I AIN’T LIVING LONG LIKE THIS! (CAN'T LIVE AT ALL LIKE THIS, CAN I, BABY?)

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No, this isn’t the political blog bit(s) I alluded to in my last post. Nor is it a post about my (semi-)impending move to Reno. This is really just a quick little ‘Product Review’ that I’ve thrown together on the fly in order to stall for time.

I probably won’t get back into the political scene until next weekend and I knew I was past due to post something here, so... HERE it is:

Some of you already know that the legendary Country music “Outlaw” WAYLON JENNINGS is one of my all-time very favorite musicians. He passed away in 2002, but I was very fortunate to have seen him perform live on stage with his band four times in the late 1980s / very early ‘90s. He was the most charismatic entertainer I ever saw and his concert performances were second to none.

I went to perhaps four Bruce Springsteen concerts in the mid-1980s. They were tremendous. I saw Brenda Lee on a little casino stage. She was great. I saw Blue Oyster Cult in the 1970s when lasers were still a big part of their stage production. Highly memorable.

But Waylon was the best!

In 1978, Waylon released his album ‘I’VE ALWAYS BEEN CRAZY’. My FM Rock radio station of choice (it wasn’t called “Classic” Rock back then) began playing the title track from Waylon’s new album. The song instantly became my personal theme and I quickly purchased my first ever Country-Western music album. Also on that LP was a song titled ‘A LONG TIME AGO’ (more about that below).

Lately I’ve been playing some of my Waylon CDs and DVDs and decided to stall for time by writing a little blog entry about him. I liked that Ol’ Outlaw so much that I even read his autobiography which – just like the man himself – was funny, exciting, and at times disappointing. Below are three things that a lot of people don’t know about Waylon Jennings:

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#1: He was “expelled from music class in high school for ‘lack of musical ability’.”

#2: Waylon was the bass player for his buddy Buddy Holly. That’s right, Waylon was one of the traveling Crickets (that’s before there was a Traveling Wilburys). On “the day the music died” in 1959, Buddy Holly chartered a plane to fly through bad weather to the next gig, but there weren’t enough seats for everyone; some would take a bus there. Those who flew didn’t get there.

Ritchie Valens flipped a coin with a member of Holly’s band for a seat on the plane and won. Or lost. The plane went down, killing all the passengers. Waylon Jennings voluntarily gave up his seat to The Big Bopper, best remembered for one of my favorite early Rock ‘N’ Roll hits ‘Chantilly Lace’. (I can’t hear that song without thinking of a certain girl named Lisa.)

When Buddy Holly learned that Waylon had given his seat to The Big Bopper, he jokingly said, “Well, I hope your damned bus freezes up again.” Waylon replied in jest, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.”

Waylon writes in his autobiography:

That took me a lot of years to get over. I was just a kid, barely twenty-one. I was about halfway superstitious, like all Southern people, scared of the devil and scared of God equally.

I was afraid somebody was going to find out I said that, and blame me. I knew I said that. I remember Buddy laughing and then heading out for the airport after the show. I was certain I caused it.

In the song ‘A LONG TIME AGO’, Waylon references that fateful day when he offered his seat on that plane to The Big Bopper.

#3: Waylon was asked to write the theme song for a new TV series, ‘The Dukes Of Hazzard’. When the producers heard what Waylon had come up with, ‘Good Ol’ Boys’, they had a suggestion. Waylon, take it away...

“They thought that was good but said all it needed was something about two modern-day Robin Hoods, fighting the system. So I wrote ‘Fighting the system, like two modern-day Robin Hoods’, and they didn’t even know they wrote the damn line. It was my first million-selling single, and one of the easiest records I ever cut.”

Waylon was a very funny man and a clever songwriter. He was also the founder of the ‘Country Outlaw’ movement; a true maverick, and one hell of a masculine looking man’s man! If I could look and sound like anyone, I’d choose Waylon.

Alright, let’s hear a couple Outlaw tunes. This first one is from ‘85, featuring a little older and heavier Waylon, but this stuffs rocks! (The video will begin after the fifteen-second dog food commercial. At least that’s the commercial I got)...

Waylon Jennings - I Ain't Living Long Like This

(Live at Farm Aid 1985)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXrb7dAQ9Y0

Next up is ‘A LONG TIME AGO’ from the first Waylon album I ever owned. I had no idea who he “gave his seat to on that plane” when I got my vinyl album home, peeled off the shrink-wrap and plopped it down on my turntable for the first time in 1978...

I don’t look the way the average cowboy singer looks.
I’ll admit I’ve taken things I never shoulda took.
You can read a different story in a lot of different books.
But even then you won’t really know,
How it was a long time ago.

Women have been my trouble since I found out they weren’t men.
In spite of that I stopped and took a wife now and then.
They built their fences high but they couldn’t hold me in.
I was born with a fire down below,
And I learned to fly a long time ago.

Don’t ask me about the years I spent out in the rain.
About the ones I spent in love, or the ones I spent insane.
And don’t ask me who I gave my seat to on that plane.
I think you already know.
I told you that a long time ago.

Me and ol’ Willie, Lordy, we’ve been sold and bought.
I guess you all heard about some kind of system that we fought.
We ain’t the only outlaws, just the only ones they caught.
They tried to run us off but Willie’s slow.
And I quit runnin’ a long time ago.

Waylon Jennings- "A Long Time Ago"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIDUole-PQ8

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If you dig those two tunes, then you might want to think about obtaining the two-CD set ‘THE ESSENTIAL WAYLON JENNINGS’. It contains every song mentioned in this blog bit and 38 more. Truly some of the best tracks in Country music history.

Rock And Roll's been going downhill ever since Carl Wilson died, and I saw Satan laughing with delight the day the Outlaw died.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.

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