenager, also liked the sounds of rock'n'roll stars such as Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry. As a teenager, he played in a variety of country, rockabilly, folk, and rock'n'roll bands. But he didn't begin to work on music as a career until after serving in the U.S. Army for 2 years. While supporting himself with odd jobs in the area of Corpus Christi, South Texas, including driving a truck and working in oil fields, Williams and a friend, Lofton Kline, started singing in dingy bars as the Strangers Two.
One night in 1964, the duo played a college dance and found themselves on the same bill with singer Susan Taylor. The 3 became acquainted and Taylor joined Williams and Kline to form the folk pop trio, The Pozo Seco Singers. They released a single, 'Time' on an independent label, which became a hit in their home state, Texas, and led to them being signed by Columbia Records. By 1966, 'Time' had become a national hit. highlighted by two Top 40 hits in late 1966, 'I Can Make It with You' and 'Look What You've Done'. But despite the honour of being asked to sing at President Lyndon Johnson's ranch in 1968, by the dawn of the 1970s their mellow folk pop sound was out of fashion and Williams and his friends were reduced to singing back in dingy bars. Disilusioned, Williams, who had married back in 1960 and had 2 children, quit the group and his music career in 1971 to open a furniture store in Corpus Christi with his father-in-law.
But Williams was not contented with his new life outside of music and the following year he went to Nashville, ironically seeking work as a songwriter as he didn't think his singing style would have commercial appeal. He was hired by Jack Music Publishing, both to write and to sell his songs to country artists. After a short time of having these artists almost buy his songs but reject them because they thought his work as being just too different to be popular with country fans, Williams heeded their advice about recording them himself. He signed with JMI Records, which, like Jack Music, belonged to Jack Clement, who believed Williams had something. Though he did perform his own compositions, Williams wisely didn't restrict himself to them, but developed strong links with a few up and coming Nashville based songwriters, especially Bob McDill and Wayland Holyfield.
Williams' debut single 'Don't You Believe', went nowhere, but The Shelter of Your Eyes' climbed to # 14 in early 1973,
quickly followed by 'Come Every Morning' reaching # 12. His solo debut album, "Don Williams, Volume One", which got to
# 3, featured the now-classic 'Amanda'. It’s one of the classic arguments for longtime fans of Country Music - Waylon Jennings’ 1979 chart-topper or Don Williams’ 1973 original? Either way, the choice is one of a classic. But, Don’s recording of 'Amanda' (a charted B-side of early hit of his early single 'Come Early Morning') Bob McDill evergreen made plenty of positive impressions early on in his career -
In 1974, at age 35, Williams scored a string of minor hits before he had his breakthrough, 'We Should Be Together',
reaching # 5. This to a contract with ABC/Dot, and his next single, 'Wouldn't Want to Live If You Didn't Love Me' went
all the way to # 1 in mid 1974. After Williams’ breakthrough in 1974, he went even better in 1975 with the release of
'You’re My Best Friend'. The album’s title track brought him a second #1 hit and marked the beginning of a long and
fruitful partnership with songwriter Wayland Holyfield. It was the first time Holyfield topped the U.S. charts in a career
that would see him pen hits for everyone from Charley Pride to Anne Murray to George Strait. 'You’re My Best Friend' was
quintessential Williams – a plaintive, loping ode of gratitude to his wife, with a gentle, soothing string accompaniment. The
song also marked Williams’ true beginning as a commercial juggernaut, as it also topped the Canadian country chart and
even cracked the UK Top 40, while the album’s next single, '(Turn Out the Light and) Love Me Tonight', also went to # 1 just
3 months later -
Williams’ easygoing proclamations of love had a way of feeling timeless, as though their sense of calm was rooted in the knowledge that the universe would always come around. So ‘Til the Rivers All Run Dry' took that theme from implication to outright declaration, as Williams vowed his love would last as long as the sun was in the sky. Reuniting him with songwriter Holyfield, with whom Williams shared a co-writing credit for the first time, the song – at once spare and lush with its warm
electric guitar leads – opened the # 1 selling 1976 album "Harmony". ‘Til the Rivers All Run Dry', another # 1 hit, demonstrated just how far Williams’ influence now extended, particularly in the U.K., where The Who’s Pete Townshend and The Faces’ Ronnie Lane showed their softer sides with an earnest cover of the song on their "Rough Mix" collaboration later that year - -
In spite of its breezy tune, light-as-a-feather production and Williams’ toasty-warm vocals, 'Some Broken Hearts Never Mind' offers 2 verses about lost love that also let Williams sing with a tinge of sadness and regret in his voice. Another # 1 Williams song in 1977 from the pen of Wayland Holyfield, actor Telly Savalas (aka Kojak) also had a sizeable hit with it in Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands, and others who’ve recorded it, in contrasting styles, include the Bellamy Brothers (to a reggae beat) and the Cox Family (as a bluegrass number) -
'Rake And Ramblin' Man', a # 3 hit in 1978 is a song that many men have identified with at one time or the other – about that moment where you find out that parenthood is just around the corner. Edgy by Williams' standards, this partially-narrated tale about a free spirit tells of a rambling man with enough common sense to know he wouldn't make a reliable father. It's one of several Williams classics penned by Bob McDill. Williams handled the song with just the right amount of wry humor in interpreting McDill’s lyrics -
By 1978, the Williams style had developed - gently paced songs with straightforward arrangements, lyrics and sentiments. Williams was mining the same vein as Jim Reeves, but he eschewed Reeves' smartness by dressing like a ranch-hand - his one and only nod to the influence of the Outlaw era then in full swing. Despite having had 7 Top 5 albums and 7 # 1 singles in just 5 years, his biggest success - and biggest hit -still lay ahead, but for now, we leave Don Williams off in 1978 - until tomorrow.
Don Williams was born in 1939 in a small town on the high plains of West Texas, but the family moved to the large South Texas city of Corpus Christi when he was still a young child. His father was a mechanic, but his mother was musical and taught him how to play the guitar by the time he was 12. Though he always enjoyed country music, Williams, as a teenager, also liked the sounds of rock'n'roll stars such as Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry. As a teenager, he played in a variety of country, rockabilly, folk, and rock'n'roll bands. But he didn't begin to work on music as a career until after serving in the U.S. Army for 2 years. While supporting himself with odd jobs in the area of Corpus Christi, South Texas, including driving a truck and working in oil fields, Williams and a friend, Lofton Kline, started singing in dingy bars as the Strangers Two.
One night in 1964, the duo played a college dance and found themselves on the same bill with singer Susan Taylor. The 3 became acquainted and Taylor joined Williams and Kline to form the folk pop trio, The Pozo Seco Singers. They released a single, 'Time' on an independent label, which became a hit in their home state, Texas, and led to them being signed by Columbia Records. By 1966, 'Time' had become a national hit. highlighted by two Top 40 hits in late 1966, 'I Can Make It with You' and 'Look What You've Done'. But despite the honour of being asked to sing at President Lyndon Johnson's ranch in 1968, by the dawn of the 1970s their mellow folk pop sound was out of fashion and Williams and his friends were reduced to singing back in dingy bars. Disilusioned, Williams, who had married back in 1960 and had 2 children, quit the group and his music career in 1971 to open a furniture store in Corpus Christi with his father-in-law.
But Williams was not contented with his new life outside of music and the following year he went to Nashville, ironically seeking work as a songwriter as he didn't think his singing style would have commercial appeal. He was hired by Jack Music Publishing, both to write and to sell his songs to country artists. After a short time of having these artists almost buy his songs but reject them because they thought his work as being just too different to be popular with country fans, Williams heeded their advice about recording them himself. He signed with JMI Records, which, like Jack Music, belonged to Jack Clement, who believed Williams had something. Though he did perform his own compositions, Williams wisely didn't restrict himself to them, but developed strong links with a few up and coming Nashville based songwriters, especially Bob McDill and Wayland Holyfield.
Williams' debut single 'Don't You Believe', went nowhere, but The Shelter of Your Eyes' climbed to # 14 in early 1973,
quickly followed by 'Come Every Morning' reaching # 12. His solo debut album, "Don Williams, Volume One", which got to
# 3, featured the now-classic 'Amanda'. It’s one of the classic arguments for longtime fans of Country Music - Waylon Jennings’ 1979 chart-topper or Don Williams’ 1973 original? Either way, the choice is one of a classic. But, Don’s recording of 'Amanda' (a charted B-side of early hit of his early single 'Come Early Morning') Bob McDill evergreen made plenty of positive impressions early on in his career -
In 1974, at age 35, Williams scored a string of minor hits before he had his breakthrough, 'We Should Be Together',
reaching # 5. This to a contract with ABC/Dot, and his next single, 'Wouldn't Want to Live If You Didn't Love Me' went
all the way to # 1 in mid 1974. After Williams’ breakthrough in 1974, he went even better in 1975 with the release of
'You’re My Best Friend'. The album’s title track brought him a second #1 hit and marked the beginning of a long and
fruitful partnership with songwriter Wayland Holyfield. It was the first time Holyfield topped the U.S. charts in a career
that would see him pen hits for everyone from Charley Pride to Anne Murray to George Strait. 'You’re My Best Friend' was
quintessential Williams – a plaintive, loping ode of gratitude to his wife, with a gentle, soothing string accompaniment. The
song also marked Williams’ true beginning as a commercial juggernaut, as it also topped the Canadian country chart and
even cracked the UK Top 40, while the album’s next single, '(Turn Out the Light and) Love Me Tonight', also went to # 1 just
3 months later -
Williams’ easygoing proclamations of love had a way of feeling timeless, as though their sense of calm was rooted in the knowledge that the universe would always come around. So ‘Til the Rivers All Run Dry' took that theme from implication to outright declaration, as Williams vowed his love would last as long as the sun was in the sky. Reuniting him with songwriter Holyfield, with whom Williams shared a co-writing credit for the first time, the song – at once spare and lush with its warm
electric guitar leads – opened the # 1 selling 1976 album "Harmony". ‘Til the Rivers All Run Dry', another # 1 hit, demonstrated just how far Williams’ influence now extended, particularly in the U.K., where The Who’s Pete Townshend and The Faces’ Ronnie Lane showed their softer sides with an earnest cover of the song on their "Rough Mix" collaboration later that year - -
In spite of its breezy tune, light-as-a-feather production and Williams’ toasty-warm vocals, 'Some Broken Hearts Never Mind' offers 2 verses about lost love that also let Williams sing with a tinge of sadness and regret in his voice. Another # 1 Williams song in 1977 from the pen of Wayland Holyfield, actor Telly Savalas (aka Kojak) also had a sizeable hit with it in Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands, and others who’ve recorded it, in contrasting styles, include the Bellamy Brothers (to a reggae beat) and the Cox Family (as a bluegrass number) -
'Rake And Ramblin' Man', a # 3 hit in 1978 is a song that many men have identified with at one time or the other – about that moment where you find out that parenthood is just around the corner. Edgy by Williams' standards, this partially-narrated tale about a free spirit tells of a rambling man with enough common sense to know he wouldn't make a reliable father. It's one of several Williams classics penned by Bob McDill. Williams handled the song with just the right amount of wry humor in interpreting McDill’s lyrics -
By 1978, the Williams style had developed - gently paced songs with straightforward arrangements, lyrics and sentiments. Williams was mining the same vein as Jim Reeves, but he eschewed Reeves' smartness by dressing like a ranch-hand - his one and only nod to the influence of the Outlaw era then in full swing. Despite having had 7 Top 5 albums and 7 # 1 singles in just 5 years, his biggest success - and biggest hit -still lay ahead, but for now, we leave Don Williams off in 1978 - until tomorrow.
Last edited:
Don William's run of # 1 hits from 1974 through 1975 propelled him into Hollywood - playing a band member himself in the 1975 Burt Reynolds film "W.W. & the Dixie Dance Kings" and, having developed a friendship with Reynolds and having by now racked up an extraordinary 12 # 1 hits and 8 other Top 5 songs, he also appeared in "Smokey and the Bandit 2" in 1981, which didn't demand too much of his character acting skills - he simply played himself and provided a few songs for the movie (probably the only good thing about that terrible sequel).
Williams always maintained tight artistic control over his material. He refused to consider sing any songs about the common country music themes of fighting, marital infidelity or drinking/drugs. Apparently it wasn't so much to take a high moral tone as to be true to his own experiences, with Williams once saying - "I've never really done those things, they haven't been a part of my life, so I guess I just don't relate to them very well." This clean cut, domestic living, devoid of any advice (apart from tobacco) made Williams a somewhat unusual country music star. Instead he preferred love ballads or storytelling songs, much like his early influencers, Eddy Arnold and Jim Reeves.
The “Gentle Giant” toughened up his sound on 'Tulsa Time', from 1978’s "Expression" LP. Driven by a gritty, funky rock'n'roll beat that sounded more like it was out of Waylon Jennings’ playbook than his own, Williams reveled in songwriter Danny Flowers’ hard-luck tale of trying and failing to make it in the big city. Pushing his baritone to a higher-than-normal register, his voice felt like it might just flutter away on the up-beat, hand-clapping chorus. This was Williams at his most versatile, a fact that didn’t go overlooked by the country music establishment - 'Tulsa Time', his 8th # 1 single (and soon-to-be favorite of Eric Clapton’s), was named ACM Song of the Year, while the CMA gave Williams the Male Vocalist award - the only time he would earn either honour -
'Lay Down Beside Me' was, like many of Williams’ early recordings, composed by Williams himself. Before he had a chance to release it himself, Kenny Rodgers cut a version for his 1976 self-titled album. It took Williams to turn it into a Top 5 hit though, which he did in style in 1979 -
'Good Ole Boys Like Me' is for me, fascinated as I am with Southern culture, with all its virtues ... and vices, is, lyrically, Williams best song. This sweet, openly nostalgic tune from Bob McDill, a # 2 single in 1980, offers a number of glimpses of vintage Southern life that's now mostly fading. There are complicated memories of a father “... with gin on his breath and a Bible in his hand...", cherished nights listening to legendary deejays John R. and Wolfman Jack on the radio and wisdom imparted by “... those Williams boys, Hank and Tennessee.” (making sure his listeners understood he wasn't referring to himself but the 2 legendary performers) What this Williams boy does with those memories is simply magical, and although the song also name-checks Thomas Wolfe, who wrote "You Can’t Go Home Again", Williams’ delivery suggests that home really is anywhere you leave your heart -
Likely the song that stands as Williams’ most identifiable classic, 'I Believe in You' was the biggest selling record of Williams’ career – an international country chart-topper and platinum album title track. It was also explicitly, if subtly, political. The song, written by Roger Cook and Sam Hogin, lets Williams, in a relaxed "rap", shake his head at the absurdities and contradictions of modern life (so it's still just as relevant today), expressing disbelief at a host of hard life transitions and troubles – from getting old to religious fundamentalism to “... the high cost of getting by...” In opposition to all that nonsense, Williams avers that “I believe in love…I believe in you.” this was an across the board, yet another # 1 country hit (naturally) in both the U.S. and Canada, but also # 8 and # 7 on the U.S. and Canadian AC charts respectively and even reaching # 24 on the U.S. pop chart. Moreover, the song’s success stretched across the world, hitting the charts in Europe, a Top 20 hit on the Australian chart and even reaching # 4 in New Zealand-
'If I Needed You' was written by one of America's greatest songwriters, the late, great and legendary Townes Van Zandt (see posts # 551-555). Williams did hardly any collaborations in his career. But when Emmylou Harris comes calling, offering to duet a Van Zandt song, Williams simply couldn't refuse. This beautiful, moving ballad was first heard on Van Zandt’s 1972 LP "The Late Great Townes Van Zandt". Nine years later, Harris recruited Williams for the duet, which she included on her LP "Cimarron". Though Williams may never have intended to perform as a duet, here his smooth baritone and Harris’ gentle folk-country vocal blend beautifully, creating one of the most romantic pairings in the country canon. A # 3 single in the U.S., and topping the chart in Canada -
By 1981, the quietly spoken Williams was at the very height of his success, his songs dominating the charts. Yet it was around about this time that, like a few , heroes like Lefty Frizzell, Don Gibson and Townes Van Zandt, the celebrity lifestyle really wasn't for him. He started cutting back on promotional work such as going on various radio stations, avoided TV shows, cut back his concert schedule by half (though he continued giving concerts until near the end of his life), and instead spent more time at home with his wife and kids, tinkering around or relaxing on his favourite hobby of fishing. The hectic celebrity party lifestyle and chasing ever more success just wasn't for him. Yet his run of sucess wasn't over yet - that will be concluded tomorrow.
Williams always maintained tight artistic control over his material. He refused to consider sing any songs about the common country music themes of fighting, marital infidelity or drinking/drugs. Apparently it wasn't so much to take a high moral tone as to be true to his own experiences, with Williams once saying - "I've never really done those things, they haven't been a part of my life, so I guess I just don't relate to them very well." This clean cut, domestic living, devoid of any advice (apart from tobacco) made Williams a somewhat unusual country music star. Instead he preferred love ballads or storytelling songs, much like his early influencers, Eddy Arnold and Jim Reeves.
The “Gentle Giant” toughened up his sound on 'Tulsa Time', from 1978’s "Expression" LP. Driven by a gritty, funky rock'n'roll beat that sounded more like it was out of Waylon Jennings’ playbook than his own, Williams reveled in songwriter Danny Flowers’ hard-luck tale of trying and failing to make it in the big city. Pushing his baritone to a higher-than-normal register, his voice felt like it might just flutter away on the up-beat, hand-clapping chorus. This was Williams at his most versatile, a fact that didn’t go overlooked by the country music establishment - 'Tulsa Time', his 8th # 1 single (and soon-to-be favorite of Eric Clapton’s), was named ACM Song of the Year, while the CMA gave Williams the Male Vocalist award - the only time he would earn either honour -
'Lay Down Beside Me' was, like many of Williams’ early recordings, composed by Williams himself. Before he had a chance to release it himself, Kenny Rodgers cut a version for his 1976 self-titled album. It took Williams to turn it into a Top 5 hit though, which he did in style in 1979 -
'Good Ole Boys Like Me' is for me, fascinated as I am with Southern culture, with all its virtues ... and vices, is, lyrically, Williams best song. This sweet, openly nostalgic tune from Bob McDill, a # 2 single in 1980, offers a number of glimpses of vintage Southern life that's now mostly fading. There are complicated memories of a father “... with gin on his breath and a Bible in his hand...", cherished nights listening to legendary deejays John R. and Wolfman Jack on the radio and wisdom imparted by “... those Williams boys, Hank and Tennessee.” (making sure his listeners understood he wasn't referring to himself but the 2 legendary performers) What this Williams boy does with those memories is simply magical, and although the song also name-checks Thomas Wolfe, who wrote "You Can’t Go Home Again", Williams’ delivery suggests that home really is anywhere you leave your heart -
Likely the song that stands as Williams’ most identifiable classic, 'I Believe in You' was the biggest selling record of Williams’ career – an international country chart-topper and platinum album title track. It was also explicitly, if subtly, political. The song, written by Roger Cook and Sam Hogin, lets Williams, in a relaxed "rap", shake his head at the absurdities and contradictions of modern life (so it's still just as relevant today), expressing disbelief at a host of hard life transitions and troubles – from getting old to religious fundamentalism to “... the high cost of getting by...” In opposition to all that nonsense, Williams avers that “I believe in love…I believe in you.” this was an across the board, yet another # 1 country hit (naturally) in both the U.S. and Canada, but also # 8 and # 7 on the U.S. and Canadian AC charts respectively and even reaching # 24 on the U.S. pop chart. Moreover, the song’s success stretched across the world, hitting the charts in Europe, a Top 20 hit on the Australian chart and even reaching # 4 in New Zealand-
'If I Needed You' was written by one of America's greatest songwriters, the late, great and legendary Townes Van Zandt (see posts # 551-555). Williams did hardly any collaborations in his career. But when Emmylou Harris comes calling, offering to duet a Van Zandt song, Williams simply couldn't refuse. This beautiful, moving ballad was first heard on Van Zandt’s 1972 LP "The Late Great Townes Van Zandt". Nine years later, Harris recruited Williams for the duet, which she included on her LP "Cimarron". Though Williams may never have intended to perform as a duet, here his smooth baritone and Harris’ gentle folk-country vocal blend beautifully, creating one of the most romantic pairings in the country canon. A # 3 single in the U.S., and topping the chart in Canada -
By 1981, the quietly spoken Williams was at the very height of his success, his songs dominating the charts. Yet it was around about this time that, like a few , heroes like Lefty Frizzell, Don Gibson and Townes Van Zandt, the celebrity lifestyle really wasn't for him. He started cutting back on promotional work such as going on various radio stations, avoided TV shows, cut back his concert schedule by half (though he continued giving concerts until near the end of his life), and instead spent more time at home with his wife and kids, tinkering around or relaxing on his favourite hobby of fishing. The hectic celebrity party lifestyle and chasing ever more success just wasn't for him. Yet his run of sucess wasn't over yet - that will be concluded tomorrow.
Among country’s major acts, Don Williams was perhaps the least enamored of his success. Commenting on his reputation
as a superstar, he said, “The only way that I would be comfortable with that sort of title is when people tell me that my
music has helped them through some stage of their life ... But as far as that whole approach to special treatment and
people carrying on over you, I never have been too big on that.” At heart a private person, he avoided music industry
parties, he gave few interviews and TV appearances, didn't do any promotions and deliberately limited his tour schedule
so he could spend time on his farm with his family. Yet despite deliberately keeping a low profile, his hits continued right
through the 1980's and into the early 1990's.
Despite his quiet demeoner (he wasn't one to talk or banter with an audience, just go up and song his songs), onstage,
Don Williams built a large and loyal following. In addition to his domestic audience, he won fans worldwide, selling records
and touring extensively in the British Isles, Europe, Latin America, and Australia. He is one of the few singing stars of any
genres who toured through Africa - South Africa, Kenya, Zambia Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast.
Williams sang so softly and easily, and his records were arranged so sparsely, that listeners were all but forced to attend to every word. Strange then that 'Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good', usually regarded as an ordinary man’s humble morning prayer - or hope - hasn’t been more widely recognized for what it is - a great expression of all-too-human hubris. Williams comes off as just a regular Job here, accusing God of perhaps forgetting him, suggesting specific plans to replace his mysterious ways, even flattering the Lord a little bit (“... It would be easy for you!...“), the better to get him to do the singer a solid and make this day a good one. Slyest of all is that Williams’ down-on-his-knees delivery leaves us endorsing this everyday sacrilege – and even singing along to it - in this # 1 in both the U.S. and Canada in 1981 -
Williams had his 13th # 1 U.S. hit and also topped the chart again in Canada, with Bob McDill’s 'If Hollywood Don’t Need You', released in 1982 from the "Listen to the Radio" album. It’s a classic trope in country songwriting that persists even today - the narrator is pining over a woman who’s ditched him for the bright lights of Tinseltown. He’s feeling a bit stuck (“... Things back here they never change at all ...” he admits) and unable to enjoy himself without her (“...'Cause all that I can think about is you ...“), but Williams sings it with an air of calm, sad acceptance. He wishes her the best and leaves an offer on the table that he’ll have her back if things don’t pan out in California, asking her to shake Burt Reynolds’ hand if she ever meets him – funny, considering Williams had his own Hollywood moment (albeit it was all filmed in Florida) with his friend, Reynolds in 1981's "Smokey And The Bandit 2" -
On to 1983 and yet another # 1 in both the U.S. and Canada. On this Roger Cook and John Prine co-write, 'Love Is On A Roll', Williams smoothed out his down-home drawl with some rolling Jimmy Buffet style rhythms and a delivery that might convince
you could do as well - at least until you try - remaining in perfect pitch is a deceptively difficult art that only an elite few like
Eddie Arnold, Jim Reeves and Williams himself, truly mastered. He stood alone in this ability at this time - no-one else sounded like Don Williams -
Williams had passed the peak of his popularity by the late 1980's, but the hits never stopped drying up. In 1988, aged almost 50, proving age was no barrier to success, Williams released probably his best single of his later years, with 'Another Place, Another Time'. This tender ballad was the nearest thing Williams sang, or was willing to sing, about cheating - a song about a love that should've been, could've been - but wasn't - as the timing wasn’t right, due to the relationships that the singer and the other were already in. So fidelity triumphed over temptation, despite the very strong strand of regret. Of course, strong lyrics were nothing new to the great song-writer, Bob McDill, who co-wrote this gem with Paul Harrison. The song hit # 5 -
Williams continued to have hits, but his streak came to an end in 1992, following his last Top 10 single, 'Lord Have Mercy on a Country Boy'. Although he continued to perform in the mid-'90s, he had effectively retired to his Nashville farm, returning to recording in 1998 with his "I Turn the Page" album. After some limited touring, Williams resumed his recording career with "My Heart to You" in 2004, followed in 2006 by his "Farewell Tour of the World" concert tour throughout the U.S. and Europe, then another retirement. This one lasted until 2010, when he re-commenced touring and in 2012 released the acclaimed "And So It Goes" album. Enjoying a big career revival as an elder statesman of country music, Williams continued recording and performing, and released his last album, "Reflections" in 2014 - which provided a popular music video.
