WAYLON JENNINGS
Waylon Jennings (June 15, 1937 – February 13, 2002) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. In 1958, Buddy Holly arranged Jennings’s first recording session, of “Jole Blon” and “When Sin Stops (Love Begins)”. Holly hired him to play bass. In Clear Lake, Iowa, Jennings gave up his seat on the ill-fated flight that crashed and killed Holly and others. During the 1970’s, Jennings joined the Outlaw movement. In 1976 he released the album Wanted! The Outlaws with Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser, and Jessi Colter, the first platinum country music album. That success was followed by Ol’ Waylon, and the hit song “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)”. He was the balladeer for The Dukes of Hazzard; composing and singing the show’s theme song. In 2001 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. (More from Wikipedia)
Meanwhile, future country superstar Waylon Jennings was holding court in the other nightclub upstairs from JD’s, the club owned and operated by Phil and the Frantics; this was one of the nation’s first double-decker clubs. (Jennings is also well known as being a member of Buddy Holly’s band on “The Day the Music Died”). Waylon Jennings wound up producing the band’s fourth and most successful single, “I Must Run” b/w “Pain”; he also played 12-string guitar on the recording. (A later release of the 45 had a different flip side, “What’s Happening”).
(August 2012)
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Dion and the Belmonts had several hits beginning with “I Wonder Why” in 1958. On the strength of their early success, they were brought along on the Winter Dance Party with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. At one stop, Holly chartered a plane to get to the next date on the tour; but Dion turned down the offered ride, saying that he couldn’t afford the $36 cost. On February 3, 1959, the plane crashed in a cornfield in Iowa, killing Holly, Valens, the Big Bopper, and the pilot. (Waylon Jennings, who was in Buddy Holly’s band at the time, also decided against getting on the plane).
(September 2012)
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The final cut on the Moon Going Down album – the lyrics are also printed for this song – is called “Are You Sure John Donne it this Way”; only Thomas Anderson could mix a reference to an old “outlaw country” song by Waylon Jennings, “Are you Sure Hank Done it this Way” with John Donne, the British poet and satirist who was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.
(November 2012)
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I was starting to listen to more country music myself by the late 1970’s; I was happily discovering country’s roots such as the Carter Family and Hank Williams Sr., and also a lot of the “outlaw country” crowd like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and David Allan Coe. Many of the earliest alt-country artists also caught my ear (before anyone was even using the term), like Randy Travis, Lyle Lovett, k.d. lang and Hank Williams III; and some were simply country-flavored rock bands such as the Georgia Satellites and the Kentucky Headhunters.
(January 2013)
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At the top of the list of “might have been” in rock and roll has to be the crash on February 3, 1959 in an Iowa cornfield of a small airplane carrying three early rockers to their graves: Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper. The stories around this tragic event include those about several men who were not on the plane for one reason or another, most famously future country music star Waylon Jennings, who had recently joined Buddy Holly’s band after the break-up of his previous band the Crickets. Also, Dion DiMucci (of Dion and the Belmonts) couldn’t afford the $36 cost, so he also decided not to board the plane.
(June 2013/1)
