From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Sat Jun 15, 2002  2:29 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Waylon Jennings

WAYLON JENNINGS (By Alain Dormoy)

Born Waylon Arnold Jennings, 15 June 1937, Littlefield, Texas
Died 13 February 2002, Chandler, Arizona

By the time he was 19, Waylon was already an experienced DJ at a
local radio station in his hometown. He was eventually fired for playing
R'n'R. He had also been expelled from music class in high school for
"lack of musical ability".

He met Buddy Holly in Lubbock, 34 miles east of Littlefield, through
Sonny Curtis. In January '59, Norman Petty had Buddy's money tied up,
so Buddy was preparing a three week performing tour. Petty had talked
the Crickets into not taking part in it and Buddy needed musicians. He
walked into the radio station Waylon was working for, handed him an
electric bass guitar and told him: "You have two weeks to learn to
play that thing".

On 3 Feb, Waylon left his seat to the Big Bopper on the chartered
plane that took Buddy's life. It took Waylon several years to get over
the guilt, especially since he had said to Buddy, in a joking way,
moments before he took off: "I hope your plane crashes".

He went to live in Phoenix, Arizona and became very popular in a club
called JD's.

Herb Alpert signed him to A&M records. While Waylon was extremely
successful as a live performer every night at JD's, most of his records
were flops. So he looked for a way to capture on a record what he was
doing on stage.

Bobby Bare became friendly with him and got Chet Atkins to offer him a
deal with RCA in '65.

He got reasonable success with the first singles he cut, produced by
Chet end of '65' & early '66, among which "Anita You're Dreaming",
"That's What You Get For Lovin' Me". But Waylon still felt he could
not be allowed to put on record the music he was hearing in his head
(and performing on stage). Moreover RCA would not let road musicians
play in the studio.

In 1972, after ten years of banging around the honky tonk circuit and
being frustrated in the studios, Waylon had lost his way. The more his
records sold, the more he felt they did not correspond to what he had
in mind. He was also up to his chin in pills and debt ($250,000),
paying alimony to three ex-wives and with the IRS on his tail. The
hepatitis he caught came as the straw that broke the camel's back. He
was on the verge of just going back to a nightclub somewhere, probably
Phoenix, and play *his* music (rather than that which the system
expected him to).

That's when his pal Richie Albright told him: "There is one more way
of doing things and that is rock and roll". Richie did not mean
rockabilly. It was 1972 already. Richie had in mind the way rock music
was regarded by the big companies: Rock acts on RCA, like the
Jefferson Airplane, got huge budgets to record, with promotion to
match, while country music artists were supposed to make their albums
in a few days. Everytime Waylon had gone to LA, rockers had flocked to
his shows at the Palomino. Gram Parsons had told him "What I did was
take your music one step further." Even Dylan came down to the
Palomino. Maybe if Waylon stopped trying to fit in and started saying
"fuck it", he was going to get a chance to do things his way.

Richie introduced Waylon to Neil Reshen, a seasoned lawyer from New
York, about as non-Nashville as you can get. He proved a very tough
negotiator and an excellent defender of Waylon's interests. Together
they twisted RCA's arm in such a way that RCA wound up having to sell
their Nashville recording studio. Thanks to Waylon's influence, for the first
time some artists in Nashville got to share power with producers.

The first result of that new situation was "Honky Tonk Heroes" a whole
album of Billy Joe Shaver's songs. Certainly not a rockabilly album
but definitely several steps towards musical freedom.

They called in Jack Clement. For him the main thing was to capture the
bass and drum section (more of an R'n'R than a country attitude).
"Dreaming My Dream", which Waylon did with Clement, was his favourite
album, according to his own words.

On Jan. 16, 1976, RCA released "Wanted: The Outlaws", mostly a
compilation of previously released material, starring Waylon, his wife
Jessi Colter, Willie Nelson and Tompall Glaser. This album was the
first country album to go platinum (1 million copies) in history.

Waylon never stopped making records until 2000, in a style very
different to that of the first part of his career. His last album,
"Never Say Die", recorded live at the Ryman auditorium, was released
in 2000.

Waylon died on 13 Feb 2002, in his Arizona home, from diabetes related
health problems.


Recommended CD: RCA Country Legends: Waylon Jennings.
A 2 CD compilation released Nov. 2001.
The selection of 40 songs is an excellent introduction to his work,
over a period including his struggling years until 1972 and his
"Outlaw years" until the mid '80s.

Website: http://www.waylon.com/Main.htm
Books: Waylon Jennings with Lenny Kaye, Waylon : an autobiography.
New York : Warner, 1996.
John L. Smith, The Waylon Jennings discography. Westport, CT :
Greenwood Press, 1995. (400 pages.)