OK, we've seen this one before (see post #498). 'Sing Me Back Home' was written and recorded by country legend, Merle Haggard in 1967 and was his 3rd # 1 hit. A moving ballad portraying a condemned prisoner’s final moments and last wishes is a typically humane Haggard take on a member of a marginalized and even despised sub-group. There's no suggestion the condemned man is innocent, or even that he should be pardoned. He merely finds the humanity in the last minutes of a misspent life that allows his subject to regain some semblance of connection to a better time and place. And yes, it really happened - his name was James's Rabbit. He was executed in 1961 for murder. But not before Haggard, at his request, sang him home - taking the prisoner back to his hometown, where he remembers the church he grew up in, his friends and his mama, back home to his final resting place. Here, Williams, at age 75, 3 years before his death, still showed his masterly voice control -
"... Let him sing me back home with a song / And make my old memories come alive
And take me away and turn back the years / Sing me back home before I die ..." -
In 2016, Williams retired again, this time for the final time - saying he was ready "to spend some quiet time at home". In honour of his hugely successful career and music, a tribute album, "Gentle Giants: The Songs of Don Williams" was released in 2017, featuring an all-star lineup, including John Prine, Garth Brooks, Brandy Clark, Jason Isbell & Amanda Shires, Alison Krauss, Lady Antebellum, Keb’ Mo’, Pistol Annies, Chris and Morgane Stapleton and Trisha Yearwood. The Grand Ole Opry then put on a very rare special show, featuring Alison Krauss, John Prine, Jason Isbell, and Amanda Shires, all in honour of Don Williams, who was
in attendance. Just 4 months later, he was dead.
Williams rarely drank alcohol and never took drugs - he even once interrupted his concert to get 2 audience members thrown out because he notice they were smoking reefers - but he did indulge in tobacco and it got him in the end. He unexpectedly died in his retirement home on the Gulf Coast in Mobile, Alabama, in September 2017, at age 78, from emphysema. He was survived by his wife of 57 years of marriage and their 2 sons.
Williams was elected to the Country Music HoF in 2010. Over his career, he had a super impressive 17 # 1 hits and a further 22 Top 5 singles. He was also one of the minority of country singers that toured internationally extensively and enjoyed considerable world wide success.
I'm heading back to the bush for at least a week. When I'm back, moving into 1975, we'll head deep down into South Texas to find an artist, the second of his type in this history, who finally broke through to the big time, 15 years after his music career was stalled on the cusp of success by being busted for a small bit of marijuana.
as a superstar, he said, “The only way that I would be comfortable with that sort of title is when people tell me that my
music has helped them through some stage of their life ... But as far as that whole approach to special treatment and
people carrying on over you, I never have been too big on that.” At heart a private person, he avoided music industry
parties, he gave few interviews and TV appearances, didn't do any promotions and deliberately limited his tour schedule
so he could spend time on his farm with his family. Yet despite deliberately keeping a low profile, his hits continued right
through the 1980's and into the early 1990's.
Despite his quiet demeoner (he wasn't one to talk or banter with an audience, just go up and song his songs), onstage,
Don Williams built a large and loyal following. In addition to his domestic audience, he won fans worldwide, selling records
and touring extensively in the British Isles, Europe, Latin America, and Australia. He is one of the few singing stars of any
genres who toured through Africa - South Africa, Kenya, Zambia Zimbabwe and Ivory Coast.
Williams sang so softly and easily, and his records were arranged so sparsely, that listeners were all but forced to attend to every word. Strange then that 'Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good', usually regarded as an ordinary man’s humble morning prayer - or hope - hasn’t been more widely recognized for what it is - a great expression of all-too-human hubris. Williams comes off as just a regular Job here, accusing God of perhaps forgetting him, suggesting specific plans to replace his mysterious ways, even flattering the Lord a little bit (“... It would be easy for you!...“), the better to get him to do the singer a solid and make this day a good one. Slyest of all is that Williams’ down-on-his-knees delivery leaves us endorsing this everyday sacrilege – and even singing along to it - in this # 1 in both the U.S. and Canada in 1981 -
Williams had his 13th # 1 U.S. hit and also topped the chart again in Canada, with Bob McDill’s 'If Hollywood Don’t Need You', released in 1982 from the "Listen to the Radio" album. It’s a classic trope in country songwriting that persists even today - the narrator is pining over a woman who’s ditched him for the bright lights of Tinseltown. He’s feeling a bit stuck (“... Things back here they never change at all ...” he admits) and unable to enjoy himself without her (“...'Cause all that I can think about is you ...“), but Williams sings it with an air of calm, sad acceptance. He wishes her the best and leaves an offer on the table that he’ll have her back if things don’t pan out in California, asking her to shake Burt Reynolds’ hand if she ever meets him – funny, considering Williams had his own Hollywood moment (albeit it was all filmed in Florida) with his friend, Reynolds in 1981's "Smokey And The Bandit 2" -
On to 1983 and yet another # 1 in both the U.S. and Canada. On this Roger Cook and John Prine co-write, 'Love Is On A Roll', Williams smoothed out his down-home drawl with some rolling Jimmy Buffet style rhythms and a delivery that might convince
you could do as well - at least until you try - remaining in perfect pitch is a deceptively difficult art that only an elite few like
Eddie Arnold, Jim Reeves and Williams himself, truly mastered. He stood alone in this ability at this time - no-one else sounded like Don Williams -
Williams had passed the peak of his popularity by the late 1980's, but the hits never stopped drying up. In 1988, aged almost 50, proving age was no barrier to success, Williams released probably his best single of his later years, with 'Another Place, Another Time'. This tender ballad was the nearest thing Williams sang, or was willing to sing, about cheating - a song about a love that should've been, could've been - but wasn't - as the timing wasn’t right, due to the relationships that the singer and the other were already in. So fidelity triumphed over temptation, despite the very strong strand of regret. Of course, strong lyrics were nothing new to the great song-writer, Bob McDill, who co-wrote this gem with Paul Harrison. The song hit # 5 -
Williams continued to have hits, but his streak came to an end in 1992, following his last Top 10 single, 'Lord Have Mercy on a Country Boy'. Although he continued to perform in the mid-'90s, he had effectively retired to his Nashville farm, returning to recording in 1998 with his "I Turn the Page" album. After some limited touring, Williams resumed his recording career with "My Heart to You" in 2004, followed in 2006 by his "Farewell Tour of the World" concert tour throughout the U.S. and Europe, then another retirement. This one lasted until 2010, when he re-commenced touring and in 2012 released the acclaimed "And So It Goes" album. Enjoying a big career revival as an elder statesman of country music, Williams continued recording and performing, and released his last album, "Reflections" in 2014 - which provided a popular music video.
OK, we've seen this one before (see post #498). 'Sing Me Back Home' was written and recorded by country legend, Merle Haggard in 1967 and was his 3rd # 1 hit. A moving ballad portraying a condemned prisoner’s final moments and last wishes is a typically humane Haggard take on a member of a marginalized and even despised sub-group. There's no suggestion the condemned man is innocent, or even that he should be pardoned. He merely finds the humanity in the last minutes of a misspent life that allows his subject to regain some semblance of connection to a better time and place. And yes, it really happened - his name was James's Rabbit. He was executed in 1961 for murder. But not before Haggard, at his request, sang him home - taking the prisoner back to his hometown, where he remembers the church he grew up in, his friends and his mama, back home to his final resting place. Here, Williams, at age 75, 3 years before his death, still showed his masterly voice control -
"... Let him sing me back home with a song / And make my old memories come alive
And take me away and turn back the years / Sing me back home before I die ..." -
In 2016, Williams retired again, this time for the final time - saying he was ready "to spend some quiet time at home". In honour of his hugely successful career and music, a tribute album, "Gentle Giants: The Songs of Don Williams" was released in 2017, featuring an all-star lineup, including John Prine, Garth Brooks, Brandy Clark, Jason Isbell & Amanda Shires, Alison Krauss, Lady Antebellum, Keb’ Mo’, Pistol Annies, Chris and Morgane Stapleton and Trisha Yearwood. The Grand Ole Opry then put on a very rare special show, featuring Alison Krauss, John Prine, Jason Isbell, and Amanda Shires, all in honour of Don Williams, who was
in attendance. Just 4 months later, he was dead.
Williams rarely drank alcohol and never took drugs - he even once interrupted his concert to get 2 audience members thrown out because he notice they were smoking reefers - but he did indulge in tobacco and it got him in the end. He unexpectedly died in his retirement home on the Gulf Coast in Mobile, Alabama, in September 2017, at age 78, from emphysema. He was survived by his wife of 57 years of marriage and their 2 sons.
Williams was elected to the Country Music HoF in 2010. Over his career, he had a super impressive 17 # 1 hits and a further 22 Top 5 singles. He was also one of the minority of country singers that toured internationally extensively and enjoyed considerable world wide success.
I'm heading back to the bush for at least a week. When I'm back, moving into 1975, we'll head deep down into South Texas to find an artist, the second of his type in this history, who finally broke through to the big time, 15 years after his music career was stalled on the cusp of success by being busted for a small bit of marijuana.
Last edited:
PatsFitztrick
Debutant
- Mar 5, 2020
- 129
- 269
- AFL Club
- Carlton
" ....the clarity and purity of the voice" says it all.
I never tire of John Denver.
Thanks again, Prof.
- Apr 11, 2015
- 4,539
- 5,604
- AFL Club
- Hawthorn
- Other Teams
- Cill Chainnigh
Molly Tuttle again.
another but with with yodeling!
another but with with yodeling!
Last edited:
- Apr 11, 2015
- 4,539
- 5,604
- AFL Club
- Hawthorn
- Other Teams
- Cill Chainnigh
RIP Loretta. More than 50 years performing at the top is some achievement.
Without doubt, Loretta Lynn was one of the greats - described in the New York Times obituary as "... one of the most beloved American music performers of her generation..." - and whose remarkable life and rise from abject poverty to major stardom was told in the movie "The Coalminers Daughter" - which hopefully will appear on TV (last seen on SBS last year) as a tribute. Her potted history is found on posts # 489-493.
Loretta Lynn, Country Music Star and Symbol of Rural Resilience, Dies at 90 (Published 2022)
Her powerful voice, playful lyrics and topical songs were a model for generations of country singers and songwriters. So was her life story.
Loretta Lynn, country singer of love and hardship, dies aged 90
Kentucky-born singer went from poverty and teenage marriage to becoming one of the most celebrated stars of US country
Not far back, I covered the first Hispanic artist in this series, (see posts #713-716). His success was soon followed - and even eclipsed - by another Hispanic artist - and one who not only wove Spanish lyrics into his songs, just like Rodriguez (more difficult than you might think - I‘lol explain why later) but also openly incorporated Hispanic musical influences into his music. even more than Rodriguez, who long ago based himself in Nashville, todays artist is still revered as a legend in South Texas, especially with its majority Hispanic populace. He was known as the King of Tex-Mex (before Tex-Mex was re-labeled as Tejano). His career and influence extended well beyond the bounds of country music, especially into the Mexican norteno traditions, but of course this history segment will mostly focus on his considerable country, or pop-country, contribution.
Born Baldermar Huerta in 1937 in San Benito, a South Texas border town near Brownsville in 1937, he grew up (like the majority in this series) in abject poverty, a migrant farm worker alongside his parents. Working from the age of 10, he later reminisced how he “worked beets in Michigan, pickles in Ohio, baled hay and picked tomatoes in Indiana. When that was over, it was cotton-picking time in Arkansas“. He sang and played guitar to the blues, country and Mexican records he heard on the radio and sang along with others, including African Americans picking in the fields. He eventually developed into his own hybrid style. Always a performer, he sang on the radio as a boy and won contests - one valuable prize included a tub full of food worth $10. At age 16, he left school and joined the US marines in 1953, but too often landed in the brig due to alcohol fueled fights and in 1956 he was court-marshalled and dismissed for continual bad conduct. Referring back to his military service, he later stated (after President Bill Clinton intervened to remove the charge) - “It has taken me 35 years to have my discharge changed from bad conduct, and this means I am now eligible for a military funeral”.
In the late 1950s, he was back in San Benito, billing himself as ‘El Be Bop Kid’ playing rockabilly in local honky-tonks and dance halls. By 1958 his records, sung entirely in Spanish, were doing well in Texas and Mexico. A Spanish version of Elvis’ ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, went to # 1 in Mexico and Central America. In 1959 he decided to adopt the stage name, Freddy Fender (Fender came from the neck of his guitar), along with a stronger rock’n’roll and country feel, in order to attract "gringo" audiences. He scored a local pop hit with the self-penned ’Wasted Days And Wasted Nights in 1960. But Fender was busted in Louisiana for possessing a small envelope of marijuana, for personal use, in his car glove box, convicted and sentenced to 5 years in Louisiana's notorious Angola State Prison (the same correctional facility which once held blues legend Leadbelly). His song, Wasted Days And Wasted Nights’ was promptly dropped by radio stations and record stores just as it was poised to become a major national hit And his promising music career came to a sudden halt.
After serving 3 years, Fender was paroled thanks to the efforts of Louisiana music great and governor Jimmie Davis (see posts # 150-153) but only on the condition that upon his release he stay away from the corruptive influences of the music scene. After his 2 year parole ended, Fender tried to re-ignite his career, but with the exception of a few scattered semi-regular nightclub gigs in the New Orleans area, he found little success. In 1969 he finally gave up on finding success in New Orleans (but not before absorbing Cajun, Country and New Orleans jazz influences) and returned to his home town on the Texas-Mexican border where he worked as a car mechanic and gained a sociology degree at community college with a view to helping ex-convicts. He resumed playing weekend gigs at local honkytonks and gradually built up an increasing fan base around South Texas. In 1974, he met the owner of the Houston-based Crazy Cajun label, Huey Meaux, and after agreeing on a recording deal, he convinced Fender to perform country music while maintaining his music's Hispanic roots.
Fender's first Meaux-produced single, ’Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘ was released in January 1975 and soon became a massive cross-over smash hit, with Fender becoming, like Don Williams, one of the rare artists to top both the country and pop chartswith the one song. It also became a worldwide hit, hitting # 1 in both Canada and Australia, # 2 in N.Z. Fender, at age 37, and 15 years after his 1960 marijuana arrest and conviction stopped his initial rise to stardom in its tracks, he found himself an “overnight“ star. Written by Vivian Keith and Ben Peters in 1967, the song had been recorded over two dozen times by various artists – but Fender‘s bilingual version, singing the first half in English then substituting Spanish lyrics, is by far the most famous and regarded as the standard. Fender also recorded a version fully in Spanish, entitled ’Estaré Contigo Cuando Triste Estés‘ (which literally translates as - "I‘ll be with you when you are sad"). The Spanish-language 2nd verse in the English version is the 1st verse of the fully Spanish version. ‘Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘ absolutely kickstarted then turbo-charged Fender’s career
and remained the biggest selling hit of his career -
As outlined above, Fender originally wrote and recorded ‘Wasted Days And Wasted Nights’ in 1959, during the very early stages of his career And was set to become a hit back then until his marijuana bust. The song showcased his new style of blending rockabilly and Tex-Mex (now called Tejano), which he was trying to perfect at the time. By the time of his 1975 re-recording, he also incorporated a typical Louisiana swamp pop ballad arrangement. Riding on the back of the enormous success of ’Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘, it became another huge hit, one of his most successful. It topped the country charts and crossed over to the top 10 in both the pop and AC charts in the U.S., # 2 in Canada, # 8 in Australia and # 1 in NZ -
Fellow Texan, Charley Crockett, recorded a cover of this song on his 2016 album, “In The Night”.
Fender followed up with ‘Since I Met You Baby’. It was written and first performed by R&B artist and pianist, Ivory Joe Hunter in 1956. The popularity of the song was renewed in 1969 when Sonny James took it all the way to # 1 (see post # 477). Fender‘s version also made it to the Top 10 in 1975 -
‘Secret Love’ was originally written by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webber for the 1953 musical western film “Calamity Jane” and was sung by pop legend, Doris Day. It has been recorded by a wide range of artists in different genres. Fender’s version became his 3rd # 1 hit in 1975. It also crossed over to reach the Top 20 of the pop chart. Fender‘s covered the song for the
album ‘“Are You Ready for Freddy?”, his second consecutive # 1 album while the single was Fender’s 3rd # 1 in 1975 and also crossed over to the Top 20 of the pop chart. This song also went all the way to # 1 in Canada. This live version is from the iconic country music venue, Church Street Station in Orlando, and shows the power of Fenders high tenor vocals -
Now a song we’ve already seen before (see post # 235). ‘Wild Side Of Life‘ was made famous by Texan Western swing legend Hank Thompson in 1952 and became one of the most popular tunes in the history of country music. The wonderful melody was “borrowed“ from Roy Acuff's 'Great Speckled Bird' hit of 1938 (see post #148), which in turn was ”acquired“ from the original Carter Family hit 'I'm Thinking Tonight of my Blue Eyes' (way back in post #118). There have been many cover versions of the song – it even yielded one of the most famous “answer” songs from Kitty Wells (see post # 238) - of which some turned out
to be a hit in their own right. But Fender’s masterful 1976 version was one the most successful covers, preserving the Western swing elements in the accompiament -
In the same year, 1976, Rod Stewart released a version of this song on his album, “A Night On The Town” and the British boogie-beat band Status Quo (as per those Coles ads) also had a top 10 pop hit in both the UK and Australia in early 1977 with their rock version - but hardly any of their fans would know of the history of the song - and the even longer history of the songs melody! Fender also subsequently recorded a live album along with Hank Thompson, Don Williams and Roy Clarke in 1977 - “Country Comes To Carnegie Hall”
In just one year, 1975, Freddy Fender had gone from obscurity to being one of the biggest names in country, and even pop, music. His first 2 albums, “Before The Next Teardrop Falls” and “Are You Ready For Freddy?”, both topped the charts. His first
4 singles all went Top 10, with 3 going all the way to # 1. Billboard named Fender its “Top Male Artist” of 1975. ’Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘ was named as Best Single of the Year at the 1975 CMA awards and he won the Best New Artist (at age 38!) at the ACM Awards. Fenders career will be continued - tomorrow.
Born Baldermar Huerta in 1937 in San Benito, a South Texas border town near Brownsville in 1937, he grew up (like the majority in this series) in abject poverty, a migrant farm worker alongside his parents. Working from the age of 10, he later reminisced how he “worked beets in Michigan, pickles in Ohio, baled hay and picked tomatoes in Indiana. When that was over, it was cotton-picking time in Arkansas“. He sang and played guitar to the blues, country and Mexican records he heard on the radio and sang along with others, including African Americans picking in the fields. He eventually developed into his own hybrid style. Always a performer, he sang on the radio as a boy and won contests - one valuable prize included a tub full of food worth $10. At age 16, he left school and joined the US marines in 1953, but too often landed in the brig due to alcohol fueled fights and in 1956 he was court-marshalled and dismissed for continual bad conduct. Referring back to his military service, he later stated (after President Bill Clinton intervened to remove the charge) - “It has taken me 35 years to have my discharge changed from bad conduct, and this means I am now eligible for a military funeral”.
In the late 1950s, he was back in San Benito, billing himself as ‘El Be Bop Kid’ playing rockabilly in local honky-tonks and dance halls. By 1958 his records, sung entirely in Spanish, were doing well in Texas and Mexico. A Spanish version of Elvis’ ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, went to # 1 in Mexico and Central America. In 1959 he decided to adopt the stage name, Freddy Fender (Fender came from the neck of his guitar), along with a stronger rock’n’roll and country feel, in order to attract "gringo" audiences. He scored a local pop hit with the self-penned ’Wasted Days And Wasted Nights in 1960. But Fender was busted in Louisiana for possessing a small envelope of marijuana, for personal use, in his car glove box, convicted and sentenced to 5 years in Louisiana's notorious Angola State Prison (the same correctional facility which once held blues legend Leadbelly). His song, Wasted Days And Wasted Nights’ was promptly dropped by radio stations and record stores just as it was poised to become a major national hit And his promising music career came to a sudden halt.
After serving 3 years, Fender was paroled thanks to the efforts of Louisiana music great and governor Jimmie Davis (see posts # 150-153) but only on the condition that upon his release he stay away from the corruptive influences of the music scene. After his 2 year parole ended, Fender tried to re-ignite his career, but with the exception of a few scattered semi-regular nightclub gigs in the New Orleans area, he found little success. In 1969 he finally gave up on finding success in New Orleans (but not before absorbing Cajun, Country and New Orleans jazz influences) and returned to his home town on the Texas-Mexican border where he worked as a car mechanic and gained a sociology degree at community college with a view to helping ex-convicts. He resumed playing weekend gigs at local honkytonks and gradually built up an increasing fan base around South Texas. In 1974, he met the owner of the Houston-based Crazy Cajun label, Huey Meaux, and after agreeing on a recording deal, he convinced Fender to perform country music while maintaining his music's Hispanic roots.
Fender's first Meaux-produced single, ’Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘ was released in January 1975 and soon became a massive cross-over smash hit, with Fender becoming, like Don Williams, one of the rare artists to top both the country and pop chartswith the one song. It also became a worldwide hit, hitting # 1 in both Canada and Australia, # 2 in N.Z. Fender, at age 37, and 15 years after his 1960 marijuana arrest and conviction stopped his initial rise to stardom in its tracks, he found himself an “overnight“ star. Written by Vivian Keith and Ben Peters in 1967, the song had been recorded over two dozen times by various artists – but Fender‘s bilingual version, singing the first half in English then substituting Spanish lyrics, is by far the most famous and regarded as the standard. Fender also recorded a version fully in Spanish, entitled ’Estaré Contigo Cuando Triste Estés‘ (which literally translates as - "I‘ll be with you when you are sad"). The Spanish-language 2nd verse in the English version is the 1st verse of the fully Spanish version. ‘Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘ absolutely kickstarted then turbo-charged Fender’s career
and remained the biggest selling hit of his career -
As outlined above, Fender originally wrote and recorded ‘Wasted Days And Wasted Nights’ in 1959, during the very early stages of his career And was set to become a hit back then until his marijuana bust. The song showcased his new style of blending rockabilly and Tex-Mex (now called Tejano), which he was trying to perfect at the time. By the time of his 1975 re-recording, he also incorporated a typical Louisiana swamp pop ballad arrangement. Riding on the back of the enormous success of ’Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘, it became another huge hit, one of his most successful. It topped the country charts and crossed over to the top 10 in both the pop and AC charts in the U.S., # 2 in Canada, # 8 in Australia and # 1 in NZ -
Fellow Texan, Charley Crockett, recorded a cover of this song on his 2016 album, “In The Night”.
Fender followed up with ‘Since I Met You Baby’. It was written and first performed by R&B artist and pianist, Ivory Joe Hunter in 1956. The popularity of the song was renewed in 1969 when Sonny James took it all the way to # 1 (see post # 477). Fender‘s version also made it to the Top 10 in 1975 -
‘Secret Love’ was originally written by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webber for the 1953 musical western film “Calamity Jane” and was sung by pop legend, Doris Day. It has been recorded by a wide range of artists in different genres. Fender’s version became his 3rd # 1 hit in 1975. It also crossed over to reach the Top 20 of the pop chart. Fender‘s covered the song for the
album ‘“Are You Ready for Freddy?”, his second consecutive # 1 album while the single was Fender’s 3rd # 1 in 1975 and also crossed over to the Top 20 of the pop chart. This song also went all the way to # 1 in Canada. This live version is from the iconic country music venue, Church Street Station in Orlando, and shows the power of Fenders high tenor vocals -
Now a song we’ve already seen before (see post # 235). ‘Wild Side Of Life‘ was made famous by Texan Western swing legend Hank Thompson in 1952 and became one of the most popular tunes in the history of country music. The wonderful melody was “borrowed“ from Roy Acuff's 'Great Speckled Bird' hit of 1938 (see post #148), which in turn was ”acquired“ from the original Carter Family hit 'I'm Thinking Tonight of my Blue Eyes' (way back in post #118). There have been many cover versions of the song – it even yielded one of the most famous “answer” songs from Kitty Wells (see post # 238) - of which some turned out
to be a hit in their own right. But Fender’s masterful 1976 version was one the most successful covers, preserving the Western swing elements in the accompiament -
In the same year, 1976, Rod Stewart released a version of this song on his album, “A Night On The Town” and the British boogie-beat band Status Quo (as per those Coles ads) also had a top 10 pop hit in both the UK and Australia in early 1977 with their rock version - but hardly any of their fans would know of the history of the song - and the even longer history of the songs melody! Fender also subsequently recorded a live album along with Hank Thompson, Don Williams and Roy Clarke in 1977 - “Country Comes To Carnegie Hall”
In just one year, 1975, Freddy Fender had gone from obscurity to being one of the biggest names in country, and even pop, music. His first 2 albums, “Before The Next Teardrop Falls” and “Are You Ready For Freddy?”, both topped the charts. His first
4 singles all went Top 10, with 3 going all the way to # 1. Billboard named Fender its “Top Male Artist” of 1975. ’Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘ was named as Best Single of the Year at the 1975 CMA awards and he won the Best New Artist (at age 38!) at the ACM Awards. Fenders career will be continued - tomorrow.
