Basically a Love Letter to Waylon
For Christmas last year I bought my sister a new Cosley record player. I picked it up on Black Friday for a steal so I figured she was worth it that year. The old record players at our grandmothers house had long since quit working and both my sister and I had wanted to start a collection of classic vinyls.
Mom thought we were crazy, wanting music with all the pops, crackles and static that accompanied those old records. But to me, the idea was perfect. That's how my favorite music was supposed to sound. That's how fans all across the world listened to the best of the best before those records and those artist were legends.
I won't lie; I shrieked, I cried, I jumped up and down and acted like a child when I found my Greatest Hits of Waylon album. Waylon is my hero. The music he made, his duets with Willie, all the songs and love with Jesse, his work with the original boy-band super group The Highwaymen. He was as imperfectly, perfect as the idolization you still see when Hank Jr talks or sings about him and his musical creations.
The original outlaw - everything Waylon was in life and the legacy he left when I was just eight years old. For those of you who remember, my fascination with the great country outlaws began around this time with Hank Jr. Howeve, since Waylon came into my life, I have been looking for another sound to compare him to. For over 13 years I have listened in hopes of every modern singer to produce such a sound and such a greatness to rival him.
I know that when Shooter Jennings tries to, he can mimic his father's tone and style to perfection. But Shooter, like his father (and mother) before him, he has his own way of thinking and sounding. Jayme Johnson and Chris Stapleton have come into the same category but have fallen short. Accepting the fact that there is never going to be a voice and passion that can bring forth so much emotion and not an attitude to rival and compare Waylon to hasn't been easy. For Waylon in all his faults, earned the mark and statue of his revered legacy.
He was the balladeer for all of Hazzard. The one who made me want to hop in a car and drive down to Luckenbach, Texas. He told me not to let my son grow up to be a cowboy (although I'll doubt my boy will be anything but).
"The Wild Ones" from 1994s Waymore's Blues (Part II) gives me chills as I write now. I'm not sure there will ever be a time when I will hear him sing that he won't.
I am thankful he gave up his seat on February 3rd 1959, the day the music died. And because he didn't catch that plane a new brand of music could live. I'm grateful he and Willie were the outlaws that they caught. Grateful that when they fought the system and the system tried to run them off that Willie was slow. (Listed to "A Long Time Ago".)
I guess I will always be searching for that new Waylon. In forty years some other girl will be talking about another long gone country singer. Wishing she was in a different era and believing that there was a man who changed the direction of music and inspired a nation.
"I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane..."
"A Long Time Ago"
"The Wild Ones"
Mom thought we were crazy, wanting music with all the pops, crackles and static that accompanied those old records. But to me, the idea was perfect. That's how my favorite music was supposed to sound. That's how fans all across the world listened to the best of the best before those records and those artist were legends.
I won't lie; I shrieked, I cried, I jumped up and down and acted like a child when I found my Greatest Hits of Waylon album. Waylon is my hero. The music he made, his duets with Willie, all the songs and love with Jesse, his work with the original boy-band super group The Highwaymen. He was as imperfectly, perfect as the idolization you still see when Hank Jr talks or sings about him and his musical creations.
The original outlaw - everything Waylon was in life and the legacy he left when I was just eight years old. For those of you who remember, my fascination with the great country outlaws began around this time with Hank Jr. Howeve, since Waylon came into my life, I have been looking for another sound to compare him to. For over 13 years I have listened in hopes of every modern singer to produce such a sound and such a greatness to rival him.
I know that when Shooter Jennings tries to, he can mimic his father's tone and style to perfection. But Shooter, like his father (and mother) before him, he has his own way of thinking and sounding. Jayme Johnson and Chris Stapleton have come into the same category but have fallen short. Accepting the fact that there is never going to be a voice and passion that can bring forth so much emotion and not an attitude to rival and compare Waylon to hasn't been easy. For Waylon in all his faults, earned the mark and statue of his revered legacy.
He was the balladeer for all of Hazzard. The one who made me want to hop in a car and drive down to Luckenbach, Texas. He told me not to let my son grow up to be a cowboy (although I'll doubt my boy will be anything but).
"The Wild Ones" from 1994s Waymore's Blues (Part II) gives me chills as I write now. I'm not sure there will ever be a time when I will hear him sing that he won't.
I am thankful he gave up his seat on February 3rd 1959, the day the music died. And because he didn't catch that plane a new brand of music could live. I'm grateful he and Willie were the outlaws that they caught. Grateful that when they fought the system and the system tried to run them off that Willie was slow. (Listed to "A Long Time Ago".)
I guess I will always be searching for that new Waylon. In forty years some other girl will be talking about another long gone country singer. Wishing she was in a different era and believing that there was a man who changed the direction of music and inspired a nation.
"I've always been crazy but it's kept me from going insane..."
"A Long Time Ago"
"The Wild Ones"
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