Waylon Jennings - The Original Country Outlaw

Waylon Jennings via last.fm

Waylon Jennings, born June 15 1937 in Littlefield Texas, is probably the best known of the country outlaws that came of age in 70's. More than any other country artist, Jennings was fundamentally incapable of resigning himself to the harsh restrictions of Nashville's slick production machine.


At the heart of the revolt was a fundamental difference in musical outlook. Nashville, at some point along the way, had decided that the bleak but authentic agrarian blues and rockabilly of Hank Williams could no longer be marketed. The new Nashville sound was oriented to the limited tastes of new upwardly-mobile middle class soccer moms - and all hints of despair and pain of its Great Depression origins were ruthlessly excised. Eventually, despite lip service to its past, Nashville producers abandoned artists like Johnny Cash, who, in turn, began seeking out independent labels, producers, and radio outlets to express themselves.


Thus was born the outlaw country movement.


Waylon Jennings: I Don't Think Hank Done It This Way

Billy Joe Shaver - Black Rose

Cover of Old Five and Dimers Like Me

Billy Joe Shaver Official Website


Billy Joe Shaver (born August 16, 1939 in Corsicana, Texas) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Shaver's 1973 album Old Five and Dimers Like Me is a classic in the outlaw country genre.


Shaver was raised by his mother, Victory Watson Shaver, after his father Virgil left the family before he was born. Until he was 12, he spent a great deal of time with his grandmother in Corsicana, Texas so that his mother could work in Waco. He sometimes accompanied his mother to her job at a local nightclub, where he began to be exposed to country music.


Shaver's mother remarried about the time that his grandmother died, so he and his older sister Patricia moved in with their mother and new stepfather. Shaver left school after the eighth grade to help his uncles pick cotton, but occasionally returned to school to play sports.


Shaver joined the U.S. Navy on his seventeenth birthday. Upon his discharge, he worked a series of dead-end jobs, including trying to be a rodeo cowboy. About this time, Shaver met and married Brenda Joyce Tindell. They had one son, John Edwin, known as Eddy, who was born in 1962. The two divorced and remarried several times.


Shaver took a job at a lumber mill to make ends meet. One day his right hand (his dominant hand) became caught in the machinery, and he lost the better part of two fingers and contracted a serious infection. He eventually recovered, and taught himself to play the guitar without those missing fingers.


Shaver decided that life was too short to do something he didn't enjoy, so he set out one day to hitchhike to L.A.. He couldn't get a ride west, and ended up accompanying a man who dropped him off just outside of Memphis, Tennessee. The next ride brought him to Nashville, where he found a job as a songwriter for $50/week. His work came to the attention of Waylon Jennings, who filled most of his album Honky Tonk Heroes with Shaver's songs. Other artists, including Elvis Presley and Kris Kristofferson, began to record Shaver's music. This led to his own record deal.
Unfortunately for Shaver, the first few recording companies he signed with soon folded. He was never able to gain widespread recognition as a singer, although he never stopped recording his own music. On his records, he has been accompanied by other major rock and country music musicians like Willie Nelson, Nanci Griffith, Chuck Leavell and Dickey Betts (of the Allman Brothers), Charlie Daniels, Flaco Jiménez, and Al Kooper.


After losing his wife, Brenda, and his mother to cancer in 1999, Shaver lost his son and longtime guitarist Eddy, who died at age 38 of a heroin overdose on December 31, 2000. Shaver nearly died himself the following year when he had a heart attack on stage during an Independence Day show at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas. After successful heart surgery, Billy Joe came back to release a new album entitled Freedom's Child in 2002.