Last edited:
I’m starting today with the briefest of brief outline of what used to be called Tex-Mex, now called Tejano, music that I can manage, without writing a whole chapter, about a genre that’s so much a core part of Central and South Texan and northeastern Mexican culture, combining stylistic elements from both cultures. Tejano music draws from norteño, a style of music from Northern Mexico (“norteño” is the Spanish word for “north”), with its passionate ballads, and the brass music of German and Czech immigrants who settled in Texas during the 19th century. Tejano artists borrowed the accordion (2 different types and each differing again from the Cajun accordion), stringed instruments like the violin, and brass instruments like the trumpet and tuba from these styles.
Conjunto music - traditional Tejano music from the Rio Grande borderlands - is another primary influence on the sound. Both conjunto groups in Texas and grupos norteños (norteño groups) in Mexico perform with a mix of traditional Mexican and Eastern European instruments like the button accordion, bajo sexto (a 12-string guitar), bass, and drums. Conjunto and norteño groups also play similar setlists built around traditional forms of Mexican music, including corridos, or ballads, and dance music like cumbias, polkas, and waltzes. Tejano music offers variations on these band arrangements and songs and draws on forms of American music, such as rock’n’roll, blues, and, of course, country, for its sound - which is where Freddy Fender steps in. So, with this really briefest of overviews done, let’s get back to Fender’s music, picking up where we left off in 1976.
The R&B ballad ‘You’ll Lose A Good Thing’ was written by Barbara Lynn after she found out her boyfriend was chatting up another girl. Feeling devastated, she cried the whole night but woke up the next morning and wrote her ultimatum in a song. It became a # 1 hit for Lynn. In 1976, Freddy Fender covered the song for his 1976 album, “Rock’n‘Country”, retaining some of the bluesy feel while also making it a country version of the original. The single became his 4th # 1 hit. Fender transformed the song from its R&B vibe to his almost perfect Country version, with his vocals and guitar riffs -
Featured in Fender’s 1976 “Rock’n’Country” album, ‘Vaya Cos Dios‘, written by Larry Russell, Buddy Pepper, and Inez James, immediately brings on some Spanish feel and spice and is included in the list of the Top 100 Western Songs of All Time that was compiled by the Western Writers of America. Fender, in true Mexican Norteno style, always imbued his songs with heartfelt emotion - ‘Vaya Cos Dios” is a perfect example that received a positive reception despite being a sad song, reaching # 7 in the U.S. and all the way to # 1 in Canada. Translated from Spanish, the phrase “Vaya cos Dios” simply means “go with God.” Hence, the song “Vaya Cos Dios” is a final farewell song to a departed loved one - and a song anyone who has a lost a loved one could relate to-
Cookie & His Cupcakes were a Swamp-pop group from Louisiana, who were among the first to blend Cajun music with rock‘n’roll to create swamp pop, combining New Orleans–style, R&B, country, Western swing and traditional French Louisiana musical influences (so quite a big mix). Although a fairly obscure genre elsewhere, apart from a brief wave of national exposure in the late 1950’s to early 1960’s, swamp pop still maintains a large audience in its south Louisiana and southeast Texas homeland (one of those areas, like the Mississippi Delta, the central Appalachians region and South Texas so rich in music heritage). Having spent a decade from 1959 to 1969 in New Orleans (including the 3 years he spent in gaol), Fender had absorbed swamp-pop into his own bag of musical influences, and here, also from his 1976 album, “Rock’n‘Country”, he shows the swamp-pop sound on his cover of the Cookie & His Cupcakes 1957 classic ‘Mathilda’, regarded as the unofficial anthem of the swamp-pop genre -
‘The Rains Came’ reached # 4 in the U.S. and even better in Canada, again all the way to # 1. It was written in 1962 by Fender’s record producer, Huey P. Meaux and first recorded by Big Sambo and the House Wreckers, then recorded in 1965 by the Sir Douglas Quintet. Their version reached #31 in 1966. Fender covered the song as the 3rd single from his 1977 album “Rock 'n' Country”. His version was the most successful, peaking at #4 -
In 1977, 4 country greats, multi-instrumentalist Roy Clark, Western swing legend Hank Thompson (by now well past his prime, see posts # 235-237), Don Williams (see posts #. ) and Fender (both now at the peak of their popularity) received the rare honour for country artists of being invited to take the stage at the prestigious Carnegie Hall, NYC, to perform (individually) a once in a lifetime, sold-out event. Between them, they charted more than 200 Country hits, including 26 that reached # 1. Featured in the live album of the concert “Country Comes To Carnegie Hall”, the Hank Williams classic ‘Jambalaya‘ (see post #. ) brings on true country vibes from the word go. Fender loved performing this song live to his fans on stage while showcasing his sublime guitar skills. Even better is his vocal capabilities when he shifts from English to Spanish in the singing, making him an icon in this art -
I mentioned yesterday about Fender slipping into Spanish mid-song - just like Rodriguez - and stated this is more difficult than what you might think. Through previous travels through Latin America, I've picked up a useful knowledge of Spanish, though I'm not yet fluent - it's a great language, especially for music. The problem with dropping into a new language halfway through a song is that it’s impossible to simply do a word for word replacement, due to differing grammatical constructions and the need to preserve the metre and flow of the song inevitably requires not only differing words but whole new phrases for the singer to memorise e.g. in Fender’s biggest hit, ‘Before The Next Teardrop Falls‘, the English line “… I’ll Be There Before The Next Teardrop Falls.” is rendered in Spanish “… Y estaré contigo cuando triste estás”, which translates literally as “I’ll be with you when you are sad”. So it ain’t that simple to switch language and hence have a new set of lyrics to memorise.
From 1975 through to 1977, Fender had 12 songs that reached theTop 20, with 4 reaching # 1. However, as tastes changed, Fender, just like his fellow South Texan Hispanic performer, Johnny Rodriguez (who by now lived in Nashville), found it harder to hit the chart heights by the late 1970’s. Like Rodriguez, this wasn’t helped by alcoholism (a problem Fender had since his teen years) and drug abuse - namely cocaine - exacerbated by the pressures of sudden fortune and fame.Although Fender‘s peak commercial success as a major star was over by the mid seventies and he had difficult times ahead through the 1980’s, many music critics consider Fender’s last period of his career to have been his most valuable - particularly to Tejano music. But that’s for tomorrow.
Conjunto music - traditional Tejano music from the Rio Grande borderlands - is another primary influence on the sound. Both conjunto groups in Texas and grupos norteños (norteño groups) in Mexico perform with a mix of traditional Mexican and Eastern European instruments like the button accordion, bajo sexto (a 12-string guitar), bass, and drums. Conjunto and norteño groups also play similar setlists built around traditional forms of Mexican music, including corridos, or ballads, and dance music like cumbias, polkas, and waltzes. Tejano music offers variations on these band arrangements and songs and draws on forms of American music, such as rock’n’roll, blues, and, of course, country, for its sound - which is where Freddy Fender steps in. So, with this really briefest of overviews done, let’s get back to Fender’s music, picking up where we left off in 1976.
The R&B ballad ‘You’ll Lose A Good Thing’ was written by Barbara Lynn after she found out her boyfriend was chatting up another girl. Feeling devastated, she cried the whole night but woke up the next morning and wrote her ultimatum in a song. It became a # 1 hit for Lynn. In 1976, Freddy Fender covered the song for his 1976 album, “Rock’n‘Country”, retaining some of the bluesy feel while also making it a country version of the original. The single became his 4th # 1 hit. Fender transformed the song from its R&B vibe to his almost perfect Country version, with his vocals and guitar riffs -
Featured in Fender’s 1976 “Rock’n’Country” album, ‘Vaya Cos Dios‘, written by Larry Russell, Buddy Pepper, and Inez James, immediately brings on some Spanish feel and spice and is included in the list of the Top 100 Western Songs of All Time that was compiled by the Western Writers of America. Fender, in true Mexican Norteno style, always imbued his songs with heartfelt emotion - ‘Vaya Cos Dios” is a perfect example that received a positive reception despite being a sad song, reaching # 7 in the U.S. and all the way to # 1 in Canada. Translated from Spanish, the phrase “Vaya cos Dios” simply means “go with God.” Hence, the song “Vaya Cos Dios” is a final farewell song to a departed loved one - and a song anyone who has a lost a loved one could relate to-
Cookie & His Cupcakes were a Swamp-pop group from Louisiana, who were among the first to blend Cajun music with rock‘n’roll to create swamp pop, combining New Orleans–style, R&B, country, Western swing and traditional French Louisiana musical influences (so quite a big mix). Although a fairly obscure genre elsewhere, apart from a brief wave of national exposure in the late 1950’s to early 1960’s, swamp pop still maintains a large audience in its south Louisiana and southeast Texas homeland (one of those areas, like the Mississippi Delta, the central Appalachians region and South Texas so rich in music heritage). Having spent a decade from 1959 to 1969 in New Orleans (including the 3 years he spent in gaol), Fender had absorbed swamp-pop into his own bag of musical influences, and here, also from his 1976 album, “Rock’n‘Country”, he shows the swamp-pop sound on his cover of the Cookie & His Cupcakes 1957 classic ‘Mathilda’, regarded as the unofficial anthem of the swamp-pop genre -
‘The Rains Came’ reached # 4 in the U.S. and even better in Canada, again all the way to # 1. It was written in 1962 by Fender’s record producer, Huey P. Meaux and first recorded by Big Sambo and the House Wreckers, then recorded in 1965 by the Sir Douglas Quintet. Their version reached #31 in 1966. Fender covered the song as the 3rd single from his 1977 album “Rock 'n' Country”. His version was the most successful, peaking at #4 -
In 1977, 4 country greats, multi-instrumentalist Roy Clark, Western swing legend Hank Thompson (by now well past his prime, see posts # 235-237), Don Williams (see posts #. ) and Fender (both now at the peak of their popularity) received the rare honour for country artists of being invited to take the stage at the prestigious Carnegie Hall, NYC, to perform (individually) a once in a lifetime, sold-out event. Between them, they charted more than 200 Country hits, including 26 that reached # 1. Featured in the live album of the concert “Country Comes To Carnegie Hall”, the Hank Williams classic ‘Jambalaya‘ (see post #. ) brings on true country vibes from the word go. Fender loved performing this song live to his fans on stage while showcasing his sublime guitar skills. Even better is his vocal capabilities when he shifts from English to Spanish in the singing, making him an icon in this art -
I mentioned yesterday about Fender slipping into Spanish mid-song - just like Rodriguez - and stated this is more difficult than what you might think. Through previous travels through Latin America, I've picked up a useful knowledge of Spanish, though I'm not yet fluent - it's a great language, especially for music. The problem with dropping into a new language halfway through a song is that it’s impossible to simply do a word for word replacement, due to differing grammatical constructions and the need to preserve the metre and flow of the song inevitably requires not only differing words but whole new phrases for the singer to memorise e.g. in Fender’s biggest hit, ‘Before The Next Teardrop Falls‘, the English line “… I’ll Be There Before The Next Teardrop Falls.” is rendered in Spanish “… Y estaré contigo cuando triste estás”, which translates literally as “I’ll be with you when you are sad”. So it ain’t that simple to switch language and hence have a new set of lyrics to memorise.
From 1975 through to 1977, Fender had 12 songs that reached theTop 20, with 4 reaching # 1. However, as tastes changed, Fender, just like his fellow South Texan Hispanic performer, Johnny Rodriguez (who by now lived in Nashville), found it harder to hit the chart heights by the late 1970’s. Like Rodriguez, this wasn’t helped by alcoholism (a problem Fender had since his teen years) and drug abuse - namely cocaine - exacerbated by the pressures of sudden fortune and fame.Although Fender‘s peak commercial success as a major star was over by the mid seventies and he had difficult times ahead through the 1980’s, many music critics consider Fender’s last period of his career to have been his most valuable - particularly to Tejano music. But that’s for tomorrow.
We left off yesterday with Freddy Fender riding high, with chart topping hits and still enjoying cross-over success. However, as tastes changed in the late seventies, his chart successes dropped away, with no more top 5 hits after 1977 and top 20 hits after 1978. He then faced some difficult years battling addiction as he proceeded into the 1980’s, before sorting himself out and having a great career revival as a highly respected musician - not confined to country music. But first off for today, we start off back in the late 1970’s, just as his run of high end chart successes were coming to an end.
‘I'm Leaving It Up to You‘, released by Fender in 1978, was written and originally performed by rock, blues and R&B duo, Don Harris and Dewey Terry in 1957 and later popularized in 1963 by the American rock duo Dale and Grace, who took it to #1 on
the pop chart. In 1974, Donny and Marie Osmond reached the top 5 on the pop chart and #1 on the AC chart with their cover. Although it wasn’t even a top 20 hit for Fender, only reaching # 26, a sure sign that his high charting days were over, his cover has endured and now remains one of his better critically regarded covers -
Fender had been battling with alcohol addiction since his teen years - being court marshalled and thrown out of the U.S. marines in 1956 after a series of alcohol related incident. Come the 1980’s and, despite being in a long term marriage and having five children (though one was killed in a car crash), he was still hitting the bottle and also indulging in an ever increasing cocaine addiction when in 1985 he entered a drug clinic and managed to overcome his addiction. He then found a new interest in acting, appearing in the movie “She Came To The Valley”. In 1988 he appeared in the highly acclaimed Robert Redford-directed “The Milagro Beanfield War”.
Marching on to the 1990s, still strong in his vocals despite everything, Fender released the critically acclaimed album “Favourite Ballads”, which featured some of the greatest songs he ever did, such as a wonderful version of the country standard ‘Release Me‘. Written by country song-writers Eddie "Piano" Miller and Robert Yount in 1949, 4 years later this country music classic became a hit for Jimmy Heap, Kitty Wells (see post # 238 for this and the next classic song) and Ray Price (post # 269), all in 1954. Even though Price had several major hits beforehand, ’Release Me’ is sometimes considered his breakthrough hit. The song is best known in Australia and the UK due to the top-selling 1967 pop cover by Englebert Humperdinck. Without a doubt, ‘Release Me’
is a sweet song and Fender brings his own distinctive style and sublime vocals to one of the best covers of this country classic -
Also from the 1991 “Favourite Ballads” album, ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You‘ was written and first recorded by country singer-songwriter great, Don Gibson (see post # 400). It was released in 1958 but only as the B-side (yep - the B-side) of ’Oh, Lonesome Me’, but still reached # 7. At the time of Gibson's death in 2003, the song had long become a country standard, recorded by more than 700 artists, including Kitty Wells, who took it to # 3 in 1958 (see post # 238), but most notably by
Ray Charles (post # 443), whose recording reached # 1 on all the charts. Fender delivered another great cover in his own distinctive style -
‘Crying Time’ is a song from 1964 written and originally recorded by the legendary Bakersfield Sound artist, Buck Owens
(post # 458). It gained greater success in the version recorded by Ray Charles (post # 445), which won 2 Grammy Awards
in 1967. Numerous other cover versions have been performed and recorded over the intervening years, and one of the best
was from Fender, again from his 1991 “Favourite Ballads” album -
In 1989, Fender entered a new - and many critics consider the best - stage of his career when he became a member of the all-star supergroup, The Texas Tornados, with long-time friends Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers and Flaco Jimenez - all highly accomplished and multi-talented musicians in their own right - from San Antonio, with particular skills in Tejano music. Flaco Jiménez had played with acts such as The Rolling Stones and Dwight Yoakam and is known as the "Father of Conjunto Music", a master of playing the Conjunto accordion. Augie Meyers had shared the stage with the likes of the Allman Brothers Band and Bob Dylan and like all the other group members, is a member of the Texas Music Hall of Fame. Doug Sahm and Meyers were both members of the 1960’s Texan pop-rock band the Sir Douglas Quintet. Meyers's signature sound on the Vox organ was a prominent feature of the band's sound.
The Texas Tornados 1990 debut was recorded in both English and Spanish versions. From the start, they were highly
acclaimed by music critics and soon attracted a large fan base, enjoying considerable success, both as a live act and on recordings, going on to perform worldwide, including the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton and the Montreux Jazz
Festival, making regular appearances at Farm Aid and the Houston Rodeo. They won a Grammy award in 1990 for Best
Mexican/American Performance. This clip is from a performance on Austin City Limits in 1990 with one of their popular
Tejano songs, ‘Hey Baby Que Paso’-
Throughout the 1990‘s, Fender split his time pretty evenly between The Tornados, the star-studded Los Super Seven and his own solo career. In the late 1990s, now n his sixties and while remaining a member of The Texan Tornados, Fender also joined another supergroup, Los Super Seven, with Los Lobos' David Hidalgo and César Rosas, Flaco Jiménez, Ruben Ramos, Joe Ely, and country singer Rick Trevino. He shared in 2 Grammys with the Texas Tornados, won in 1990 for best Mexican-American performance for “Soy de San Luis” and with Los Super Seven in the same category in 1998 for “Los Super Seven”. He also won a Grammy for Best Latin Album in 2002 for “La Musica De Baldemar Huerta“, showing the great respect he was now held in amongst the country’s top music critics.
Fender had to cut down his workload to weekends only when he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 2000. He received a kidney transplant from his youngest daughter in 2002 and received a liver transplant in 2004. He continued to perform and played his final concert on New Years Eve 2005. just weeks later, early in 2006, Fender became ill and died of lung cancer at his home in Corpus Christi in October 2006.
The funeral procession went along Freddy Fender Lane, past the home where he grew up. Singer Charlie Rich, Jr., who had once been a member of Fender’s band, sang the singer’s legendary ‘Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘ during the service. The Texas Governor and Congressman attended. Fender was buried with military honors at the San Benito Cemetery, survived by his wife Vangie, 2sons, and 2daughters. In death, Freddy Fender’s musical colleagues recalled him as a musical icon whose influence on future generations of rock‘n’roll, country (which, though I’ve mainly concentrated on in this history was just a part of his total music career), and in particular Tejano musicians, was substantial.
Fender was inducted into the Conjunto Music HoF in 1986, Grammy awards for his group work in the Texas Tornados in 1991 and Los Super Seven in 1999, and for his solo work on “La Musica de Baldemar Huerta”, which won the Grammy for Best Latin Pop Album in 2002. ‘Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘ was named one of the top 100 country songs of all time in 2003. His other accolades included the Hollywood Walk of Fame Star in 1998 and the Texas Music HoF in 1999, the Tejano Roots HoF Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, and the South Texas Music Walk of Fame Star in 2004. The one thing he still hasn’t achieved yet, being just too Texan for Nashville, is admission into the country music HoF - another scandalous omission. In 2007, the Freddy Fender Museum opened in San Benito and is a must see should you go down deep into South Texas, to the Brownsville area. He remains a much revered figure down there.
Now I’m required to head off again for another 2 weeks - this time to remote parts of the Gulf Country of far North Queensland. But I’ll be back and plunging back to the mid 1970’s, finally ready to take this history on another new path.
‘I'm Leaving It Up to You‘, released by Fender in 1978, was written and originally performed by rock, blues and R&B duo, Don Harris and Dewey Terry in 1957 and later popularized in 1963 by the American rock duo Dale and Grace, who took it to #1 on
the pop chart. In 1974, Donny and Marie Osmond reached the top 5 on the pop chart and #1 on the AC chart with their cover. Although it wasn’t even a top 20 hit for Fender, only reaching # 26, a sure sign that his high charting days were over, his cover has endured and now remains one of his better critically regarded covers -
Fender had been battling with alcohol addiction since his teen years - being court marshalled and thrown out of the U.S. marines in 1956 after a series of alcohol related incident. Come the 1980’s and, despite being in a long term marriage and having five children (though one was killed in a car crash), he was still hitting the bottle and also indulging in an ever increasing cocaine addiction when in 1985 he entered a drug clinic and managed to overcome his addiction. He then found a new interest in acting, appearing in the movie “She Came To The Valley”. In 1988 he appeared in the highly acclaimed Robert Redford-directed “The Milagro Beanfield War”.
Marching on to the 1990s, still strong in his vocals despite everything, Fender released the critically acclaimed album “Favourite Ballads”, which featured some of the greatest songs he ever did, such as a wonderful version of the country standard ‘Release Me‘. Written by country song-writers Eddie "Piano" Miller and Robert Yount in 1949, 4 years later this country music classic became a hit for Jimmy Heap, Kitty Wells (see post # 238 for this and the next classic song) and Ray Price (post # 269), all in 1954. Even though Price had several major hits beforehand, ’Release Me’ is sometimes considered his breakthrough hit. The song is best known in Australia and the UK due to the top-selling 1967 pop cover by Englebert Humperdinck. Without a doubt, ‘Release Me’
is a sweet song and Fender brings his own distinctive style and sublime vocals to one of the best covers of this country classic -
Also from the 1991 “Favourite Ballads” album, ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You‘ was written and first recorded by country singer-songwriter great, Don Gibson (see post # 400). It was released in 1958 but only as the B-side (yep - the B-side) of ’Oh, Lonesome Me’, but still reached # 7. At the time of Gibson's death in 2003, the song had long become a country standard, recorded by more than 700 artists, including Kitty Wells, who took it to # 3 in 1958 (see post # 238), but most notably by
Ray Charles (post # 443), whose recording reached # 1 on all the charts. Fender delivered another great cover in his own distinctive style -
‘Crying Time’ is a song from 1964 written and originally recorded by the legendary Bakersfield Sound artist, Buck Owens
(post # 458). It gained greater success in the version recorded by Ray Charles (post # 445), which won 2 Grammy Awards
in 1967. Numerous other cover versions have been performed and recorded over the intervening years, and one of the best
was from Fender, again from his 1991 “Favourite Ballads” album -
In 1989, Fender entered a new - and many critics consider the best - stage of his career when he became a member of the all-star supergroup, The Texas Tornados, with long-time friends Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers and Flaco Jimenez - all highly accomplished and multi-talented musicians in their own right - from San Antonio, with particular skills in Tejano music. Flaco Jiménez had played with acts such as The Rolling Stones and Dwight Yoakam and is known as the "Father of Conjunto Music", a master of playing the Conjunto accordion. Augie Meyers had shared the stage with the likes of the Allman Brothers Band and Bob Dylan and like all the other group members, is a member of the Texas Music Hall of Fame. Doug Sahm and Meyers were both members of the 1960’s Texan pop-rock band the Sir Douglas Quintet. Meyers's signature sound on the Vox organ was a prominent feature of the band's sound.
The Texas Tornados 1990 debut was recorded in both English and Spanish versions. From the start, they were highly
acclaimed by music critics and soon attracted a large fan base, enjoying considerable success, both as a live act and on recordings, going on to perform worldwide, including the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton and the Montreux Jazz
Festival, making regular appearances at Farm Aid and the Houston Rodeo. They won a Grammy award in 1990 for Best
Mexican/American Performance. This clip is from a performance on Austin City Limits in 1990 with one of their popular
Tejano songs, ‘Hey Baby Que Paso’-
Throughout the 1990‘s, Fender split his time pretty evenly between The Tornados, the star-studded Los Super Seven and his own solo career. In the late 1990s, now n his sixties and while remaining a member of The Texan Tornados, Fender also joined another supergroup, Los Super Seven, with Los Lobos' David Hidalgo and César Rosas, Flaco Jiménez, Ruben Ramos, Joe Ely, and country singer Rick Trevino. He shared in 2 Grammys with the Texas Tornados, won in 1990 for best Mexican-American performance for “Soy de San Luis” and with Los Super Seven in the same category in 1998 for “Los Super Seven”. He also won a Grammy for Best Latin Album in 2002 for “La Musica De Baldemar Huerta“, showing the great respect he was now held in amongst the country’s top music critics.
Fender had to cut down his workload to weekends only when he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 2000. He received a kidney transplant from his youngest daughter in 2002 and received a liver transplant in 2004. He continued to perform and played his final concert on New Years Eve 2005. just weeks later, early in 2006, Fender became ill and died of lung cancer at his home in Corpus Christi in October 2006.
The funeral procession went along Freddy Fender Lane, past the home where he grew up. Singer Charlie Rich, Jr., who had once been a member of Fender’s band, sang the singer’s legendary ‘Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘ during the service. The Texas Governor and Congressman attended. Fender was buried with military honors at the San Benito Cemetery, survived by his wife Vangie, 2sons, and 2daughters. In death, Freddy Fender’s musical colleagues recalled him as a musical icon whose influence on future generations of rock‘n’roll, country (which, though I’ve mainly concentrated on in this history was just a part of his total music career), and in particular Tejano musicians, was substantial.
Fender was inducted into the Conjunto Music HoF in 1986, Grammy awards for his group work in the Texas Tornados in 1991 and Los Super Seven in 1999, and for his solo work on “La Musica de Baldemar Huerta”, which won the Grammy for Best Latin Pop Album in 2002. ‘Before the Next Teardrop Falls‘ was named one of the top 100 country songs of all time in 2003. His other accolades included the Hollywood Walk of Fame Star in 1998 and the Texas Music HoF in 1999, the Tejano Roots HoF Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, and the South Texas Music Walk of Fame Star in 2004. The one thing he still hasn’t achieved yet, being just too Texan for Nashville, is admission into the country music HoF - another scandalous omission. In 2007, the Freddy Fender Museum opened in San Benito and is a must see should you go down deep into South Texas, to the Brownsville area. He remains a much revered figure down there.
Now I’m required to head off again for another 2 weeks - this time to remote parts of the Gulf Country of far North Queensland. But I’ll be back and plunging back to the mid 1970’s, finally ready to take this history on another new path.
Last edited:
We're now up to about 1975 in the history (roughly based upon when an artist breaks through to sustained prominence/stardom), and as I'm heading off again for a couple of weeks, I've updated the index to the history, including the sub-genre types of each artist or group. You can use this as a guide to peruse any artist or country sub-genre at your leisure (and I've covered far more artists than I ever intended to when the lockdown inspired me to do this).
Name, Post/s number, State of origin, Key to sub-genre.
TF = Traditional and/or folk country (as established by Vernon Dalhart, The Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers)
TC = Traditional Country but without the folk influence.
G = Gospel
WC = Western Cowboy or trail songs
WM = Western movie music
WS = Western Swing
HT = Honky Tonk (baroom "adult" music - usually about breakups, heartaches, drinking, cheating etc) that generally appealed to the rural and working class base.
BG = Bluegrass (usually traditionally acoustic using traditional instruments including banjo and slap bass)
RR = Rockabilly and/or rock'n'roll (rockabilly generally retaining a more country flavour than straight out R&R) that in the 1950's was generally confined to the youth, mostly teenage base.
NS = Nashville Sound, a more sophisticated 'pop country' sound than honky tonk, deliberately appealing to a mass suburban, more middle class audience, thus expanding the country music market.
CP = Countrypolitan, an even more refined “Nashville Sound”, with smooth vocals and instrumentals, sometimes including soul or jazz influences.
CB = Country Ballad, e.g. Marty Robbins' 'El Paso' and Johnny Hortons 'Battle of New Orleans', popular in the late fifties to early sixties.
PC = Pop Country. Lighter pop/rock sound appealing to beyond the traditional country market to middle clas suburbia, with Sonny James and particularly Glenn Campbell as breakthrough artists.
TM = Tex/Mex aka Tejano - traditional Mexican, esp North Mexican Norteno and South Texas European influence - including use of mixed English & Spanish lyrics and accordions.
OC = Music associated with the Outlaw era of the mid to late seventies, often with a heavier Country rock influenced sound.
Vernon Dalhart 114-115 Texas TF
The Carter Family 117-119 Virginia TF, G
Jimmie Rodgers 120-122 Mississippi TF, HT
Sons of the Pioneers 123-124 California WC, WM
Gene Autry 125-126 Texas WC, WM
Bob Wills &
The Texas Playboys 132-140 Texas WS
Roy Acuff 147-149 Tennessee TF, G
Jimmie Davis 150-153 Louisiana TF
Roy Rogers 154-157 Ohio WC, WM
Elton Britt 159-160 Arkansas WC, TF
Ernest Tubb 161-165 Texas HT
Milton Brown 163 Texas WS
Al Dexter 166-168 Texas HT
Spade Cooley 169-171 Oklahoma WS
Tex Williams 172 Illinois WS
Red Foley 173 & 176-178 Kentucky TF, HT, RR, G
Tex Ritter 179-180 Texas TF, HT, WM
Bill Monroe &
The Bluegrass Boys 181-183 Kentucky BG
Merle Travis 184-186 Kentucky HT, TF
The Stanley Brothers 187-188 Virginia BG
Eddy Arnold 189-191 Tennessee TF, HT, NS, WC
Flatt & Scruggs 194-195 Tennessee BG
Tenessee Ernie Ford 196-197 Tennessee TF, RR
Moon Mullican 198-199 Texas HT, RR
Hank Snow 202-204 Novia Scotia (Can) TF, HT
Hank Williams 205-214 Alabama HT, TF, RR, G
Lefty Frizzell 216-219 Texas HT, TF
Mother Maybelle &
The Carter Sisters 222 Virginia TF, G
Anita Carter 225-232 Virginia TF
Carl Smith 233-234 Tennessee HT, RR
Hank Thompson 235-237 Texas WS, HT, RR
Kitty Wells 238-239 Tennessee HT
Webb Pierce 240-250 Louisiana HT, RR
Jean Shepard 251 Oklahoma HT
Slim Whitman 252-254 Texas WT
Frankie Laine 255-256 Illinois WM
Faron Young 261-262 & 266 Louisiana HT, TF
Ray Price 269-275 Texas HT, TF, NS
Elvis Presley 278-286 Alabama RR, TF, G
Carl Perkins 287-291 Tennessee RR, TF
The Louvin Brothers 294-295 Tennessee TF, G
Johnny Horton 296 & 301 & 308 California. HT, RR, CB
Sanford Clark 311-313 Arizona RR, WT
Marty Robbins 325-330 & 335 Arizona HT, RR, TF, WC, CB, WS, NS, G
Johnny Cash 338-345 Arkansas RR, HT, TF, CB, WT, NS, G
Charlie Feathers 346-348 Tennessee RR
Jerry Lee Lewis 349-352 & 365-367 Louisiana RR, HT, TF, G
Chet Atkins 353-356 Tennessee - world class guitarist and producer of NS
Ferlin Husky 362-364 Missouri NS, G
The Browns 368-369 Arkansas TF, G
Jim Ed Brown 371-372 Arkansas TF, HT
Helen Cornelius 372 Missouri TF, HT
Bobby Helms 377 Indiana RR, TF
Hank Locklin 378-379 Florida HT, TF
Jim Reeves 383-386 Texas NS
Patsy Cline 387-389 Virginia NS
Cowboy Copas 390 Oklahoma TF
The Everly Bros 393-399 Illinois RR, TF
Don Gibson 400-404 North Carolina HT
George Jones 405-412 Texas HT, TF
Western movie themes to 1962 416-419 WM
Leroy Van Dyke 423-424 Missouri RR, HT, TF
Jimmy Dean 428-429 Texas RR, TF, CB, NS
Porter Wagoner 430-432 Missouri TF, G
Roy Drusky 433-434 Georgia NS, TF
Claude King 440-441 Louisiana CB, WC, TF, HT
Ray Charles 443-445 Georgia Soul country
Skeeter Davis 446-448 Kentucky NS, TF
Bill Anderson 449-452 South Carolina TF, NS, BG, G
Bakersfield Sound 455 HT
Buck Owens 456-463 Texas HT
Bobby Bare 464-468 Ohio TF, HT, OC
Nat King Cole 469 Alabama pop country influencer
Sonny James 474-478 Alabama NS PC (influenced by Nat King Cole)
Roger Miller 479-482 Texas TF
Connie Smith 483-486 Indiana NS, TF, G
David Houston 487-488 Louisiana HT, NS
Loretta Lynn 489-493 Kentucky TF, HT
Jack Greene 494-495 Tennessee TF, NS
Merle Haggard 497-502 California TF, HT
Tammy Wynette 503-506 Mississippi TF, HT
Glen Campbell 507-509 Arkansas TF, PC
Charley Pride 510-513 Mississippi NS, PC
Conway Twitty 514-520 Mississippi RR, NS, PC
Western Movie Themes 1964-1970 521-524
Bobby Gentry 531-535 Mississippi TF, PC
Jeannie Riley 537-540 Texas PC, G
Tom T. Hall 543-550 Tennessee TF, BG, CB
Townes Van Zandt 551-555 Texas TF,
Gram Parsons 560-570 Florida HT, TF
Lynn Anderson 573-575 North Dakota, TF, PC, BG, WC, G
Dolly Parton 581-607 Tennessee TF, PC, BG, WC, HT, CB, G
Tom T Hall 611-617 Tennessee TF, BG, CB
Freddie Hart 622-625 Alabama TF, PC, G
Mal Street 627-631 Tennessee HT, TF
Donna Fargo 647 North Carolina PC
Mel Tillis 648-657 Florida RR, HT, TF, PC, OC
Kris Kristofferson 661-667 Texas TF, NS, HT, PC, RR, G, OC
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band California 674-680 TF, BG, RR
John Prine Illinois 685-691+695 TF, CB
Gordon Lightfoot Ontario 696-702 TF, CB, PC
Charlie Rich Arkansas 706-70. RR, CP, G
Johnny Rodriguez Texas 713-716 TM, HT,
Billy “Crash” Craddock North Carolina 721-723. RR, PC, TC
Ronnie Milsap North Carolina 732-737 PC, HT
Olivia Newton John UK/Australia 738-741 PC
John Denver New Mexico 744-748 PC, TF
Don Williams Texas 757-759. TC, TF, CP
Freddy Fender Texas 764-766 TM, CP, PC
And as I hit the country roads again, having just featured Freddy Fender from San Benito in the far south of Texas, I’ll leave you with another that hails from the very same town - and one I‘ve really liked for a few years now, putting the western back into country … & western. Here’s the title track from Charley Crockett’s latest album released last month -
Name, Post/s number, State of origin, Key to sub-genre.
TF = Traditional and/or folk country (as established by Vernon Dalhart, The Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers)
TC = Traditional Country but without the folk influence.
G = Gospel
WC = Western Cowboy or trail songs
WM = Western movie music
WS = Western Swing
HT = Honky Tonk (baroom "adult" music - usually about breakups, heartaches, drinking, cheating etc) that generally appealed to the rural and working class base.
BG = Bluegrass (usually traditionally acoustic using traditional instruments including banjo and slap bass)
RR = Rockabilly and/or rock'n'roll (rockabilly generally retaining a more country flavour than straight out R&R) that in the 1950's was generally confined to the youth, mostly teenage base.
NS = Nashville Sound, a more sophisticated 'pop country' sound than honky tonk, deliberately appealing to a mass suburban, more middle class audience, thus expanding the country music market.
CP = Countrypolitan, an even more refined “Nashville Sound”, with smooth vocals and instrumentals, sometimes including soul or jazz influences.
CB = Country Ballad, e.g. Marty Robbins' 'El Paso' and Johnny Hortons 'Battle of New Orleans', popular in the late fifties to early sixties.
PC = Pop Country. Lighter pop/rock sound appealing to beyond the traditional country market to middle clas suburbia, with Sonny James and particularly Glenn Campbell as breakthrough artists.
TM = Tex/Mex aka Tejano - traditional Mexican, esp North Mexican Norteno and South Texas European influence - including use of mixed English & Spanish lyrics and accordions.
OC = Music associated with the Outlaw era of the mid to late seventies, often with a heavier Country rock influenced sound.
Vernon Dalhart 114-115 Texas TF
The Carter Family 117-119 Virginia TF, G
Jimmie Rodgers 120-122 Mississippi TF, HT
Sons of the Pioneers 123-124 California WC, WM
Gene Autry 125-126 Texas WC, WM
Bob Wills &
The Texas Playboys 132-140 Texas WS
Roy Acuff 147-149 Tennessee TF, G
Jimmie Davis 150-153 Louisiana TF
Roy Rogers 154-157 Ohio WC, WM
Elton Britt 159-160 Arkansas WC, TF
Ernest Tubb 161-165 Texas HT
Milton Brown 163 Texas WS
Al Dexter 166-168 Texas HT
Spade Cooley 169-171 Oklahoma WS
Tex Williams 172 Illinois WS
Red Foley 173 & 176-178 Kentucky TF, HT, RR, G
Tex Ritter 179-180 Texas TF, HT, WM
Bill Monroe &
The Bluegrass Boys 181-183 Kentucky BG
Merle Travis 184-186 Kentucky HT, TF
The Stanley Brothers 187-188 Virginia BG
Eddy Arnold 189-191 Tennessee TF, HT, NS, WC
Flatt & Scruggs 194-195 Tennessee BG
Tenessee Ernie Ford 196-197 Tennessee TF, RR
Moon Mullican 198-199 Texas HT, RR
Hank Snow 202-204 Novia Scotia (Can) TF, HT
Hank Williams 205-214 Alabama HT, TF, RR, G
Lefty Frizzell 216-219 Texas HT, TF
Mother Maybelle &
The Carter Sisters 222 Virginia TF, G
Anita Carter 225-232 Virginia TF
Carl Smith 233-234 Tennessee HT, RR
Hank Thompson 235-237 Texas WS, HT, RR
Kitty Wells 238-239 Tennessee HT
Webb Pierce 240-250 Louisiana HT, RR
Jean Shepard 251 Oklahoma HT
Slim Whitman 252-254 Texas WT
Frankie Laine 255-256 Illinois WM
Faron Young 261-262 & 266 Louisiana HT, TF
Ray Price 269-275 Texas HT, TF, NS
Elvis Presley 278-286 Alabama RR, TF, G
Carl Perkins 287-291 Tennessee RR, TF
The Louvin Brothers 294-295 Tennessee TF, G
Johnny Horton 296 & 301 & 308 California. HT, RR, CB
Sanford Clark 311-313 Arizona RR, WT
Marty Robbins 325-330 & 335 Arizona HT, RR, TF, WC, CB, WS, NS, G
Johnny Cash 338-345 Arkansas RR, HT, TF, CB, WT, NS, G
Charlie Feathers 346-348 Tennessee RR
Jerry Lee Lewis 349-352 & 365-367 Louisiana RR, HT, TF, G
Chet Atkins 353-356 Tennessee - world class guitarist and producer of NS
Ferlin Husky 362-364 Missouri NS, G
The Browns 368-369 Arkansas TF, G
Jim Ed Brown 371-372 Arkansas TF, HT
Helen Cornelius 372 Missouri TF, HT
Bobby Helms 377 Indiana RR, TF
Hank Locklin 378-379 Florida HT, TF
Jim Reeves 383-386 Texas NS
Patsy Cline 387-389 Virginia NS
Cowboy Copas 390 Oklahoma TF
The Everly Bros 393-399 Illinois RR, TF
Don Gibson 400-404 North Carolina HT
George Jones 405-412 Texas HT, TF
Western movie themes to 1962 416-419 WM
Leroy Van Dyke 423-424 Missouri RR, HT, TF
Jimmy Dean 428-429 Texas RR, TF, CB, NS
Porter Wagoner 430-432 Missouri TF, G
Roy Drusky 433-434 Georgia NS, TF
Claude King 440-441 Louisiana CB, WC, TF, HT
Ray Charles 443-445 Georgia Soul country
Skeeter Davis 446-448 Kentucky NS, TF
Bill Anderson 449-452 South Carolina TF, NS, BG, G
Bakersfield Sound 455 HT
Buck Owens 456-463 Texas HT
Bobby Bare 464-468 Ohio TF, HT, OC
Nat King Cole 469 Alabama pop country influencer
Sonny James 474-478 Alabama NS PC (influenced by Nat King Cole)
Roger Miller 479-482 Texas TF
Connie Smith 483-486 Indiana NS, TF, G
David Houston 487-488 Louisiana HT, NS
Loretta Lynn 489-493 Kentucky TF, HT
Jack Greene 494-495 Tennessee TF, NS
Merle Haggard 497-502 California TF, HT
Tammy Wynette 503-506 Mississippi TF, HT
Glen Campbell 507-509 Arkansas TF, PC
Charley Pride 510-513 Mississippi NS, PC
Conway Twitty 514-520 Mississippi RR, NS, PC
Western Movie Themes 1964-1970 521-524
Bobby Gentry 531-535 Mississippi TF, PC
Jeannie Riley 537-540 Texas PC, G
Tom T. Hall 543-550 Tennessee TF, BG, CB
Townes Van Zandt 551-555 Texas TF,
Gram Parsons 560-570 Florida HT, TF
Lynn Anderson 573-575 North Dakota, TF, PC, BG, WC, G
Dolly Parton 581-607 Tennessee TF, PC, BG, WC, HT, CB, G
Tom T Hall 611-617 Tennessee TF, BG, CB
Freddie Hart 622-625 Alabama TF, PC, G
Mal Street 627-631 Tennessee HT, TF
Donna Fargo 647 North Carolina PC
Mel Tillis 648-657 Florida RR, HT, TF, PC, OC
Kris Kristofferson 661-667 Texas TF, NS, HT, PC, RR, G, OC
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band California 674-680 TF, BG, RR
John Prine Illinois 685-691+695 TF, CB
Gordon Lightfoot Ontario 696-702 TF, CB, PC
Charlie Rich Arkansas 706-70. RR, CP, G
Johnny Rodriguez Texas 713-716 TM, HT,
Billy “Crash” Craddock North Carolina 721-723. RR, PC, TC
Ronnie Milsap North Carolina 732-737 PC, HT
Olivia Newton John UK/Australia 738-741 PC
John Denver New Mexico 744-748 PC, TF
Don Williams Texas 757-759. TC, TF, CP
Freddy Fender Texas 764-766 TM, CP, PC
And as I hit the country roads again, having just featured Freddy Fender from San Benito in the far south of Texas, I’ll leave you with another that hails from the very same town - and one I‘ve really liked for a few years now, putting the western back into country … & western. Here’s the title track from Charley Crockett’s latest album released last month -
Last edited:
- Apr 11, 2015
- 4,539
- 5,604
- AFL Club
- Hawthorn
- Other Teams
- Cill Chainnigh
Morgan Wade
I’m back again, this time returning from the heat and humidity of outback and isolated far North’s Queensland‘s Gulf Country to Melbourne’s pleasant Spring (well at least it’s nice upon my return). I’ll resume the history in the next day or two, but for now, time to mark the death of another very important figure in country music history - although there’s a good chance you haven’t heard of her, despite the fact she, or at least her singing group, have been heard - albeit only in the background - heaps of times in this history series.
Just a few months after the release of her biography, “Anita Kerr: America’s First Lady of Music,” came news that one of the
most significant “background” contributors to the sound of country music - specifically the “Nashville Sound” that features so prominently in this history series (see posts # 404 & 527), Anita Kerr, passed away last week at age 94. Founder and head of the famed Anita Kerr singers, which are heard in dozens, in fact probably a few hundred or more youtube clips from the 1950’s and 1960’s in this thread (I haven’t kept count, but I know I‘ e made mention quite a few times of them providing the backing), they were absolutely pivotal in the emergence of the “Nashville Sound”, as developed by Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley - the only rivals for providing backing singers and sounds being the Jordanaires.
It’s beyond my scope to give any proper history on Anita Kerry’s music career, which started early and went well beyond the confines of country music - she even had one of her own albums of easy listening music best the Beatles “Help!” Album, as well
as The Beach Boys and The Mamas & The Papas amongst others, to the 1966 Best Performance By A Vocal Group Grammy! - so I’ll let these obituaries suffice to tell of her accomplishments -
www.nytimes.com
"I did everything regarding music. I couldn’t get enough. I never had the problem of wondering what I was going to do when I grew up. I always knew that it would be music". - Anita Kerr.
When I’m back here soon, it’ll be with a 1 day special on a group … like no other group or solo artists in this history (or those still to come). It’ll be a unique entry into this series.
Just a few months after the release of her biography, “Anita Kerr: America’s First Lady of Music,” came news that one of the
most significant “background” contributors to the sound of country music - specifically the “Nashville Sound” that features so prominently in this history series (see posts # 404 & 527), Anita Kerr, passed away last week at age 94. Founder and head of the famed Anita Kerr singers, which are heard in dozens, in fact probably a few hundred or more youtube clips from the 1950’s and 1960’s in this thread (I haven’t kept count, but I know I‘ e made mention quite a few times of them providing the backing), they were absolutely pivotal in the emergence of the “Nashville Sound”, as developed by Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley - the only rivals for providing backing singers and sounds being the Jordanaires.
It’s beyond my scope to give any proper history on Anita Kerry’s music career, which started early and went well beyond the confines of country music - she even had one of her own albums of easy listening music best the Beatles “Help!” Album, as well
as The Beach Boys and The Mamas & The Papas amongst others, to the 1966 Best Performance By A Vocal Group Grammy! - so I’ll let these obituaries suffice to tell of her accomplishments -
Anita Kerr, an Architect of the Nashville Sound, Dies at 94 (Published 2022)
She and her background vocalists were heard “oohing” and “aahing” on thousands of country and pop hits recorded in the 1950s and ’60s.
Anita Kerr, groundbreaking 'Nashville Sound' vocalist and arranger, remembered
Anita Kerr, the woman in many ways largely responsible for the globalization of the Nashville Sound, died on October 10 at the age of 94.
www.tennessean.com
"I did everything regarding music. I couldn’t get enough. I never had the problem of wondering what I was going to do when I grew up. I always knew that it would be music". - Anita Kerr.
When I’m back here soon, it’ll be with a 1 day special on a group … like no other group or solo artists in this history (or those still to come). It’ll be a unique entry into this series.
Last edited:
To mark another turning point in this country music history, just as a point of separation I’ve decided to include a one-off entry today - a group that virtually no American has ever heard of! This is the most different, almost bizarre, part of this whole history series. I now introduce a group headed by 3 sisters - the lead singer possessing a clear, powerful voice and an impressive vocal range, the other 2 providing back-up harmony. That’s not strange. What sets these 3 sisters, the daughters of a Polish refugee miner, and the other band members apart is that they never once toured the U.S., never, due to obscure copyright reasons, had any of their records released in the U.S, were (and remain) unknown to all but a tiny few in the U.S. - and yet, in 1975/76, they had possibly the biggest selling country single of all time, written by a country music loving Dutch rock guitarist, a massive worldwide hit (including in Australia), despite being completely shut out of (by far) the biggest country music market!
The group was fronted by the 3 Kowalczyk sisters - Toni, Marianne and Betty. They began their music career as The Singing Sisters in 1963, singing German language songs. They subsequently changed their name to The Dutch BeeGees. Meanwhile,
rock guitarist but country music lover, Werner Theunissen began his musical career in the early 1960’s with 'The Rocking Apaches'. However, it was with the indo–rock band The Entertainers that he wrote his first single. He also met and gave guitar lessons to
the 3 young sisters, Toni (later Toni Willé) and her older sisters, Marianne and Betty Kowalczyk, who were aged 10, 11 and 12 respectively. Theunissen initially got them into contemporary pop. Impressed with their talent, especially the youngest, lead singer Toni, he wrote his first song for them’. Six years later in 1973 he formed the group 'Sweet Reaction' with the core of the group consisting of the 3 singing sisters, guitarist Lou Willé (who soon married Toni), along with 2 other musicians from a protopunk band called Scum. Brimming with talent, recording came quickly to the nascent group.
The group sent a demo tape with 3 songs to EMI. Fortuitously, one of them was a country song ‘Mississippi’. The song was written by Theunissen, who despite his rock background was a huge country music fan, for the 3 girls way back in 1969, being inspired by the Bee Gees song ‘Massachusetts' but was shelved by him for a reason Theunissen himself described as the demise of country music in favor of rock (ironical, given the song’s lyrics). But when listening to the tape, it was ’Mississippi‘ that grabbed EMI's attention, and they promptly signed the band purely on the potential of this one song. EMI's arranger Eddy Hilberts became their producer. With the sisters the core members of the group, by early 1975, with the record deal in place, they recruited drummer Theo Coumans, bassist Theo Wetzels and guitarist John Theunissen (brother of Werner) to update their image once again - now finally emerging as the pop-country band, Pussycat (this very uncountry like band name was apparently chosen by the sisters - surely someone should’ve talked them out of it).
'Mississippi' was released in the Netherlands in mid 1975 with no fan-fare or publicity. After it’s quiet start, a Dutch radio DJ, thinking the song was from an English group, played it on her radio show and received large amounts of calls from listeners inquiring about the song and requesting it be played again - and again. Following this, Pussycat was invited to play the song
on a top-rating Dutch TV quiz show, as the episode had a question about the Mississippi River and they thought it a good idea
to have Pussycat play 'Mississippi' straight after the question. That TV exposure really got things rolling and by December 1975 the song had became a massive hit, # 1 in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, with ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ topping the charts in the UK, a popular Liverpool DJ added ‘MississippI’ to the playlist and thus the song took off in the UK, going on to knock ABBA off the top of the charts in 1976, spending a month at # 1. And it wasn’t just # 1 in the UK, but 10 European countries including Germany. It also topped the charts in South Africa, New Zealand and, eventually, even ABBA obsessed Australia, though it took a while here (August 1976) to finally displace ’Dancing Queen’ from # 1. In South America, it charted for an incredible 129 weeks and over
6 million copies were sold worldwide by 1977 - despite it never being released in the U.S.
The songs lyrics of nostalgia for a past (mythical?) time, lolling around the Mississippi River, listening to country music and where everything was “… love and understanding everywhere around…”, until “… country music forever lost its soul when the guitar player turned to rock and roll …”, can’t be taken literally or seriously for anyone who has followed this history - the world of the honky tonk was rarely peaceful and never “full of love and understanding everywhere around” (I’ve never been to such a place like that), nor did country music lose its soul to rock’n’roll, which, as described in this history, was an off-shoot of country music (along with R&B). Furthermore the repeated lines “… I'll be longin' for the day / That I will be in Greenville again …” is really ironical,
as the gritty Mississippi Delta port town of Greenville has a black majority and was, in the 1940’s and 1950’s renowned for its boisterous, rough Delta Blues and Jazz clubs - so not the right choice for nostalgic memories about peaceful old times listening to country music! Which makes me think the Dutch songwriter had never actually visited the Mississippi delta. But, if we ignore the facts and just go along with the flow and mood of the song, it’s effective in calling up a nostalgic feeling of good times from a past now gone - the steel guitar was spot on, the strings effective, the “rock” guitar segment a nice little touch and the vocal range of the gap-toothed lead singer, Toni (her teeth would never have been accepted in the U.S.) really carried the song (though the totally uncoordinated, obviously unrehearsed, natural movements of the 3 sisters in this clip does kinda amuse me) -
I lied (just a little bit) when I said ’Mississippi’ was unknown in the U.S.. Being such a huge international hit elsewhere, it was inevitable word of it would filter through to Nashville, and so it was, also in 1976, that a cover was recorded by Barbara Fairchild, who had previously had a # 1 hit in 1973 with ’The Teddy Bear Song’, along with a couple of other Top 5 hits. Her southern accent and vocals gave the song a distinct country rather than pop-country flavour, but in truth her vocals, even with the help of the backing singers, didn’t have near the range to do the song justice. The lyrics also might’ve seemed a bit NQR for American country music fans (for the reasons described above). Her cover only got to # 31 in the charts and was quickly forgotten.
Proving they were no one hit wonder (at least not in Europe, though in the U.K. and Australia they pretty much were), Pussycat followed up with another hit, though not in the same league or with the spectacular as ‘Mississippi’, with the more melancholic,
pop influenced ‘Georgie’ in 1976. This topped the charts in their native Netherlands and also reached # 2 in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and South Africa and # 6 in Germany. The gap-toothed youngest sister, Toni, really sings this solo with her older sisters consigned to just backing duties -
Their next hit, also in 1976, ‘Smile’ has the sisters harmonising to an extent (though Toni is still very much the lead singer), especially in the second half of this otherwise simple, light, pop-country song, yet another written by Werner Theunissen. This song went to # 1 in the Netherlands and South Africa, # 3 in Belgium and New Zealand, where Pussycat enjoyed more popularity than in Australia, a top 10 hit in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but only reached # 24 in the U.K. and # 34 in Australia - perhaps the video was too off-putting for Australians. This quite amusing video clip shows the sisters now more co-ordinated in their dance moves but with a very strange fashion choice - a reminder we’re still in 1976 -
IMO, Pussycat’s best - and most country flavoured - song after ‘Mississipp’ was ’My Broken Souvenirs’, released in 1977. It had
it’s biggest success in New Zealand, going all the way to # 1. It reached # 2 in The Netherlands, Belgium and South Africa, # 7 in Switzerland and Top 20 in Germany and Austria. This was a well written country heartbreak song of despair, wistfulness and regret over lost love. The use of the harmonica adds to the sense of loss and despair expressed in the song -
“… If you'll need me again / There's no way you really can / Pasted pieces never make a whole /
And if you leave your room / On some windy afternoon / Try to see where all the pieces flew…”
On to 1979 and with Pussycat’s chart success now in decline as tastes changed and their brand of pop-country was going out of fashion, we farewell them with the country flavoured, light, breezy, danceable ’Hey Joe‘, reaching # 17 in 1979. This video is worth it for the fashion and especially for those dance steps alone! -
Pussycat continued to record albums and singles as well as perform all over the world (except the U.S. and Canada) throughout the late 1970's to the mid 80's, though for financial reasons they dropped their backing band for taped music in 1982, before breaking up in 1985. Betty focused on raising a family and Marianne became a bar owner (my type of woman), but lead singer Toni Wille went on to a highly successful solo career in pop-country, releasing 8 albums, winning various awards and being very well known in Europe. In 1999 the band got back together to perform at several reunion concerts. They contributed to the country band Major Dundee's single ’Somewhere Someone’ in 2005 and singer Dennis Jones' Dutch reggae cover of their signature hit song ’Mississippi’ in 2007. AFAIK, they last performed together in 2015.
Anyway, with this brief and somewhat weirdly wonderful visit to European pop-country and that massive international hit ‘Mississippi’ by Pussycat now duly dealt with, this history series will resume normalcy by returning to the U.S. in 1975 in
the next couple of days or so - albeit I’m about to take this history into a long anticipated (at least by me) new direction.
The group was fronted by the 3 Kowalczyk sisters - Toni, Marianne and Betty. They began their music career as The Singing Sisters in 1963, singing German language songs. They subsequently changed their name to The Dutch BeeGees. Meanwhile,
rock guitarist but country music lover, Werner Theunissen began his musical career in the early 1960’s with 'The Rocking Apaches'. However, it was with the indo–rock band The Entertainers that he wrote his first single. He also met and gave guitar lessons to
the 3 young sisters, Toni (later Toni Willé) and her older sisters, Marianne and Betty Kowalczyk, who were aged 10, 11 and 12 respectively. Theunissen initially got them into contemporary pop. Impressed with their talent, especially the youngest, lead singer Toni, he wrote his first song for them’. Six years later in 1973 he formed the group 'Sweet Reaction' with the core of the group consisting of the 3 singing sisters, guitarist Lou Willé (who soon married Toni), along with 2 other musicians from a protopunk band called Scum. Brimming with talent, recording came quickly to the nascent group.
The group sent a demo tape with 3 songs to EMI. Fortuitously, one of them was a country song ‘Mississippi’. The song was written by Theunissen, who despite his rock background was a huge country music fan, for the 3 girls way back in 1969, being inspired by the Bee Gees song ‘Massachusetts' but was shelved by him for a reason Theunissen himself described as the demise of country music in favor of rock (ironical, given the song’s lyrics). But when listening to the tape, it was ’Mississippi‘ that grabbed EMI's attention, and they promptly signed the band purely on the potential of this one song. EMI's arranger Eddy Hilberts became their producer. With the sisters the core members of the group, by early 1975, with the record deal in place, they recruited drummer Theo Coumans, bassist Theo Wetzels and guitarist John Theunissen (brother of Werner) to update their image once again - now finally emerging as the pop-country band, Pussycat (this very uncountry like band name was apparently chosen by the sisters - surely someone should’ve talked them out of it).
'Mississippi' was released in the Netherlands in mid 1975 with no fan-fare or publicity. After it’s quiet start, a Dutch radio DJ, thinking the song was from an English group, played it on her radio show and received large amounts of calls from listeners inquiring about the song and requesting it be played again - and again. Following this, Pussycat was invited to play the song
on a top-rating Dutch TV quiz show, as the episode had a question about the Mississippi River and they thought it a good idea
to have Pussycat play 'Mississippi' straight after the question. That TV exposure really got things rolling and by December 1975 the song had became a massive hit, # 1 in the Netherlands. Meanwhile, with ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ topping the charts in the UK, a popular Liverpool DJ added ‘MississippI’ to the playlist and thus the song took off in the UK, going on to knock ABBA off the top of the charts in 1976, spending a month at # 1. And it wasn’t just # 1 in the UK, but 10 European countries including Germany. It also topped the charts in South Africa, New Zealand and, eventually, even ABBA obsessed Australia, though it took a while here (August 1976) to finally displace ’Dancing Queen’ from # 1. In South America, it charted for an incredible 129 weeks and over
6 million copies were sold worldwide by 1977 - despite it never being released in the U.S.
The songs lyrics of nostalgia for a past (mythical?) time, lolling around the Mississippi River, listening to country music and where everything was “… love and understanding everywhere around…”, until “… country music forever lost its soul when the guitar player turned to rock and roll …”, can’t be taken literally or seriously for anyone who has followed this history - the world of the honky tonk was rarely peaceful and never “full of love and understanding everywhere around” (I’ve never been to such a place like that), nor did country music lose its soul to rock’n’roll, which, as described in this history, was an off-shoot of country music (along with R&B). Furthermore the repeated lines “… I'll be longin' for the day / That I will be in Greenville again …” is really ironical,
as the gritty Mississippi Delta port town of Greenville has a black majority and was, in the 1940’s and 1950’s renowned for its boisterous, rough Delta Blues and Jazz clubs - so not the right choice for nostalgic memories about peaceful old times listening to country music! Which makes me think the Dutch songwriter had never actually visited the Mississippi delta. But, if we ignore the facts and just go along with the flow and mood of the song, it’s effective in calling up a nostalgic feeling of good times from a past now gone - the steel guitar was spot on, the strings effective, the “rock” guitar segment a nice little touch and the vocal range of the gap-toothed lead singer, Toni (her teeth would never have been accepted in the U.S.) really carried the song (though the totally uncoordinated, obviously unrehearsed, natural movements of the 3 sisters in this clip does kinda amuse me) -
I lied (just a little bit) when I said ’Mississippi’ was unknown in the U.S.. Being such a huge international hit elsewhere, it was inevitable word of it would filter through to Nashville, and so it was, also in 1976, that a cover was recorded by Barbara Fairchild, who had previously had a # 1 hit in 1973 with ’The Teddy Bear Song’, along with a couple of other Top 5 hits. Her southern accent and vocals gave the song a distinct country rather than pop-country flavour, but in truth her vocals, even with the help of the backing singers, didn’t have near the range to do the song justice. The lyrics also might’ve seemed a bit NQR for American country music fans (for the reasons described above). Her cover only got to # 31 in the charts and was quickly forgotten.
Proving they were no one hit wonder (at least not in Europe, though in the U.K. and Australia they pretty much were), Pussycat followed up with another hit, though not in the same league or with the spectacular as ‘Mississippi’, with the more melancholic,
pop influenced ‘Georgie’ in 1976. This topped the charts in their native Netherlands and also reached # 2 in Austria, Switzerland, Belgium and South Africa and # 6 in Germany. The gap-toothed youngest sister, Toni, really sings this solo with her older sisters consigned to just backing duties -
Their next hit, also in 1976, ‘Smile’ has the sisters harmonising to an extent (though Toni is still very much the lead singer), especially in the second half of this otherwise simple, light, pop-country song, yet another written by Werner Theunissen. This song went to # 1 in the Netherlands and South Africa, # 3 in Belgium and New Zealand, where Pussycat enjoyed more popularity than in Australia, a top 10 hit in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but only reached # 24 in the U.K. and # 34 in Australia - perhaps the video was too off-putting for Australians. This quite amusing video clip shows the sisters now more co-ordinated in their dance moves but with a very strange fashion choice - a reminder we’re still in 1976 -
IMO, Pussycat’s best - and most country flavoured - song after ‘Mississipp’ was ’My Broken Souvenirs’, released in 1977. It had
it’s biggest success in New Zealand, going all the way to # 1. It reached # 2 in The Netherlands, Belgium and South Africa, # 7 in Switzerland and Top 20 in Germany and Austria. This was a well written country heartbreak song of despair, wistfulness and regret over lost love. The use of the harmonica adds to the sense of loss and despair expressed in the song -
“… If you'll need me again / There's no way you really can / Pasted pieces never make a whole /
And if you leave your room / On some windy afternoon / Try to see where all the pieces flew…”
On to 1979 and with Pussycat’s chart success now in decline as tastes changed and their brand of pop-country was going out of fashion, we farewell them with the country flavoured, light, breezy, danceable ’Hey Joe‘, reaching # 17 in 1979. This video is worth it for the fashion and especially for those dance steps alone! -
Pussycat continued to record albums and singles as well as perform all over the world (except the U.S. and Canada) throughout the late 1970's to the mid 80's, though for financial reasons they dropped their backing band for taped music in 1982, before breaking up in 1985. Betty focused on raising a family and Marianne became a bar owner (my type of woman), but lead singer Toni Wille went on to a highly successful solo career in pop-country, releasing 8 albums, winning various awards and being very well known in Europe. In 1999 the band got back together to perform at several reunion concerts. They contributed to the country band Major Dundee's single ’Somewhere Someone’ in 2005 and singer Dennis Jones' Dutch reggae cover of their signature hit song ’Mississippi’ in 2007. AFAIK, they last performed together in 2015.
Anyway, with this brief and somewhat weirdly wonderful visit to European pop-country and that massive international hit ‘Mississippi’ by Pussycat now duly dealt with, this history series will resume normalcy by returning to the U.S. in 1975 in
the next couple of days or so - albeit I’m about to take this history into a long anticipated (at least by me) new direction.
Last edited:
The long anticipated time has finally arrived in this history series. Something I could’ve started earlier, as far back as 1973 but I think 1975, when the movement was reaching its zenith, is the most appropriate moment to introduce a new sub-genre into this country music history - not so much a new sound but more a whole new cultural movement that shook up the country music industry and led to a renewal in its relevance and hence popularity in the crucial youth market - especially the male youth market - that had seemed to be lost to rock’n’roll.
In 2015, pop star Luke Bryan (who the industry labels as a “country artist”, but his straight pop music ain’t nothin’ to do with country) caused a storm of controversy when he said in an interview - “… Well, yeah. I think that people who want Merle, Willie and Waylon just need to buy Merle, Willie and Waylon. I’ve never been a ‘Those were the good old days’ kind of guy. I’m not big on looking back on the past. I’m not an outlaw country singer. I don’t do cocaine and run around. So I’m not going to sing outlaw country. I like to hunt, fish, ride around on my farm, build a big bonfire and drink some beers - and that’s what I sing about. It’s what I know. I don’t know about laying in the gutter, strung out on drugs. I don’t really want to do that...”.
Come again? Laying in the gutter, strung out on drugs was the thematic capstone of Willie Nelson’s Outlaw canon? That’s what Waylon was singing about in his #1 hits ‘Luckenbach, TX‘ and ‘Amanda’? (FTR - he wasn’t). And when did Merle ever say anything about doing cocaine and running around? Then Bryan made things even worse by referring to himself in the 3rd person. - “There’s plenty of room for people to like Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Jason Aldean”. And in this one outburst, he exposed one of the biggest problems with mainstream country today. Forget about them respecting the roots of the music, many of today’s current stars don’t even know the very basic history of the genre that has allowed them to become millionaires many times over.
And once again we have a major pop star (marketed as a “country artist“), setting up a Straw Man by painting naysayers into such a narrow mindset that they must be fools - as if anyone who takes issue with Luke Bryan is doing so because they believe country music should be all about drug-induced destitution, which Willie, Waylon, and Merle combined sang about in 2, maybe 3 songs throughout their entire careers. And once again, the idea that anyone that takes issue with the quality or country-ness of country music today must be some hardline purist who wants all country music to sound like it’s coming from Waylon impersonators - a totally ridiculous, simply wrong, notion.
Well, the reaction Bryan got was deservedly swift and savage - and to be fair to him, he personally rang members of both the Haggard and Jennings families to apologise for his slur - explaining that what he actually meant was that he didn’t have the life experiences of those legends to draw upon for his own songs and he just didn’t choose his words wisely - and there must be truth in that as none of his songs contain lyrics of any substance. But the real point I’m trying to make here is that even after 40+ years on from “The Outlaw’ era of the 1970’s, it still has much relevance, continuing fascination and able to draw a passionate response from so many lovers of (actual) country music. Count me in as one of those.
But what an “Outlaw” is and what the term means has always been under dispute - and the more one attempts to research it, the more differing opinions, disputed facts, unintentional errors and outright contradictions one finds - in short, there really isn’t a one simple answer. So in the end, all I can give (and as briefly as I can manage) is my own opinion - based on sources too many to state - and at least some of my opinions differ from the majority, particularly in which artists truly fall under the “Outlaw“ category. Then again, I did narrow the definition of “Outlaw” (actually very few sources properly outlined their criteria to be regarded an “Outlaw”, leading on to all sorts of errors) for the purposes of containing this narrative to manageable limits.
The story of outlaw country starts in very different places, depending on who is spinning the yarn. Some say it all started in 1972, after Willie Nelson’s home outside Nashville caught fire, prompting him to move back to Austin and play in dancehalls around Texas. “Outlaws & Armadillos,” the Country Music HoF’s exhibition on the Outlaws, which I visited in 2020, insisted the movement started with Bobby Bare in the 1970’s, when the headstrong country star negotiated a new contract with RCA that allowed him to produce his own albums (see post # 465) - this soon led to Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson scoring similar deals (though not without going through hoops) and made thematically cohesive albums (rare in country music) like Waylon’s 1973 “Honky Tonk Heroes” and Willie’s 1974 “Phases & Stages”.
But what most of these origin stories have in common is motivation - the outlaws wanted freedom. The singers wanted to sing the songs they liked, written by independent people like Billy Joe Shaver, Guy Clark and Ray Wylie Hubbard, among others, rather than the usual crop of studio employed writers. They wanted to record at independent studios like Tompall Glaser’s “Hillbilly Central,” the Nashville hub for pretty much everybody even tangentially associated with the outlaw movement - where they could record the way they wanted to record, not restricted by what they saw as restrictive rules employed by RCA and Columbia. They wanted to play the dancehalls - mostly in Texas and Oklahoma - like Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, where long-haired hippies, leather clad bikies and buzzcut rednecks struck a precarious truce to enjoy some good tunes and times (and drugs) together. In short, they wanted to control their own musical destinies. That is the essence of the Outlaw movement.
Here are some more brief musings - done Wittgenstein style for brevity -
There’s differing versions as to when the term “Outlaw Music” came to be applied to the 1970’s movement. Some sources (e.g. Rolling Stone Magazine - too often an unreliable source) claimed the term was coined in an article by music critic Dave Hickey, to describe artists who opposed the commercial and creative control of Nashville's recording industry. However, by the time he wrote that article, in 1975, the term was definitely already out. Some attribute it to Lee Clayton's song 'Ladies Love Outlaws', sung by Waylon Jennings and the title track of his 1972 album. But this was 3 years before the term started to be commonly applied in 1975. I agree that it was Hazel Smith, the publicist at the Glaser Brothers' "Hillbilly Central" studio, who came up with the term “outlaw music” sometime in late 1974 and pushed the term to the media to describe the music of renegades like Tompall Glaser, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
There wasn’t one standard ”Outlaw” sound - despite there close friendship and many musical collaborations together, Waylon and Willie’s solo music were very much different from each other. Having said that, Waylon’s sound is what came to most epitomise an “Outlaw” sound and it was certainly very influential on many others to follow.
The key Outlaw musicians weren’t young blow-ins but rather somewhat grizzled music veterans now well into their thirties, some approaching 40, who had been in Nashville for about a decade or more, had had some success - but had become constrained and frustrated by the whole Nashville system, which they felt was denying them further professional success by denying them the ability to produce their own sound.
Waylon, in particular, felt he had a means of reaching a whole new youth market that had largely been abandoned country, if only he was allowed to do things his way, while Willie fled Nashville altogether and back to Texas in 1972, on a very short lived Lived retirement, before Austin’s burgeoning music scene re-ignited his passion and inspiratio.
Waylon was “guilty” (as accused by the “purists”) of having basically a rock, not country, backing band. There was truth in that - yet his own vocal sound (in a strong, underrated, baritone) was totally country and his songs (so many which were written by Billy Joe Shaver) remained thoroughly country rooted. What he did was add another element to country music that appealed to the young at a time when country music was in danger of being consigned mostly to those of middle age and beyond.
There‘s no evidence of any emnity between those identified as Outlaws and those who had no part of the movement. The vanguard of the lush “Countrypolitan“ sound was veteran Texan great, Ray Price (see posts # 269-275). This former country traditionalist, who started his career in rough, tough, often violent West Texan oil fields honky tanks but now was impeccably dressed in expensive suits and ties, took great pride (excuse the pun) in his late career phase of sophisticated Countrpolitan music (towards which Kris Kristofferson greatly contributed to with his song-writing) for a mostly middle-class, mature-age audience. Yet throughout the whole “Outlaw“ era, Ray Price remained on good very terms with fellow Texan Waylon and was close friends with his former bassist band member Willie (with whom he subsequently recorded an album with after he returned to his traditional country roots). These Texans well understood they were chasing different markets with their different music at different stages in their careers.
Johnny Cash (posts # 338-345) is listed in most (though crucially not quite all) sources as an “Outlaw”. This is wrong - he was never an “Outlaw” (in the sense of being one those 1970’s artists seeking freedom). Sure, he was good friends with Willie and Waylon (who he even shared an apartment and lots of pills with in the late 1960’s), but he was also friends with a whole lot of other musicians who had nothing to do with being an “Outlaw”. His cool “man in black” mantra dates from the 1960’s, his own wildest pill-popping outlaw times were also in the 1960’s, and during the time period the whole 1970’s Outlaw movement was happening, Cash was actually having his most settled period, mostly off the pills following rehab and therapy, happily domiciled with his wife, June Carter, introducing and tutoring his daughter, Roseanne into the professional world of country music and not doing anything in regards to being an “Outlaw”.
Merle Haggard (# 497-502), being from Bakersfield, California, was never that tied into the Nashville system and really only played a peripheral, bit role as an “Outlaw” (he was one of the influenced, rather than one of the initial influencers). He came in late to the “Outlaw” scene - after the break-up of his marriage with Bonnie Owens - starting to perform with them, growing a beard, starting a cocaine addiction, just as the Outlaw movement started its decline in the late 1970’s - and in the end, damaging, at least for a time, his own health and career. His minor, late, role in the Outlaw movement didn’t do him any good at the time.
This might seem outright like heresy, and goes against all the ”standard models” of Outlaw history, but I even have serious doubts Kris Kristofferson (posts # 661-667) should be listed as an “Outlaw” - unless one only considers friendships and fashions. He already had grown his hair longer and sported a beard by 1971, before the whole “Outlaw” movement got going. As for his friendships with Waylon and Willie, this dates from when he first arrived in Nashville and fell in the Faron Young’s gang of notorious hell-raisers hanging out at Tootsies saloon in the mid 1960’s (# 661), well before the Outlaw era.
And let’s not forget, he was also friends with, and wrote some great Countrypolitan songs for, Ray Price (e.g.'For The Good Times'). Contrary to popular mythology,he was never held back by his record company from performing - in fact the exact opposite was correct. He was persuaded by his record company exec, Fred Foster, to record his own material, not just be a song-writer (# 662) - and this all happened back in 1970. There was no rebellion by him - his drinking, drug taking and womanising had started well before the outlaw era and when the movement was taking off and reaching its height, he had drifted off to Hollywood to make movies. But not before he had produced Billy Joe Shaver’s “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” album in 1973. Maybe that’s just enough to count him in.
When the “Outlaw” supergroup The Highwaymen was formed in 1984, a fair bit of re-writing of history was done to turn Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson into retrospective Outlaws. There are some (albeit unconvincing for me) arguments for Kristofferson, none at all for Cash.
George Jones (# 405-412) is now often labelled as one of the Outlaws he but never was at the time. Sure, he was an abject alcoholic, a copious cocaine user, and got on well with his fellow Texan Outlaw musicians - especially Willie Nelson, who, along with a now tamed down Johnny Cash, tried to help George overcome his addictions. But his music remained what it was - a mixture of traditional and classic Nashville Sound with his perfect country music vocals - he never dressed or identified as an Outlaw, never grew a beard or had long hair and stuck to wearing either a now out of fashion nudie suit or just a regulation suit and tie.
Townes Van Zandt (# 551-557) just followed his own course, went to the beat his own drum (or, more aptly, the strum of his own guitar) and never followed any movement or fashion except his own. His story is separate from the Outlaw movement.
The term “Outlaws” ironically, and with the full connivance of the artists involved, soon came to be used as a (hugely successful) marketing tool by the very same record company (RCA), whose previous actions had started the “Outlaw Rebellion”. But more on this comes later.
There were the “Outlaws” - and then there were so-called “real” Outlaws, who took the term more literally (and not just as a marketing ploy). These artists have a story to tell and some very good music to listen to and will play a part in this history series.
The greatest accomplishment of the Outlaw Movement is that it really won back a huge segment of the youth and younger demographic that had seemed mostly lost to 1970’s. And especially so for young males - “Outlaw“ music was unashamedly (though not exclusively) masculine music. It’s influence remains to this day.
I’ll be back in a day or two with the first of our Outlaws to featured.
In 2015, pop star Luke Bryan (who the industry labels as a “country artist”, but his straight pop music ain’t nothin’ to do with country) caused a storm of controversy when he said in an interview - “… Well, yeah. I think that people who want Merle, Willie and Waylon just need to buy Merle, Willie and Waylon. I’ve never been a ‘Those were the good old days’ kind of guy. I’m not big on looking back on the past. I’m not an outlaw country singer. I don’t do cocaine and run around. So I’m not going to sing outlaw country. I like to hunt, fish, ride around on my farm, build a big bonfire and drink some beers - and that’s what I sing about. It’s what I know. I don’t know about laying in the gutter, strung out on drugs. I don’t really want to do that...”.
Come again? Laying in the gutter, strung out on drugs was the thematic capstone of Willie Nelson’s Outlaw canon? That’s what Waylon was singing about in his #1 hits ‘Luckenbach, TX‘ and ‘Amanda’? (FTR - he wasn’t). And when did Merle ever say anything about doing cocaine and running around? Then Bryan made things even worse by referring to himself in the 3rd person. - “There’s plenty of room for people to like Luke Bryan, Eric Church, Jason Aldean”. And in this one outburst, he exposed one of the biggest problems with mainstream country today. Forget about them respecting the roots of the music, many of today’s current stars don’t even know the very basic history of the genre that has allowed them to become millionaires many times over.
And once again we have a major pop star (marketed as a “country artist“), setting up a Straw Man by painting naysayers into such a narrow mindset that they must be fools - as if anyone who takes issue with Luke Bryan is doing so because they believe country music should be all about drug-induced destitution, which Willie, Waylon, and Merle combined sang about in 2, maybe 3 songs throughout their entire careers. And once again, the idea that anyone that takes issue with the quality or country-ness of country music today must be some hardline purist who wants all country music to sound like it’s coming from Waylon impersonators - a totally ridiculous, simply wrong, notion.
Well, the reaction Bryan got was deservedly swift and savage - and to be fair to him, he personally rang members of both the Haggard and Jennings families to apologise for his slur - explaining that what he actually meant was that he didn’t have the life experiences of those legends to draw upon for his own songs and he just didn’t choose his words wisely - and there must be truth in that as none of his songs contain lyrics of any substance. But the real point I’m trying to make here is that even after 40+ years on from “The Outlaw’ era of the 1970’s, it still has much relevance, continuing fascination and able to draw a passionate response from so many lovers of (actual) country music. Count me in as one of those.
But what an “Outlaw” is and what the term means has always been under dispute - and the more one attempts to research it, the more differing opinions, disputed facts, unintentional errors and outright contradictions one finds - in short, there really isn’t a one simple answer. So in the end, all I can give (and as briefly as I can manage) is my own opinion - based on sources too many to state - and at least some of my opinions differ from the majority, particularly in which artists truly fall under the “Outlaw“ category. Then again, I did narrow the definition of “Outlaw” (actually very few sources properly outlined their criteria to be regarded an “Outlaw”, leading on to all sorts of errors) for the purposes of containing this narrative to manageable limits.
The story of outlaw country starts in very different places, depending on who is spinning the yarn. Some say it all started in 1972, after Willie Nelson’s home outside Nashville caught fire, prompting him to move back to Austin and play in dancehalls around Texas. “Outlaws & Armadillos,” the Country Music HoF’s exhibition on the Outlaws, which I visited in 2020, insisted the movement started with Bobby Bare in the 1970’s, when the headstrong country star negotiated a new contract with RCA that allowed him to produce his own albums (see post # 465) - this soon led to Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson scoring similar deals (though not without going through hoops) and made thematically cohesive albums (rare in country music) like Waylon’s 1973 “Honky Tonk Heroes” and Willie’s 1974 “Phases & Stages”.
But what most of these origin stories have in common is motivation - the outlaws wanted freedom. The singers wanted to sing the songs they liked, written by independent people like Billy Joe Shaver, Guy Clark and Ray Wylie Hubbard, among others, rather than the usual crop of studio employed writers. They wanted to record at independent studios like Tompall Glaser’s “Hillbilly Central,” the Nashville hub for pretty much everybody even tangentially associated with the outlaw movement - where they could record the way they wanted to record, not restricted by what they saw as restrictive rules employed by RCA and Columbia. They wanted to play the dancehalls - mostly in Texas and Oklahoma - like Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, where long-haired hippies, leather clad bikies and buzzcut rednecks struck a precarious truce to enjoy some good tunes and times (and drugs) together. In short, they wanted to control their own musical destinies. That is the essence of the Outlaw movement.
Here are some more brief musings - done Wittgenstein style for brevity -
There’s differing versions as to when the term “Outlaw Music” came to be applied to the 1970’s movement. Some sources (e.g. Rolling Stone Magazine - too often an unreliable source) claimed the term was coined in an article by music critic Dave Hickey, to describe artists who opposed the commercial and creative control of Nashville's recording industry. However, by the time he wrote that article, in 1975, the term was definitely already out. Some attribute it to Lee Clayton's song 'Ladies Love Outlaws', sung by Waylon Jennings and the title track of his 1972 album. But this was 3 years before the term started to be commonly applied in 1975. I agree that it was Hazel Smith, the publicist at the Glaser Brothers' "Hillbilly Central" studio, who came up with the term “outlaw music” sometime in late 1974 and pushed the term to the media to describe the music of renegades like Tompall Glaser, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
There wasn’t one standard ”Outlaw” sound - despite there close friendship and many musical collaborations together, Waylon and Willie’s solo music were very much different from each other. Having said that, Waylon’s sound is what came to most epitomise an “Outlaw” sound and it was certainly very influential on many others to follow.
The key Outlaw musicians weren’t young blow-ins but rather somewhat grizzled music veterans now well into their thirties, some approaching 40, who had been in Nashville for about a decade or more, had had some success - but had become constrained and frustrated by the whole Nashville system, which they felt was denying them further professional success by denying them the ability to produce their own sound.
Waylon, in particular, felt he had a means of reaching a whole new youth market that had largely been abandoned country, if only he was allowed to do things his way, while Willie fled Nashville altogether and back to Texas in 1972, on a very short lived Lived retirement, before Austin’s burgeoning music scene re-ignited his passion and inspiratio.
Waylon was “guilty” (as accused by the “purists”) of having basically a rock, not country, backing band. There was truth in that - yet his own vocal sound (in a strong, underrated, baritone) was totally country and his songs (so many which were written by Billy Joe Shaver) remained thoroughly country rooted. What he did was add another element to country music that appealed to the young at a time when country music was in danger of being consigned mostly to those of middle age and beyond.
There‘s no evidence of any emnity between those identified as Outlaws and those who had no part of the movement. The vanguard of the lush “Countrypolitan“ sound was veteran Texan great, Ray Price (see posts # 269-275). This former country traditionalist, who started his career in rough, tough, often violent West Texan oil fields honky tanks but now was impeccably dressed in expensive suits and ties, took great pride (excuse the pun) in his late career phase of sophisticated Countrpolitan music (towards which Kris Kristofferson greatly contributed to with his song-writing) for a mostly middle-class, mature-age audience. Yet throughout the whole “Outlaw“ era, Ray Price remained on good very terms with fellow Texan Waylon and was close friends with his former bassist band member Willie (with whom he subsequently recorded an album with after he returned to his traditional country roots). These Texans well understood they were chasing different markets with their different music at different stages in their careers.
Johnny Cash (posts # 338-345) is listed in most (though crucially not quite all) sources as an “Outlaw”. This is wrong - he was never an “Outlaw” (in the sense of being one those 1970’s artists seeking freedom). Sure, he was good friends with Willie and Waylon (who he even shared an apartment and lots of pills with in the late 1960’s), but he was also friends with a whole lot of other musicians who had nothing to do with being an “Outlaw”. His cool “man in black” mantra dates from the 1960’s, his own wildest pill-popping outlaw times were also in the 1960’s, and during the time period the whole 1970’s Outlaw movement was happening, Cash was actually having his most settled period, mostly off the pills following rehab and therapy, happily domiciled with his wife, June Carter, introducing and tutoring his daughter, Roseanne into the professional world of country music and not doing anything in regards to being an “Outlaw”.
Merle Haggard (# 497-502), being from Bakersfield, California, was never that tied into the Nashville system and really only played a peripheral, bit role as an “Outlaw” (he was one of the influenced, rather than one of the initial influencers). He came in late to the “Outlaw” scene - after the break-up of his marriage with Bonnie Owens - starting to perform with them, growing a beard, starting a cocaine addiction, just as the Outlaw movement started its decline in the late 1970’s - and in the end, damaging, at least for a time, his own health and career. His minor, late, role in the Outlaw movement didn’t do him any good at the time.
This might seem outright like heresy, and goes against all the ”standard models” of Outlaw history, but I even have serious doubts Kris Kristofferson (posts # 661-667) should be listed as an “Outlaw” - unless one only considers friendships and fashions. He already had grown his hair longer and sported a beard by 1971, before the whole “Outlaw” movement got going. As for his friendships with Waylon and Willie, this dates from when he first arrived in Nashville and fell in the Faron Young’s gang of notorious hell-raisers hanging out at Tootsies saloon in the mid 1960’s (# 661), well before the Outlaw era.
And let’s not forget, he was also friends with, and wrote some great Countrypolitan songs for, Ray Price (e.g.'For The Good Times'). Contrary to popular mythology,he was never held back by his record company from performing - in fact the exact opposite was correct. He was persuaded by his record company exec, Fred Foster, to record his own material, not just be a song-writer (# 662) - and this all happened back in 1970. There was no rebellion by him - his drinking, drug taking and womanising had started well before the outlaw era and when the movement was taking off and reaching its height, he had drifted off to Hollywood to make movies. But not before he had produced Billy Joe Shaver’s “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” album in 1973. Maybe that’s just enough to count him in.
When the “Outlaw” supergroup The Highwaymen was formed in 1984, a fair bit of re-writing of history was done to turn Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson into retrospective Outlaws. There are some (albeit unconvincing for me) arguments for Kristofferson, none at all for Cash.
George Jones (# 405-412) is now often labelled as one of the Outlaws he but never was at the time. Sure, he was an abject alcoholic, a copious cocaine user, and got on well with his fellow Texan Outlaw musicians - especially Willie Nelson, who, along with a now tamed down Johnny Cash, tried to help George overcome his addictions. But his music remained what it was - a mixture of traditional and classic Nashville Sound with his perfect country music vocals - he never dressed or identified as an Outlaw, never grew a beard or had long hair and stuck to wearing either a now out of fashion nudie suit or just a regulation suit and tie.
Townes Van Zandt (# 551-557) just followed his own course, went to the beat his own drum (or, more aptly, the strum of his own guitar) and never followed any movement or fashion except his own. His story is separate from the Outlaw movement.
The term “Outlaws” ironically, and with the full connivance of the artists involved, soon came to be used as a (hugely successful) marketing tool by the very same record company (RCA), whose previous actions had started the “Outlaw Rebellion”. But more on this comes later.
There were the “Outlaws” - and then there were so-called “real” Outlaws, who took the term more literally (and not just as a marketing ploy). These artists have a story to tell and some very good music to listen to and will play a part in this history series.
The greatest accomplishment of the Outlaw Movement is that it really won back a huge segment of the youth and younger demographic that had seemed mostly lost to 1970’s. And especially so for young males - “Outlaw“ music was unashamedly (though not exclusively) masculine music. It’s influence remains to this day.
I’ll be back in a day or two with the first of our Outlaws to featured.
Last edited:
Our first Outlaw artist never achieved the same level of fame as peers like Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, but his songs were a significant part of the movement's architecture and were widely covered by stars ranging from Bobby Bare, Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash to Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. A native Texan who lived just the type of rough-and-tumble life that made his songs so appealing, he was 34 by the time he made his album debut.
Born in Corsicana, a town 100 km South of Dallas, in 1939, Shaver's early years seem like a blueprint for the type of outlaw country fare he and other songwriters would later immortalise. He was raised by his grandmother on her pension after his father abandoned the family and his mother took a job of sorts in a Waco honky tonk 90 km away. He grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry on radio, as well as the R&B of Corsicana’s African-American community, and began writing his own songs by age 8. He dropped out of school after 8th grade to pick cotton alongside his uncles, and started going to local honky tonks for the music … and alcohol. Like so many other poor young male Southerners of that era, he enlisted in the services - in this case the U.S. Navy - the day he turned 17 for a 2 year stint. He later bounced from job to job, trying his luck as a rodeo clown and then at a sawmill, where an accident claimed a pair of fingers and part of a third on his right hand - “I wouldn’t ever have gone into music if I hadn’t lost my fingers,” he later said. “It led to a bunch of weird dominoes falling in a weird order”.
In a display of the tenacity he carried throughout his life, Shaver quickly adapted and taught himself to play guitar without his missing fingers, using thumb and pinkie for picking. Around this same time, he met and married Brenda Tindell, with whom he had a son, Eddy, in 1962. In a strange twist of fate, he and Tindell divorced then remarried, divorced again then re-married again, seemingly bound together until her death in 1999. He often remarked that while others had marriage problems, he had divorce problems. Their first divorce purportedly came about as a result of Shaver's decision to pursue a songwriting career, and in 1966, after Tindell filed the papers, Shaver promptly hitchhiked to Nashville in the back of a cantaloupe truck.
It took a few years and some retreats back and forth between Texas and Tennessee but his tenacity once again paid off after an unannounced visit to Bobby Bare's Nashville office in 1968 (where he stridently demanded to be heard) finally earned him a contract as a staff songwriter for Bare’s music publishing company. Bare went on to record a number of Shaver's songs, including the hit ’Ride Me Down Easy’ but he wasn't the only one who heard potential in the Texan. Shaver's own debut single, 1970's ‘Chicken on the Ground‘ bombed, but he soon began landing other songs with big names like Tom T. Hall (’Willie the Wandering Gypsy and Me’) and Kris Kristofferson (’Good Christian Soldier’).
Shaver’s big break arrived in 1972 when fellow Texan, Willie Nelson invited him to perform at his first 4th of July Picnic in Dripping Springs, Texas. After hearing Shaver, Waylon Jennings vowed to record a whole album of his songs. The offer wasn’t meant to be taken seriously - Jennings was drunk or stoned or both when he spoke - but Shaver refused to let it drop, and he hounded Jennings for months to listen to his music. As Shaver tells it - “I was at the Dripping Springs Reunion … And I was singing ‘Willy The Wandering Gypsy and Me’. And Waylon busted out of there and said, ‘Whose song is that?’ We was passing a guitar around. There was about 3 of us … And I said, ‘Well it’s mine.’ He says, ‘Well I’d like to learn that and record it.’ and I said ‘Okay’ and he sat down there with me and learned it and everything. And he said, ‘You got any more of those cowboy songs?’ And that’s what I was doing at that time, and I said, ‘Yeah, I got a whole sack full of ’em.'”
“He told me to come up to Nashville and he would record all those songs. I took him at his word and I chased him around about 6 months and I’m doing little odd jobs, you know. I used to wash dishes and stuff … Finally one night, Captain Midnight whose a friend of mine, a DJ there, very popular guy, he managed to get me into a session of Waylon’s, and Waylon didn’t like me because he’d run every time he’d see me. He knew he made me a promise but he didn’t want to keep it. Waylon found out I was there and he sent Midnight back with a $100 bill just folded up into a little bitty square and [Waylon] said, ‘Give this to him and tell him to get the ***** out of here and stay the ***** away. I looked at the $100 and thought ‘Wow’ because I was broke. I could have used it. But I told Midnight, ‘Here, tell that mother****er to stick that up his ass and twist it”
As you can imagine, Waylon was not too happy! - “He’s mad as hell. And there’s a bunch of hangers on and groupies and people like that all up and down the hall. It was a long hall and it was almost like a gunfight deal. He comes out of there, glaring at me and he’s got two bikers on each side, and he says, ‘Hoss, what the ***** do you want?’ And I says, ‘I’ll tell you what I *****ing want … If you don’t listen to these songs, at least listen to them, I’m going to whip your ass right here in front of God and everybody”. This was Waylon Jennings he was talking to - the most or’nery, toughest and notorious Nashville artist at the time. Waylon didn’t like that “worth a damn.” Neither did the bikers, who started to move in on the songwriter, but Jennings stopped them. Finally won over, or worn down, by Billy Joe’s pluck and persistance, he walked over to Shaver, grabbed him by the elbow and led him into a room off the hallway. Shaver had his guitar with him, because he was on his way back to Texas that day.
Once in the room, Jennings laid out his terms - “I’ll tell you what, Billy,’Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me’, I’ll do that. I’m not going to do anything else unless I hear something that’s real good. If you can play me something real good, you can play another one. If not, you’re gonna hit that door, you’re gonna ***** off outta here, and I ain’t gonna see you again.” To Shaver, that sounded fair, so he played ‘Black Rose‘. Waylon asked for another, so Shaver went with ‘Ain’t No God In Mexico’. Waylon never stopped him. Then, Shaver played ‘Honky Tonk Heroes‘, all inspired by his hard-knock life. At that point, Waylon slapped his knee and told Billy Joe - “You’re in.” By the time he was finished, Jennings wanted to record a Shaver written album.
To the songwriter, the music had finally met its perfect match. “The songs were so big, they were too big for me,” Shaver later said. “I couldn’t possibly get them across the way Jennings could.” All but one of the songs on the album, “Honky Tonk Heroes“ were written or co-written by Shaver, and while no major hits emerged from the record, it was considered Jennings’s first full-throated renegade rallying cry. It also elevated Shaver into the upper ranks of songwriting.
That same year, Kris Kristofferson (who, like Shaver, possessed limited vocals and was first and foremost a songwriter who had only recently started his own singing career) produced Shaver's own 1973 debut album, “Old Five and Dimers Like Me“ which featured a number of originals already made famous by others, while also yielding one of his own signature cuts. Later recorded by everyone from Willie Nelson to Johnny Cash, the autobiographical ‘Georgia on A Fast Train’ was revisited by Shaver again in 1982 on his self-titled album and then a third time, 10 years later, on “Tramp On Your Street“ - explaining to Rolling Stone Magazine - “Sometimes you’ll see songs on records of mine that have been recorded 3 or 4 times. That’s because every place I play, the record company goes broke, so I have to go do the same songs again to make sure they got out”.
It’s not surprising he kept coming back to ‘Georgia on A Fast Train’ having thrown his whole life into the song - being brought up by his grandmother in a “… sharecroppers one-room country shack …” (though it was his father that high-tailed out of the home altogether when he was born while his mother at least sent money back from her honky took job in Waco), leaving school in 8th grade to go and work picking cotton on his uncle’s farm and hitting the honky tonks, his Christian up-bringing and willingness to fight. Old time Southern culture based on first hand experience, it’s all compressed in there - “… I got all my country learning, milkin' and a churning, pickin' cotton, rasin' hell, and bailin' hay …”, Shaver sings as a chugging railroad beat tears up beneath him - this 1982 re-recording features Billy Joe’s son Eddy shredding the guitar -
It was ‘Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me‘ that first caught Jennings’ attention, leading to an invitation for Shaver to write songs for the country icon. The tune was inspired by the nomadic life of his fellow Texas songwriter Willie Nelson, who went on to be his staunchest long term supporter (despite Shaver, with his 8th grade education, misspelling Willie as Willy) and it thoroughly demonstrates those collective sentiments of rootlessness and freedom every touring musician and range-riding cowboys are familiar with. There’s also something so much West Texas in this song -
Billy Joe Shaver almost didn’t make it into country music history at all. Broke and desperate after moving to Nashville in 1966, on a whim Shaver decided to spend the last bit of money he and his wife Brenda had on a ragged old truck he saw for sale. Shaver worked on the old truck all day, but couldn’t get it to start, let alone run. So his wife left him with the old truck. Out of luck, love, and money, Shaver decided to end it all. “Don’t ever play Russian roulette with an automatic,” Billy Joe warns. But he tried in this instance by pointing the gun at his head and pulling the trigger, lifting the gun up over his head just before the first shot rang out, and then unloading the rest of the bullets into the wall. He recounted the incident in ‘Ragged Old Truck’, which was first recorded and released by Johnny Paycheck in 1979, with Shaver releasing his version in 1981 -
‘Ride Me Down Easy’ was a #11 hit for Bobby Bare in 1973, was one of the songs Waylon included in his ‘Honky Tonk Heroes’ album and was finally recorded by Shaver himself in 1976 for his ‘When I Get My Wings’ album. Here’s an outlaw’s repentanceo (albeit fictitiously, with Billy Joe still doing his fair share of hell raisin’ and more at the time, but perhaps anticipating the future), where Shaver details the moment he left behind his hell-raising days, yesterday’s wine, and (just a bit boastfully) some satisfied women behind as he makes himself ready for the final leap. This clip was from his appearance on Austin City Limits in 1979 and also features his son, Eddy, on guitar -
Originally titled (and still better known as) ‘Black Rose‘, Waylon originally included the song - in which the main character has an affair with a married black woman, on his “Honky Tonk Heroes” album. Shaver later re-recorded the song in 1987 with the more PC title ‘The Devil Made Me Do It The First Time‘. Shaver much later said the song was inspired by a youthful encounter with a prostitute, but whatever the truth, he did pen one the best descriptions of some of the women who come by in a man’s life - and who hopefully stay just out of reach if one is smart. I guess Billy Joe, like most of us, wasn’t -
“… When the devil made that woman / Lord, he threw the pattern away /
She was built for speed with the tools you need / to make a new fool every day …”.
Then he slays you with the chorus -
”… The devil made me do it the first time / The second time I done it on my own /
Lord, put a handle on a simple headed man / And help me leave that black rose alone. …”
So sings the self-recriminating protagonist in this brilliant swampy country morality mini-drama -
In the 1980s, Billy Joe began collaborating with his guitarist son, Eddy, forming the band Shaver. Shaver endured not only the 1999 death of his wife Brenda and his mother but, compounding these these losses months later was the totally unexpected, tragic death of Eddy from a heroin overdose, which lead Billy Joe to campaign against drug abuse. Turning to his music for comfort, Shaver entered one of the most prolific periods of his career, kicking off an impressive 5 year run with 2001's excellent “ The Earth Rolls On“, managing a new studio album each year along with a live release. Flirting with alt-country, folk, rock and plain country, he even turned to spiritual matters on 2007's gospel-inspired “Everybody's Brother”, which earned him a Grammy nomination and featured duets with his old friends Cash and Kristofferson. During this period, he also dabbled in acting, an endeavor he'd begun in 1996, playing opposite Robert Duvall in “The Apostle”. His mid-2000s roles included parts in “Secondhand Lions” and “The Wendell Baker Story”. Additionally, his song ’Live Forever‘ was featured in the 2009 country music inspired movie ”Crazy Heart“, sung by Duvall.
Shaver cemented his infamous reputation in 2007, when he and his second wife, Wanda Canady (whom he had married, divorced, and remarried - just like his first wife, Brenda, he would divorce and remarry her several times), walked into Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon near Waco. There, the 68 year old Shaver he got into an altercation with a large, muscle bound man 20 years younger named Billy Bryant Coker, whose cousin had previously been married to Wanda. Coker came up to Shaver, stuck a knife in his beer and stirred it, threatening him while trying to flirt with his wife. After some words were exchanged, Shaver decided it was time to leave before the scene got nasty, but Coker followed him out the door. In the carpark, Coker kept coming after him with his knife, so Shaver, armed like any smart Texan, pulled a small caliber pistol out of his boot and was overheard by witnesses asking Coker, “Where do you want it?” Shaver later testified in court he actually said, “Why do you want to do this?” to Coker before shooting the man square in the face - or, as Shriver later said - “right between the mother and the ****er!”, the bullet permanently lodging in the man’s neck but somehow not causing serious damage.
The news made it down to Austin where Dale Watson decided to write a song about the incident called ‘Where Do You Want It?‘, despite Shaver denying he said that. The song ended up on a Whitey Morgan album, and eventually on one from Dale too. After calling upon Willie Nelson and Robert Duvall as character witnesses. Billy Joewas acquitted of all charges on the grounds of self-defense by a sympathetic jury of his Waco peers - who clearly believed Coker deserved to be shot the moment he stirred Shaver’s beer with a knife. Shaver and Willie Nelson wrote an wonderfully unapologetic and very Texan song about the incident in 2012 - ‘Wacko From Waco’, with the opening verse here -
“…I'm a wacko from Waco / ain't no doubt about it / Shot a man there in the head / but can't talk much about it /
He was trying to shoot me / but he took too long to aim / Anybody in my place / would have done the same /
I don't start fights, I finish fights / that's the way I'll always be / I'm a wacko from Waco / you best not mess with me …”
Billy Joe Shaver recorded more than 20 albums, filled with poetical gems, albeit mostly unpolished gems, but his gritty songwriting has always overshadowed his career as singer. That was never more true than in 1973 when Waylon Jennings chose 9 of Shaver’s songs for his “Honky Tonk Heroes” album, considered among the first and the best of the Outlaw albums and one that helped to define the era. Willie Nelson has declared Shaver “definitely the best writer in Texas. His songs are so real. … They’re pieces of literature. Everything he writes is just poetry.”
Shaver was a great enough for Bob Dylan to write him into his 2009 song ‘I Feel A Change Coming On’ with a great line - “I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver and I’m reading James Joyce”. Dylan was listening to Shaver because he wrote with a hard scrabble precision that seems so simple yet for most of us so hard to achieve and anyone who ever puts thoughts to words simply admires. Billy Joe was as plain spoken and straight as Dylan was mysteriously obtuse and hard to interpret. Dylan was probably trying to simplify at the time. More recently, Jason Isbell said on Twitter - “Billy Joe Shaver might’ve been the only true outlaw who ever made his living writing about the inner workings of his heart. The realest of them all”.
Billy Joe Shaver was admitted into the Songwriters HoF in 2004. He continued to write, tour and record more live albums before releasing what would end up being his final album in 2014. “Long in the Tooth“ was a lovingly crafted set of world-weary songs that ironically marked the singer's first-ever appearance on the Albums chart, peaking at # 19. Harking back to his outlaw days, it featured a duet with longtime friend Willie Nelson on ’It's Hard to Be an Outlaw‘. The album and his long-overdue commercial success served as a fitting swan song from one of country music's most enduring and respected songwriters. Shaver died on October 2020 (as reported here in posts # 245 & 246) in his hometown, Waco, from a massive stroke, aged 81.
I’m going away yet again - but only for the next few days and this time, instead of going to some remote part of Australia, it’s just to the Melbourne CBD - where one of the perks will be going to the Australia v England T20 WC match at the MCG on Friday. After that, I should be home home again and getting ready to post some more Outlaw stuff.
Born in Corsicana, a town 100 km South of Dallas, in 1939, Shaver's early years seem like a blueprint for the type of outlaw country fare he and other songwriters would later immortalise. He was raised by his grandmother on her pension after his father abandoned the family and his mother took a job of sorts in a Waco honky tonk 90 km away. He grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry on radio, as well as the R&B of Corsicana’s African-American community, and began writing his own songs by age 8. He dropped out of school after 8th grade to pick cotton alongside his uncles, and started going to local honky tonks for the music … and alcohol. Like so many other poor young male Southerners of that era, he enlisted in the services - in this case the U.S. Navy - the day he turned 17 for a 2 year stint. He later bounced from job to job, trying his luck as a rodeo clown and then at a sawmill, where an accident claimed a pair of fingers and part of a third on his right hand - “I wouldn’t ever have gone into music if I hadn’t lost my fingers,” he later said. “It led to a bunch of weird dominoes falling in a weird order”.
In a display of the tenacity he carried throughout his life, Shaver quickly adapted and taught himself to play guitar without his missing fingers, using thumb and pinkie for picking. Around this same time, he met and married Brenda Tindell, with whom he had a son, Eddy, in 1962. In a strange twist of fate, he and Tindell divorced then remarried, divorced again then re-married again, seemingly bound together until her death in 1999. He often remarked that while others had marriage problems, he had divorce problems. Their first divorce purportedly came about as a result of Shaver's decision to pursue a songwriting career, and in 1966, after Tindell filed the papers, Shaver promptly hitchhiked to Nashville in the back of a cantaloupe truck.
It took a few years and some retreats back and forth between Texas and Tennessee but his tenacity once again paid off after an unannounced visit to Bobby Bare's Nashville office in 1968 (where he stridently demanded to be heard) finally earned him a contract as a staff songwriter for Bare’s music publishing company. Bare went on to record a number of Shaver's songs, including the hit ’Ride Me Down Easy’ but he wasn't the only one who heard potential in the Texan. Shaver's own debut single, 1970's ‘Chicken on the Ground‘ bombed, but he soon began landing other songs with big names like Tom T. Hall (’Willie the Wandering Gypsy and Me’) and Kris Kristofferson (’Good Christian Soldier’).
Shaver’s big break arrived in 1972 when fellow Texan, Willie Nelson invited him to perform at his first 4th of July Picnic in Dripping Springs, Texas. After hearing Shaver, Waylon Jennings vowed to record a whole album of his songs. The offer wasn’t meant to be taken seriously - Jennings was drunk or stoned or both when he spoke - but Shaver refused to let it drop, and he hounded Jennings for months to listen to his music. As Shaver tells it - “I was at the Dripping Springs Reunion … And I was singing ‘Willy The Wandering Gypsy and Me’. And Waylon busted out of there and said, ‘Whose song is that?’ We was passing a guitar around. There was about 3 of us … And I said, ‘Well it’s mine.’ He says, ‘Well I’d like to learn that and record it.’ and I said ‘Okay’ and he sat down there with me and learned it and everything. And he said, ‘You got any more of those cowboy songs?’ And that’s what I was doing at that time, and I said, ‘Yeah, I got a whole sack full of ’em.'”
“He told me to come up to Nashville and he would record all those songs. I took him at his word and I chased him around about 6 months and I’m doing little odd jobs, you know. I used to wash dishes and stuff … Finally one night, Captain Midnight whose a friend of mine, a DJ there, very popular guy, he managed to get me into a session of Waylon’s, and Waylon didn’t like me because he’d run every time he’d see me. He knew he made me a promise but he didn’t want to keep it. Waylon found out I was there and he sent Midnight back with a $100 bill just folded up into a little bitty square and [Waylon] said, ‘Give this to him and tell him to get the ***** out of here and stay the ***** away. I looked at the $100 and thought ‘Wow’ because I was broke. I could have used it. But I told Midnight, ‘Here, tell that mother****er to stick that up his ass and twist it”
As you can imagine, Waylon was not too happy! - “He’s mad as hell. And there’s a bunch of hangers on and groupies and people like that all up and down the hall. It was a long hall and it was almost like a gunfight deal. He comes out of there, glaring at me and he’s got two bikers on each side, and he says, ‘Hoss, what the ***** do you want?’ And I says, ‘I’ll tell you what I *****ing want … If you don’t listen to these songs, at least listen to them, I’m going to whip your ass right here in front of God and everybody”. This was Waylon Jennings he was talking to - the most or’nery, toughest and notorious Nashville artist at the time. Waylon didn’t like that “worth a damn.” Neither did the bikers, who started to move in on the songwriter, but Jennings stopped them. Finally won over, or worn down, by Billy Joe’s pluck and persistance, he walked over to Shaver, grabbed him by the elbow and led him into a room off the hallway. Shaver had his guitar with him, because he was on his way back to Texas that day.
Once in the room, Jennings laid out his terms - “I’ll tell you what, Billy,’Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me’, I’ll do that. I’m not going to do anything else unless I hear something that’s real good. If you can play me something real good, you can play another one. If not, you’re gonna hit that door, you’re gonna ***** off outta here, and I ain’t gonna see you again.” To Shaver, that sounded fair, so he played ‘Black Rose‘. Waylon asked for another, so Shaver went with ‘Ain’t No God In Mexico’. Waylon never stopped him. Then, Shaver played ‘Honky Tonk Heroes‘, all inspired by his hard-knock life. At that point, Waylon slapped his knee and told Billy Joe - “You’re in.” By the time he was finished, Jennings wanted to record a Shaver written album.
To the songwriter, the music had finally met its perfect match. “The songs were so big, they were too big for me,” Shaver later said. “I couldn’t possibly get them across the way Jennings could.” All but one of the songs on the album, “Honky Tonk Heroes“ were written or co-written by Shaver, and while no major hits emerged from the record, it was considered Jennings’s first full-throated renegade rallying cry. It also elevated Shaver into the upper ranks of songwriting.
That same year, Kris Kristofferson (who, like Shaver, possessed limited vocals and was first and foremost a songwriter who had only recently started his own singing career) produced Shaver's own 1973 debut album, “Old Five and Dimers Like Me“ which featured a number of originals already made famous by others, while also yielding one of his own signature cuts. Later recorded by everyone from Willie Nelson to Johnny Cash, the autobiographical ‘Georgia on A Fast Train’ was revisited by Shaver again in 1982 on his self-titled album and then a third time, 10 years later, on “Tramp On Your Street“ - explaining to Rolling Stone Magazine - “Sometimes you’ll see songs on records of mine that have been recorded 3 or 4 times. That’s because every place I play, the record company goes broke, so I have to go do the same songs again to make sure they got out”.
It’s not surprising he kept coming back to ‘Georgia on A Fast Train’ having thrown his whole life into the song - being brought up by his grandmother in a “… sharecroppers one-room country shack …” (though it was his father that high-tailed out of the home altogether when he was born while his mother at least sent money back from her honky took job in Waco), leaving school in 8th grade to go and work picking cotton on his uncle’s farm and hitting the honky tonks, his Christian up-bringing and willingness to fight. Old time Southern culture based on first hand experience, it’s all compressed in there - “… I got all my country learning, milkin' and a churning, pickin' cotton, rasin' hell, and bailin' hay …”, Shaver sings as a chugging railroad beat tears up beneath him - this 1982 re-recording features Billy Joe’s son Eddy shredding the guitar -
It was ‘Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me‘ that first caught Jennings’ attention, leading to an invitation for Shaver to write songs for the country icon. The tune was inspired by the nomadic life of his fellow Texas songwriter Willie Nelson, who went on to be his staunchest long term supporter (despite Shaver, with his 8th grade education, misspelling Willie as Willy) and it thoroughly demonstrates those collective sentiments of rootlessness and freedom every touring musician and range-riding cowboys are familiar with. There’s also something so much West Texas in this song -
Billy Joe Shaver almost didn’t make it into country music history at all. Broke and desperate after moving to Nashville in 1966, on a whim Shaver decided to spend the last bit of money he and his wife Brenda had on a ragged old truck he saw for sale. Shaver worked on the old truck all day, but couldn’t get it to start, let alone run. So his wife left him with the old truck. Out of luck, love, and money, Shaver decided to end it all. “Don’t ever play Russian roulette with an automatic,” Billy Joe warns. But he tried in this instance by pointing the gun at his head and pulling the trigger, lifting the gun up over his head just before the first shot rang out, and then unloading the rest of the bullets into the wall. He recounted the incident in ‘Ragged Old Truck’, which was first recorded and released by Johnny Paycheck in 1979, with Shaver releasing his version in 1981 -
‘Ride Me Down Easy’ was a #11 hit for Bobby Bare in 1973, was one of the songs Waylon included in his ‘Honky Tonk Heroes’ album and was finally recorded by Shaver himself in 1976 for his ‘When I Get My Wings’ album. Here’s an outlaw’s repentanceo (albeit fictitiously, with Billy Joe still doing his fair share of hell raisin’ and more at the time, but perhaps anticipating the future), where Shaver details the moment he left behind his hell-raising days, yesterday’s wine, and (just a bit boastfully) some satisfied women behind as he makes himself ready for the final leap. This clip was from his appearance on Austin City Limits in 1979 and also features his son, Eddy, on guitar -
Originally titled (and still better known as) ‘Black Rose‘, Waylon originally included the song - in which the main character has an affair with a married black woman, on his “Honky Tonk Heroes” album. Shaver later re-recorded the song in 1987 with the more PC title ‘The Devil Made Me Do It The First Time‘. Shaver much later said the song was inspired by a youthful encounter with a prostitute, but whatever the truth, he did pen one the best descriptions of some of the women who come by in a man’s life - and who hopefully stay just out of reach if one is smart. I guess Billy Joe, like most of us, wasn’t -
“… When the devil made that woman / Lord, he threw the pattern away /
She was built for speed with the tools you need / to make a new fool every day …”.
Then he slays you with the chorus -
”… The devil made me do it the first time / The second time I done it on my own /
Lord, put a handle on a simple headed man / And help me leave that black rose alone. …”
So sings the self-recriminating protagonist in this brilliant swampy country morality mini-drama -
In the 1980s, Billy Joe began collaborating with his guitarist son, Eddy, forming the band Shaver. Shaver endured not only the 1999 death of his wife Brenda and his mother but, compounding these these losses months later was the totally unexpected, tragic death of Eddy from a heroin overdose, which lead Billy Joe to campaign against drug abuse. Turning to his music for comfort, Shaver entered one of the most prolific periods of his career, kicking off an impressive 5 year run with 2001's excellent “ The Earth Rolls On“, managing a new studio album each year along with a live release. Flirting with alt-country, folk, rock and plain country, he even turned to spiritual matters on 2007's gospel-inspired “Everybody's Brother”, which earned him a Grammy nomination and featured duets with his old friends Cash and Kristofferson. During this period, he also dabbled in acting, an endeavor he'd begun in 1996, playing opposite Robert Duvall in “The Apostle”. His mid-2000s roles included parts in “Secondhand Lions” and “The Wendell Baker Story”. Additionally, his song ’Live Forever‘ was featured in the 2009 country music inspired movie ”Crazy Heart“, sung by Duvall.
Shaver cemented his infamous reputation in 2007, when he and his second wife, Wanda Canady (whom he had married, divorced, and remarried - just like his first wife, Brenda, he would divorce and remarry her several times), walked into Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon near Waco. There, the 68 year old Shaver he got into an altercation with a large, muscle bound man 20 years younger named Billy Bryant Coker, whose cousin had previously been married to Wanda. Coker came up to Shaver, stuck a knife in his beer and stirred it, threatening him while trying to flirt with his wife. After some words were exchanged, Shaver decided it was time to leave before the scene got nasty, but Coker followed him out the door. In the carpark, Coker kept coming after him with his knife, so Shaver, armed like any smart Texan, pulled a small caliber pistol out of his boot and was overheard by witnesses asking Coker, “Where do you want it?” Shaver later testified in court he actually said, “Why do you want to do this?” to Coker before shooting the man square in the face - or, as Shriver later said - “right between the mother and the ****er!”, the bullet permanently lodging in the man’s neck but somehow not causing serious damage.
The news made it down to Austin where Dale Watson decided to write a song about the incident called ‘Where Do You Want It?‘, despite Shaver denying he said that. The song ended up on a Whitey Morgan album, and eventually on one from Dale too. After calling upon Willie Nelson and Robert Duvall as character witnesses. Billy Joewas acquitted of all charges on the grounds of self-defense by a sympathetic jury of his Waco peers - who clearly believed Coker deserved to be shot the moment he stirred Shaver’s beer with a knife. Shaver and Willie Nelson wrote an wonderfully unapologetic and very Texan song about the incident in 2012 - ‘Wacko From Waco’, with the opening verse here -
“…I'm a wacko from Waco / ain't no doubt about it / Shot a man there in the head / but can't talk much about it /
He was trying to shoot me / but he took too long to aim / Anybody in my place / would have done the same /
I don't start fights, I finish fights / that's the way I'll always be / I'm a wacko from Waco / you best not mess with me …”
Billy Joe Shaver recorded more than 20 albums, filled with poetical gems, albeit mostly unpolished gems, but his gritty songwriting has always overshadowed his career as singer. That was never more true than in 1973 when Waylon Jennings chose 9 of Shaver’s songs for his “Honky Tonk Heroes” album, considered among the first and the best of the Outlaw albums and one that helped to define the era. Willie Nelson has declared Shaver “definitely the best writer in Texas. His songs are so real. … They’re pieces of literature. Everything he writes is just poetry.”
Shaver was a great enough for Bob Dylan to write him into his 2009 song ‘I Feel A Change Coming On’ with a great line - “I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver and I’m reading James Joyce”. Dylan was listening to Shaver because he wrote with a hard scrabble precision that seems so simple yet for most of us so hard to achieve and anyone who ever puts thoughts to words simply admires. Billy Joe was as plain spoken and straight as Dylan was mysteriously obtuse and hard to interpret. Dylan was probably trying to simplify at the time. More recently, Jason Isbell said on Twitter - “Billy Joe Shaver might’ve been the only true outlaw who ever made his living writing about the inner workings of his heart. The realest of them all”.
Billy Joe Shaver was admitted into the Songwriters HoF in 2004. He continued to write, tour and record more live albums before releasing what would end up being his final album in 2014. “Long in the Tooth“ was a lovingly crafted set of world-weary songs that ironically marked the singer's first-ever appearance on the Albums chart, peaking at # 19. Harking back to his outlaw days, it featured a duet with longtime friend Willie Nelson on ’It's Hard to Be an Outlaw‘. The album and his long-overdue commercial success served as a fitting swan song from one of country music's most enduring and respected songwriters. Shaver died on October 2020 (as reported here in posts # 245 & 246) in his hometown, Waco, from a massive stroke, aged 81.
I’m going away yet again - but only for the next few days and this time, instead of going to some remote part of Australia, it’s just to the Melbourne CBD - where one of the perks will be going to the Australia v England T20 WC match at the MCG on Friday. After that, I should be home home again and getting ready to post some more Outlaw stuff.
Last edited:
I’m back from the city to continue this history, this time with a haunted artist - a man who had to live with his last words said to his band leader and friend before tragedy struck, and battled for years afterwards with addictions. Then some years later, now in Nashville, he was haunted by an inability to get onto vinyl the unique sound he and his band had previously developed during his celebrated performances at D.J.’s nightclub in Scottsdale, Arizona. At a time when the country music industry was dominated by the “Nashville Sound”, in which record companies required singers to adhere to a rigid convention of using session musicians playing certain sophisticate, but established, commercially safe styles, he demanded on doing things his own way - and by doing so he, along with his friend, Willie Nelson, came to personify the “outlaw movement” during the 1970’s and become a country music legend.
Waylon Jennings was born in 1937, in the small West Texas cotton town of Littlefield. His father was an amateur musician who held various jobs including working on a farm, driving a truck, and running a creamery and gas station. His mother also played music and bought Waylon his first guitar when still a young boy. He learned his first songs from his parents. Young Waylon enjoyed listening to such music as Western-swing king Bob Wills (posts # 132-140), honky tonk pioneer Ernest Tubb (# 161-165) and the greatest of all, Hank Williams (# 205-214), and he liked watching cowboy movies, especially those starring Gene Autry (# 125-126). At age 14, he got a part-time job at a Littlewood radio station, spinning records, singing and playing music with a country band he formed. After quitting high school at age 16, he worked in different jobs, including stocking shelves in a dry goods store, picking cotton, and driving a truck. He also played music at local shows with his band, the Texas Longhorns.
In the mid-to late 1950s, Waylon often visited the regional city of Lubbock, 55 km away, to play on a radio music show, which featured area bands. He landed a job as a DJ at a Lubbock radio station, where he spun country and rock’n’roll. While performing music and working as a DJ in Lubbock, Waylon became good friends with another young local musician, Buddy Holly. The 2 would often talk and play music together during Waylon’s radio shows. By the late 1950s, Holly had become a huge, nationally known rock’n’roll star. In 1958, he arranged Waylon’s first recording session, where he sang the Cajun classic ’Jole Blon‘ (in which he mangles his way through the French words - they sound French enough to most English speakers but amusing gibberish if you understand French) and ‘When Sin Stops (Love Begins)‘. Holly hired King Curtis to play saxophone on the songs. The single was released in 1959 (and is now on YouTube), but it failed to generate much notice.
In late 1958, Holly hired Waylon to play electric bass with his band on his “Winter Dance Party Tour”, starting in January 1959. The night of February 2, 1959 was bitterly cold. So cold, in fact, the rickety, unheated tour bus carrying Holly and his bandmates Carl Bunch, Tommy Allsup and Jennings broke down on the way to their gig in Iowa, resulting in frostbitten toes and a hospital stay for Bunch. Determined to find a more comfortable mode of transportation, Holly chartered a 4 seat plane to fly to their next show in Minnesota. Waylon, approached by JP Richardson (aka The Big Bopper), who was suffering from the flu, at the last minute voluntarily gave up his own seat on the plane – a decision that ultimately haunted Waylon for decades. When Holly discovered Waylon had given up his seat on the plane in exchange for another freezing night on their tour bus, the usual ribbing ensued - Holly jokingly told Jennings as he was getting ready to leave; “Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up!”. Jennings replied, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes!”. This was his final words to his good friend. That flight crashed, killing Holly, Richardson, Ritchie Valens, and the pilot. The tragedy was immortalized by Don McLean as “… the day the music died …” in the 1971 song ‘American Pie’.
Holly’s death devestated Jennings, and it took him some time to recover (decades later, he said he never fully got over it, that every day he still thought about it). He initially returned to his work as a radio DJ in West Texas. He also briefly tried working as a mechanic. But in 1961 he moved to Arizona, where he worked in radio and played in Phoenix-area clubs. He soon got a job as the main act at a new nightclub in Scottsdale called J.D.’s. It was there that Waylon - and the band he formed called the Waylors - developed a unique sound that combined his aggressive electric guitar playing, his deep, soulful, baritone vocals and a diverse repertoire that incorporated country, rock, and folk. In 2000, a recording re-surfaced of Jennings performing a Buck Owens hit (so we’ve heard this before on # 458), ‘I Don't Care (Just As Long As You Love Me)’, live at J.D.’s in early 1965, and even here, we have the trademark Jennings driving beat and, of course, his ripping guitar work on his Fender telecaster -
This also shows the influence the Bakersfield Sound (# 455) had on Waylon and his music.
Waylon quickly established himself as a regional star with a huge following in Phoenix and surrounds. Major success seemed just around the corner. But problems arose when it came to translating his music onto records. He had previously signed a recording contract with an independent in 1961 but none of the singles made much of an impact. In 1963, he obtained a contract with Herb Alpert’s A&M Records, which released a number of his recordings in 1964. However, Alpert, in a clear error of judgement, mistakenly envisioned Waylon as something of a pop-folk singer, and the resulting records were, again, unsuccessful.
Jennings’ big break finally came when Bobby Bare (notice how his name has appeared in all 3 posts so far on Outlaw music) saw Waylon perform at J.D.’s one night in late 1964. He was so impressed he persuaded Chet Atkins, his producer at RCA, to sign Waylon on the spot. In 1965, Jennings moved to Nashville to record with RCA - despite being dissuaded to do so by one of his West Texan music friends, Willie Nelson, who already had his own disillusioning experiences with the Nashville system and advised Waylon - “Nashville will break your heart”. After arriving in “Music City”, Waylon moved into an apartment with Johnny Cash, and the two musicians began a life-long friendship. They also shared a wild hell-raising lifestyle, including addictions to amphetamines (Jennings had already been using these “uppers” regularly in Arizona) - they weren’t really good for each other. Jennings was also by now a chain smoker, but one thing he very rarely imbibed in was alcohol. Pills, tobacco and junk food were enough for him.
Waylon’s first single for RCA, ‘That’s the Chance I’ll Have to Take‘ became a minor hit in mid-1965. With his second single, ‘Stop the World (And Let Me Off)‘, he charted his first top-40 hit. His first top-10 hit came with his 1966 cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s acoustic ‘(That’s What You Get) For Lovin’ Me’ (# 696) from his second album, “Leavin’ Town”. But, in what had already become apparent to Waylon and his most dedicated fans, the sound on his albums, recorded under RCA’s Nashville Sound production standards didn’t match the energy of his live performances with his own band. That’s why I’ve chosen this live version with a still young, fresh-faced looking Waylon and his Telecaster, electrifying the song. The lyrics were inspired by Bob Dylan's 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright', but was, some decades later, described by Lightfoot as "The most chauvinistic song I ever wrote". Chauvinistic or not, many a rambler could relate to this - and both Lightfoot and Jennings rambled a lot at that time -
"... So don't you shed a tear for me / I ain't the love you thought I'd be /
I've got a hundred more like you, but don't be blue / I'll have a thousand before I'm through ..." -
Waylon’s third album, “Nashville Rebel”, was notable for the title song and for a moving ballad ‘Green River‘. The album was the soundtrack to an independent 1966 movie that Jennings, who had never acted in his life, surprisingly landed the lead role after a spur-of-the-moment audition - no doubt helped by his looks and personality. However, by his own admission, Waylon turned out as not a natural actor. Through the rest of the 1960s and early 1970s, Jennings released a series of hit songs for RCA. Among these were ‘Mental Revenge’. Mel Tillis (# 648-657) wrote the song, and later enjoyed a hit with it in 1976. But Jennings was the first artist to record it, showing his strength as a vocalist with this raw and bitter-edged performance that earned him a # 12 ranking in 1967. Jennings’ version definitely influenced Hank Williams Jr., who covered the song on his 2016 album “It’s About Time”. But like so many of Waylon’s performances, I prefer this live version over the studio recording -
In 1968, the Jimmy Bryant written ‘Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line ’ became Jennings 3rd third consecutive top 5 song and his biggest hit to date. It unluckily missed going to # 1, spending an unlikely 5 weeks at # 2. The song was among the first to foreshadow what became Jennings' signature raw sound, less polished than his Nashville contemporaries. Although Jennings played other sounds and styles over the next 5 years, this served as an example for what would turn out to be his winning formula in the 1970‘s. In its review of the song, Billboard aptly complimented the singer’s “… robust, compelling vocal style.” Lines like the opening - ”Everybody knows you’ve been steppin’ on my toes … ” sound menacing, as Jennings threatens to leave his girlfriend with the “… funny little moods… ”, who is getting on his nerves. Back off, girl - that’s the gist of this bit of bravado, as Jennings tells the petulant woman to quit playing games or, rest assured, he will head off -",,, When I start a-walkin', gonna hear you start a-squawkin', begging me to come back home …,".
Waylon, singing with the Kimberlys folk quartet, received a Grammy Award for their 1969 version of Jimmy Webb‘s overblown song ‘MacArthur Park‘, which had been a 1968 pop hit for Richard Harris, despite it’s ludicrous lyrics. On to 1970 and undoubtedly Waylon was inspired by Chuck Berry‘s iconic 1956 recording of ’Brown Eyed Handsome Man’, but there was another artist who sparked Jennings’ interest in the song - his one-time friend and boss Buddy Holly, who recorded the song, which became a hit in the UK in 1963, 4 years after Holly’s death. Jennings’ 1970 release - which reached # 3 - showed an artist still looking for his own musical direction, but was a another step in the Outlaw style. Yet again with Waylon, I’ve gone with a live version from the Johnny Cash Show over the studio recording -
In all this time, Waylon also had a busy personal life - he was first married in 1956 at age 18 and by 1961, aged 23, he had 4 children. Jennings married his second wife in 1962, adopting another child, then married his third wife in 1967 as soon as his divorce came through. He later composed the song ’This Time’ about the trials and tribulations of his marriages and divorces. After his 3rd divorce, at age 32 Jennings married his 4th wife, country singer Jessi Colter in 1969. Colter had a daughter, Jennifer, from her previous marriage to Duane Eddy. Given Waylon’s headstrong manner (he was proving not a man to be messed with) and his natural weakness for women while on the road, most assumed his latest marriage would last no longer than his previous, given his headstrong ways, love of hard partying and women on the road. Instead, the couple would become musical partners as well as life partners.
Leaving off in 1970, with the 33 year old Waylon Jennings now a music industry veteran of some 15 years, habing chalked up 7 Top 10 albums, 6 Top 5 singles, but none reaching # 1. He was becoming increasingly frustrated with his career course and determined to do something about it. We will follow his path to being an outlaw - tomorrow.
Waylon Jennings was born in 1937, in the small West Texas cotton town of Littlefield. His father was an amateur musician who held various jobs including working on a farm, driving a truck, and running a creamery and gas station. His mother also played music and bought Waylon his first guitar when still a young boy. He learned his first songs from his parents. Young Waylon enjoyed listening to such music as Western-swing king Bob Wills (posts # 132-140), honky tonk pioneer Ernest Tubb (# 161-165) and the greatest of all, Hank Williams (# 205-214), and he liked watching cowboy movies, especially those starring Gene Autry (# 125-126). At age 14, he got a part-time job at a Littlewood radio station, spinning records, singing and playing music with a country band he formed. After quitting high school at age 16, he worked in different jobs, including stocking shelves in a dry goods store, picking cotton, and driving a truck. He also played music at local shows with his band, the Texas Longhorns.
In the mid-to late 1950s, Waylon often visited the regional city of Lubbock, 55 km away, to play on a radio music show, which featured area bands. He landed a job as a DJ at a Lubbock radio station, where he spun country and rock’n’roll. While performing music and working as a DJ in Lubbock, Waylon became good friends with another young local musician, Buddy Holly. The 2 would often talk and play music together during Waylon’s radio shows. By the late 1950s, Holly had become a huge, nationally known rock’n’roll star. In 1958, he arranged Waylon’s first recording session, where he sang the Cajun classic ’Jole Blon‘ (in which he mangles his way through the French words - they sound French enough to most English speakers but amusing gibberish if you understand French) and ‘When Sin Stops (Love Begins)‘. Holly hired King Curtis to play saxophone on the songs. The single was released in 1959 (and is now on YouTube), but it failed to generate much notice.
In late 1958, Holly hired Waylon to play electric bass with his band on his “Winter Dance Party Tour”, starting in January 1959. The night of February 2, 1959 was bitterly cold. So cold, in fact, the rickety, unheated tour bus carrying Holly and his bandmates Carl Bunch, Tommy Allsup and Jennings broke down on the way to their gig in Iowa, resulting in frostbitten toes and a hospital stay for Bunch. Determined to find a more comfortable mode of transportation, Holly chartered a 4 seat plane to fly to their next show in Minnesota. Waylon, approached by JP Richardson (aka The Big Bopper), who was suffering from the flu, at the last minute voluntarily gave up his own seat on the plane – a decision that ultimately haunted Waylon for decades. When Holly discovered Waylon had given up his seat on the plane in exchange for another freezing night on their tour bus, the usual ribbing ensued - Holly jokingly told Jennings as he was getting ready to leave; “Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up!”. Jennings replied, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes!”. This was his final words to his good friend. That flight crashed, killing Holly, Richardson, Ritchie Valens, and the pilot. The tragedy was immortalized by Don McLean as “… the day the music died …” in the 1971 song ‘American Pie’.
Holly’s death devestated Jennings, and it took him some time to recover (decades later, he said he never fully got over it, that every day he still thought about it). He initially returned to his work as a radio DJ in West Texas. He also briefly tried working as a mechanic. But in 1961 he moved to Arizona, where he worked in radio and played in Phoenix-area clubs. He soon got a job as the main act at a new nightclub in Scottsdale called J.D.’s. It was there that Waylon - and the band he formed called the Waylors - developed a unique sound that combined his aggressive electric guitar playing, his deep, soulful, baritone vocals and a diverse repertoire that incorporated country, rock, and folk. In 2000, a recording re-surfaced of Jennings performing a Buck Owens hit (so we’ve heard this before on # 458), ‘I Don't Care (Just As Long As You Love Me)’, live at J.D.’s in early 1965, and even here, we have the trademark Jennings driving beat and, of course, his ripping guitar work on his Fender telecaster -
This also shows the influence the Bakersfield Sound (# 455) had on Waylon and his music.
Waylon quickly established himself as a regional star with a huge following in Phoenix and surrounds. Major success seemed just around the corner. But problems arose when it came to translating his music onto records. He had previously signed a recording contract with an independent in 1961 but none of the singles made much of an impact. In 1963, he obtained a contract with Herb Alpert’s A&M Records, which released a number of his recordings in 1964. However, Alpert, in a clear error of judgement, mistakenly envisioned Waylon as something of a pop-folk singer, and the resulting records were, again, unsuccessful.
Jennings’ big break finally came when Bobby Bare (notice how his name has appeared in all 3 posts so far on Outlaw music) saw Waylon perform at J.D.’s one night in late 1964. He was so impressed he persuaded Chet Atkins, his producer at RCA, to sign Waylon on the spot. In 1965, Jennings moved to Nashville to record with RCA - despite being dissuaded to do so by one of his West Texan music friends, Willie Nelson, who already had his own disillusioning experiences with the Nashville system and advised Waylon - “Nashville will break your heart”. After arriving in “Music City”, Waylon moved into an apartment with Johnny Cash, and the two musicians began a life-long friendship. They also shared a wild hell-raising lifestyle, including addictions to amphetamines (Jennings had already been using these “uppers” regularly in Arizona) - they weren’t really good for each other. Jennings was also by now a chain smoker, but one thing he very rarely imbibed in was alcohol. Pills, tobacco and junk food were enough for him.
Waylon’s first single for RCA, ‘That’s the Chance I’ll Have to Take‘ became a minor hit in mid-1965. With his second single, ‘Stop the World (And Let Me Off)‘, he charted his first top-40 hit. His first top-10 hit came with his 1966 cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s acoustic ‘(That’s What You Get) For Lovin’ Me’ (# 696) from his second album, “Leavin’ Town”. But, in what had already become apparent to Waylon and his most dedicated fans, the sound on his albums, recorded under RCA’s Nashville Sound production standards didn’t match the energy of his live performances with his own band. That’s why I’ve chosen this live version with a still young, fresh-faced looking Waylon and his Telecaster, electrifying the song. The lyrics were inspired by Bob Dylan's 'Don't Think Twice, It's Alright', but was, some decades later, described by Lightfoot as "The most chauvinistic song I ever wrote". Chauvinistic or not, many a rambler could relate to this - and both Lightfoot and Jennings rambled a lot at that time -
"... So don't you shed a tear for me / I ain't the love you thought I'd be /
I've got a hundred more like you, but don't be blue / I'll have a thousand before I'm through ..." -
Waylon’s third album, “Nashville Rebel”, was notable for the title song and for a moving ballad ‘Green River‘. The album was the soundtrack to an independent 1966 movie that Jennings, who had never acted in his life, surprisingly landed the lead role after a spur-of-the-moment audition - no doubt helped by his looks and personality. However, by his own admission, Waylon turned out as not a natural actor. Through the rest of the 1960s and early 1970s, Jennings released a series of hit songs for RCA. Among these were ‘Mental Revenge’. Mel Tillis (# 648-657) wrote the song, and later enjoyed a hit with it in 1976. But Jennings was the first artist to record it, showing his strength as a vocalist with this raw and bitter-edged performance that earned him a # 12 ranking in 1967. Jennings’ version definitely influenced Hank Williams Jr., who covered the song on his 2016 album “It’s About Time”. But like so many of Waylon’s performances, I prefer this live version over the studio recording -
In 1968, the Jimmy Bryant written ‘Only Daddy That’ll Walk The Line ’ became Jennings 3rd third consecutive top 5 song and his biggest hit to date. It unluckily missed going to # 1, spending an unlikely 5 weeks at # 2. The song was among the first to foreshadow what became Jennings' signature raw sound, less polished than his Nashville contemporaries. Although Jennings played other sounds and styles over the next 5 years, this served as an example for what would turn out to be his winning formula in the 1970‘s. In its review of the song, Billboard aptly complimented the singer’s “… robust, compelling vocal style.” Lines like the opening - ”Everybody knows you’ve been steppin’ on my toes … ” sound menacing, as Jennings threatens to leave his girlfriend with the “… funny little moods… ”, who is getting on his nerves. Back off, girl - that’s the gist of this bit of bravado, as Jennings tells the petulant woman to quit playing games or, rest assured, he will head off -",,, When I start a-walkin', gonna hear you start a-squawkin', begging me to come back home …,".
Waylon, singing with the Kimberlys folk quartet, received a Grammy Award for their 1969 version of Jimmy Webb‘s overblown song ‘MacArthur Park‘, which had been a 1968 pop hit for Richard Harris, despite it’s ludicrous lyrics. On to 1970 and undoubtedly Waylon was inspired by Chuck Berry‘s iconic 1956 recording of ’Brown Eyed Handsome Man’, but there was another artist who sparked Jennings’ interest in the song - his one-time friend and boss Buddy Holly, who recorded the song, which became a hit in the UK in 1963, 4 years after Holly’s death. Jennings’ 1970 release - which reached # 3 - showed an artist still looking for his own musical direction, but was a another step in the Outlaw style. Yet again with Waylon, I’ve gone with a live version from the Johnny Cash Show over the studio recording -
In all this time, Waylon also had a busy personal life - he was first married in 1956 at age 18 and by 1961, aged 23, he had 4 children. Jennings married his second wife in 1962, adopting another child, then married his third wife in 1967 as soon as his divorce came through. He later composed the song ’This Time’ about the trials and tribulations of his marriages and divorces. After his 3rd divorce, at age 32 Jennings married his 4th wife, country singer Jessi Colter in 1969. Colter had a daughter, Jennifer, from her previous marriage to Duane Eddy. Given Waylon’s headstrong manner (he was proving not a man to be messed with) and his natural weakness for women while on the road, most assumed his latest marriage would last no longer than his previous, given his headstrong ways, love of hard partying and women on the road. Instead, the couple would become musical partners as well as life partners.
Leaving off in 1970, with the 33 year old Waylon Jennings now a music industry veteran of some 15 years, habing chalked up 7 Top 10 albums, 6 Top 5 singles, but none reaching # 1. He was becoming increasingly frustrated with his career course and determined to do something about it. We will follow his path to being an outlaw - tomorrow.
Today we trace Waylon Jennings‘ career into the 1970’s and his drift to his outlaw sound and image (it didn’t happen overnight or on just one album, but instead over 2 years and 5 albums, of which songs from the first 4 of these are featured today). Gone is the young looking fresh-faced image from the circa 1967/68 videos from yesterday. Waylon was living hard, becoming ever more addicted to pills, tobacco and fried junk food and in the album images below, you can see he seemed to have aged 20 years in 5 (as per that George Jones song - post # 410). Yet his rich, soulful, baritone vocals - the best baritone in country music - remained intact or even better than ever.
Musically, Jennings became increasingly frustrated with the direction of his career during the late 1960’s to early 1970’s period. RCA forced him to work with standard session musicians rather than his own band, which was more like a tight rock band in many ways, and he was not always allowed to record the type of material that he wanted. Thus, the resulting records did not fully reflect the sound and style he had in his mind, which was only found when he was performing live with his band. But Waylon was becoming increasingly forceful with his demands and gradually began to exercise a more control over his recordings with the albums “The Taker/Tulsa” (1971), “Good Hearted Woman” (1972), and “Ladies Love Outlaws“ (1972). Some of the songs on these albums hinted at the harder-edged, rock-influenced sound he was finally able to translate from his live performances with his own band onto vinyl.
“The Taker/Tulsa“ album is notable for featuring 4 compositions by Kris Kristofferson, who had emerged as a beacon for songwriters who wanted to bring a new poetic realism to country music. His greatest success to date had been his “Me and Bobby McGee” recorded by Janis Joplin in 1970. But he had also written some highly successful Countrypolitan style hits, including for Ray Price in particular (see # 661). Jennings, who had bristled when RCA producers told him what songs to record, began demanding more control over his records on all fronts, and began recording songs by newer songwriters like Kristofferson, Shel Silverstein, and Mickey Newbury. Jennings was particularly taken with the Kristofferson ballad ’Lovin' Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)‘ but was stymied by RCA's recording policies, recalling in the audio version of his autobiography “Waylon“ - "I went to Los Angeles and cut Kris Kristofferson's ‘Lovin' Her Was Easier‘ … It was a great record, up-tempo with a good guitar riff. They [RCA] wouldn't release it because it was recorded in L.A. They didn't want to set a precedent ... They didn't know who I was or what I was about, and I tried my best to keep 'em in the dark."
Although Jennings continued working with RCA producers like Danny Davis, his records began sounding less and less like his early work with the label. In the album’s title song, the Kristofferson written ‘The Taker’, unlike some of Waylon’s earlier hits we saw yesterday, here the female becomes the victim of a charming rake, an expert on the sweet arts of seduction and more than good on the job. Waylon builds the songs point ever stronger as he moves through the stages of the relationship -
“… And after he's taken the body and soul / She gives him, he'll take her for granted
Take off and leave her, taken all of her / Pride when he goes….”
“Good Hearted Woman“, Waylon’s 16th studio album from 1972, was produced by Ronny Light, who was appointed by Chet Atkins to produce Waylon after Danny Davis left to work with his brass ensemble. In his autobiography, Jennings, who had by now had a chip on his shoulder regarding producers, admitted to badgering the young producer during the sessions - "Ronny was young, one of the nicest people in the world, and didn't deserve the misery I put him through. I got more freedom with him as a producer, although I was still using musicians who didn't know what I was about”.
The album’s title track was written by Jennings and good friend, Willie Nelson, the song inspired while they were traveling together and saw a sign advertising Ike and Tina Turner, that said she was a "good-hearted woman loving two-timing men". They wrote the song while playing poker together, with Nelson's then-wife Connie Koepke writing the lines down as they said them. The song reached # 3 on the U.S. charts and went all the way to # 1 in Canada. The lines show a clear sympathy that perhaps reveals their own guilt as good timin’ men. The opening lines are a classic -
“A long time forgotten are dreams that just fell by the way / The good life he promised, ain't what she's living today …”
Jennings later re-recorded this as a duet with co-writer Nelson for the epochal “Wanted: The Outlaws” album in 1976. This version, released at the very peak of The Outlaws era, hit # 1 on the U.S. chart and # 5 in Canada’. The duet version also realized crossover success by charting at #25 on the U.S. Pop chart #16 on the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart.
The 1972 ’Sweet Dream Woman’, also from the “Good Hearted Woman” album, is noteworthy for Waylon’s vocal performance - one of his more restrained. Vocally, he held back just a little bit on this gem of a song, and the result that gives a hint at the style in which he was seeking to establish. It shows his vocal versatility and range - he was always able to belt out a powerful song in a strong baritone like Johnny Cash - but he was also capable of delivering a most tender ballad or simple love song in a way Cash, with his more limited range, couldn’t manage as well. This reached # 7 in the U.S., # 3 in Canada -
‘Ladies Love Outlaws’ from 1972 was the title track to what many consider Waylon’s first “outlaw” styled album, and not just because that word was used in its title. Mind you, notwithstanding the title of the song and album, the term “Outlaw” to describe a whole new country music movement and musicians didn’t start being used until 1973 at the earliest. Written by Lee Clayton, ‘Ladies Love Outlaws’ nonetheless crystalized Jennings’ “doing it my way” image especially since Waylon and wife Jessi Colter’s names were featured in the final verse - the first example of the many self referencing lyrics to come during the outlaw era. It’s lyrics have a lot of truth - it usually helps to be at least a bit (and sometimes more than a bit) of a bad boy -
By the end of 1972, Jennings was worn out, addicted to amphetamines, sick in hospital with hepatitis, disillusioned with the music business and on the verge of quitting. His long-time band drummer, Richie Albright, the best drummer in country music, suggested he try to renegotiate his contract with RCA along the terms that many rock artists enjoyed - terms that gave those artists full creative control over their recordings. Jennings took the suggestion and hired New York lawyer Neil Reshen to conduct the contract negotiations and manage his career. Reshen started to renegotiate Jennings's recording and touring contracts. At a meeting in a Nashville airport Jennings introduced Reshen to Willie Nelson and by end of the meeting Reshen had become Nelson's manager as well. Reshen warned RCA that if the label didn’t give Jennings his way, it would lose him as an artist the same way it had previously lost Willie Nelson. With Atlantic Records ready to pounce, RCA, not willing to lose another star like Willie Nelson from its stables, gave into Waylon’s demands, advancing $75,000 instead of its initial paltry $5,000 offer and, crucially, granting him full freedom to produce his records in any way he wanted.
Waylon’s first album to partly contain songs reflecting his new freedom (though much of it had been recorded before the new contract) was ‘Lonesome, On’ry and Mean’ in 1973. The album included the rockin’ title song, the Willie Nelson song ‘Pretend I Never Happened‘ and a version of ‘Me and Bobby McGee‘ with a highly creative bass line. Though written by Steve Young, the pen behind the Eagles' evocative "Seven Bridges Road” album, ‘Lonesome, On'ry and Mean’ became Jennings' theme song, summing up the way the seminal outlaw went through at least part of his career.
The title track encapsulated his renegade spirit and was the perfect introduction of the new, ruggedly individualistic Waylon. The song is about a truckie whose travails and travels created the titular personality - one, who we learn in the final verse, he doesn’t want to be identified with. Waylon, who had over the past dozen years travelled thousands of km’s on the road, playing many hundreds of gigs around the U.S, surely identified with the pain and desolation (both physical and spiritually) of this song. Never released as a single, the title track to his acclaimed 1973 album (as well as the lead-off track to 1979's multi-platinum “Greatest Hits” compilation), ‘Lonesome, On'ry and Mean‘ remains testament to Jennings' wild, wandering and, at times, exhausted spirit. Just listen to him sing the line - "… there's no escaping from his snowy white dream …” -
Waylon, who I think had the best baritone voice in country music - something often overshadowed by his life story as a music outlaw - was now ready for the final stage on his musical journey to being an outlaw, At the suggestion of his new manager, Reshen, he kept his long scruffy hair and beard he had grown during his hospital stay, to suit his new image. Jennings had now got what he wanted - artistic freedom. The Outlaw had arrived. Tomorrow, as we head into 1973, will see Waylon, now in his mid-thirties, ascend to his career peak,
Musically, Jennings became increasingly frustrated with the direction of his career during the late 1960’s to early 1970’s period. RCA forced him to work with standard session musicians rather than his own band, which was more like a tight rock band in many ways, and he was not always allowed to record the type of material that he wanted. Thus, the resulting records did not fully reflect the sound and style he had in his mind, which was only found when he was performing live with his band. But Waylon was becoming increasingly forceful with his demands and gradually began to exercise a more control over his recordings with the albums “The Taker/Tulsa” (1971), “Good Hearted Woman” (1972), and “Ladies Love Outlaws“ (1972). Some of the songs on these albums hinted at the harder-edged, rock-influenced sound he was finally able to translate from his live performances with his own band onto vinyl.
“The Taker/Tulsa“ album is notable for featuring 4 compositions by Kris Kristofferson, who had emerged as a beacon for songwriters who wanted to bring a new poetic realism to country music. His greatest success to date had been his “Me and Bobby McGee” recorded by Janis Joplin in 1970. But he had also written some highly successful Countrypolitan style hits, including for Ray Price in particular (see # 661). Jennings, who had bristled when RCA producers told him what songs to record, began demanding more control over his records on all fronts, and began recording songs by newer songwriters like Kristofferson, Shel Silverstein, and Mickey Newbury. Jennings was particularly taken with the Kristofferson ballad ’Lovin' Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again)‘ but was stymied by RCA's recording policies, recalling in the audio version of his autobiography “Waylon“ - "I went to Los Angeles and cut Kris Kristofferson's ‘Lovin' Her Was Easier‘ … It was a great record, up-tempo with a good guitar riff. They [RCA] wouldn't release it because it was recorded in L.A. They didn't want to set a precedent ... They didn't know who I was or what I was about, and I tried my best to keep 'em in the dark."
Although Jennings continued working with RCA producers like Danny Davis, his records began sounding less and less like his early work with the label. In the album’s title song, the Kristofferson written ‘The Taker’, unlike some of Waylon’s earlier hits we saw yesterday, here the female becomes the victim of a charming rake, an expert on the sweet arts of seduction and more than good on the job. Waylon builds the songs point ever stronger as he moves through the stages of the relationship -
“… And after he's taken the body and soul / She gives him, he'll take her for granted
Take off and leave her, taken all of her / Pride when he goes….”
“Good Hearted Woman“, Waylon’s 16th studio album from 1972, was produced by Ronny Light, who was appointed by Chet Atkins to produce Waylon after Danny Davis left to work with his brass ensemble. In his autobiography, Jennings, who had by now had a chip on his shoulder regarding producers, admitted to badgering the young producer during the sessions - "Ronny was young, one of the nicest people in the world, and didn't deserve the misery I put him through. I got more freedom with him as a producer, although I was still using musicians who didn't know what I was about”.
The album’s title track was written by Jennings and good friend, Willie Nelson, the song inspired while they were traveling together and saw a sign advertising Ike and Tina Turner, that said she was a "good-hearted woman loving two-timing men". They wrote the song while playing poker together, with Nelson's then-wife Connie Koepke writing the lines down as they said them. The song reached # 3 on the U.S. charts and went all the way to # 1 in Canada. The lines show a clear sympathy that perhaps reveals their own guilt as good timin’ men. The opening lines are a classic -
“A long time forgotten are dreams that just fell by the way / The good life he promised, ain't what she's living today …”
Jennings later re-recorded this as a duet with co-writer Nelson for the epochal “Wanted: The Outlaws” album in 1976. This version, released at the very peak of The Outlaws era, hit # 1 on the U.S. chart and # 5 in Canada’. The duet version also realized crossover success by charting at #25 on the U.S. Pop chart #16 on the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart.
The 1972 ’Sweet Dream Woman’, also from the “Good Hearted Woman” album, is noteworthy for Waylon’s vocal performance - one of his more restrained. Vocally, he held back just a little bit on this gem of a song, and the result that gives a hint at the style in which he was seeking to establish. It shows his vocal versatility and range - he was always able to belt out a powerful song in a strong baritone like Johnny Cash - but he was also capable of delivering a most tender ballad or simple love song in a way Cash, with his more limited range, couldn’t manage as well. This reached # 7 in the U.S., # 3 in Canada -
‘Ladies Love Outlaws’ from 1972 was the title track to what many consider Waylon’s first “outlaw” styled album, and not just because that word was used in its title. Mind you, notwithstanding the title of the song and album, the term “Outlaw” to describe a whole new country music movement and musicians didn’t start being used until 1973 at the earliest. Written by Lee Clayton, ‘Ladies Love Outlaws’ nonetheless crystalized Jennings’ “doing it my way” image especially since Waylon and wife Jessi Colter’s names were featured in the final verse - the first example of the many self referencing lyrics to come during the outlaw era. It’s lyrics have a lot of truth - it usually helps to be at least a bit (and sometimes more than a bit) of a bad boy -
By the end of 1972, Jennings was worn out, addicted to amphetamines, sick in hospital with hepatitis, disillusioned with the music business and on the verge of quitting. His long-time band drummer, Richie Albright, the best drummer in country music, suggested he try to renegotiate his contract with RCA along the terms that many rock artists enjoyed - terms that gave those artists full creative control over their recordings. Jennings took the suggestion and hired New York lawyer Neil Reshen to conduct the contract negotiations and manage his career. Reshen started to renegotiate Jennings's recording and touring contracts. At a meeting in a Nashville airport Jennings introduced Reshen to Willie Nelson and by end of the meeting Reshen had become Nelson's manager as well. Reshen warned RCA that if the label didn’t give Jennings his way, it would lose him as an artist the same way it had previously lost Willie Nelson. With Atlantic Records ready to pounce, RCA, not willing to lose another star like Willie Nelson from its stables, gave into Waylon’s demands, advancing $75,000 instead of its initial paltry $5,000 offer and, crucially, granting him full freedom to produce his records in any way he wanted.
Waylon’s first album to partly contain songs reflecting his new freedom (though much of it had been recorded before the new contract) was ‘Lonesome, On’ry and Mean’ in 1973. The album included the rockin’ title song, the Willie Nelson song ‘Pretend I Never Happened‘ and a version of ‘Me and Bobby McGee‘ with a highly creative bass line. Though written by Steve Young, the pen behind the Eagles' evocative "Seven Bridges Road” album, ‘Lonesome, On'ry and Mean’ became Jennings' theme song, summing up the way the seminal outlaw went through at least part of his career.
The title track encapsulated his renegade spirit and was the perfect introduction of the new, ruggedly individualistic Waylon. The song is about a truckie whose travails and travels created the titular personality - one, who we learn in the final verse, he doesn’t want to be identified with. Waylon, who had over the past dozen years travelled thousands of km’s on the road, playing many hundreds of gigs around the U.S, surely identified with the pain and desolation (both physical and spiritually) of this song. Never released as a single, the title track to his acclaimed 1973 album (as well as the lead-off track to 1979's multi-platinum “Greatest Hits” compilation), ‘Lonesome, On'ry and Mean‘ remains testament to Jennings' wild, wandering and, at times, exhausted spirit. Just listen to him sing the line - "… there's no escaping from his snowy white dream …” -
Waylon, who I think had the best baritone voice in country music - something often overshadowed by his life story as a music outlaw - was now ready for the final stage on his musical journey to being an outlaw, At the suggestion of his new manager, Reshen, he kept his long scruffy hair and beard he had grown during his hospital stay, to suit his new image. Jennings had now got what he wanted - artistic freedom. The Outlaw had arrived. Tomorrow, as we head into 1973, will see Waylon, now in his mid-thirties, ascend to his career peak,
