Waylon Jennings “A Man Called Hoss”
I suspect that, if you grew up in the early 1980s in the South -- or the Midwest or the Heartland or the Southwest, for that matter -- Waylon Jennings was just always there. You could hear him on the radio. See him performing on some regional, Country Music TV show. Maybe you had an uncle who sounded like him. Or you knew a guy who had the same beard and hair. The upholstery in your parents’ car might’ve smelled like him. It’s unlikely that you actually ever met Waylon Jennings. But, I bet you knew him in your bones.
If, however, like me, you grew up in the Northeast around the same time, you may have had no idea who Waylon Jennings was. I barely did. I knew him as the cowboy who sang with Big Bird on Sesame Street. He was the guy who Dion Warwick introduced on Solid Gold ten minutes after Laura Branigan sang “Gloria.” He narrated “The Dukes of Hazzard” and sang the show’s theme song. Honestly, I couldn’t tell the difference between Waylon, Hank Williams Jr. and Charlie Daniels. I didn’t know a single Country radio station around New York. And, when I thought of Country music, I pictured Kenny Rogers chest hair and all of Dolly Parton, singing “Islands in the Stream.” It looked garish but sounded quaint. It was 1984. I was just a kid, growing up in the world of Michael Jackson and Prince and Madonna and Duran Duran. Waylon Jennings -- whoever he was -- lived in a different world.
Ten years later, not much was the same. Green Day and Pearl Jam were huge. Kurt Cobain died. Vince Gill and Trisha Yearwood were Country’s homecoming king and queen. And, Johnny Cash released “American Recordings.” My childhood memories of Johnny Cash were faint, to the point of being unreliable. I recalled him wearing fringe jackets a lot on a variety TV show. And I could have sworn that he made a video for a song called “The Chicken in Black.” Those last two memories seemed implausible in 1994. And yet, it was all true. Through the Rick Rubin albums, I was called back into that foreign, slow, gaudy music of somebody else’s childhood -- Country music.
As a young adult, I became interested enough in Country enough to love Whiskeytown and really love Wilco. But, even then, I knew that was sort of like saying that you loved sushi but only ordering vegetarian rolls. I gradually surveyed the who’s who of Country royalty -- Pasty, George, Hank, Johnny, Merle, Dolly, Loretta, Willie, Kris and -- yes -- Waylon. I’d skim the surface and then spend a season falling in love with each of them. With the exception of Pasty Cline and Hank Williams, they all had massive discographies. And, perhaps with the exception of Merle and Willie, there’s a lot of fallow periods. But, eventually, I got a sense for every one of them. Every one of them, that is, except for Waylon Jennings.
By 2011, my wife and I had moved to Austin, Texas -- ground zero for Outlaw Country and Waylon’s former home town. In Texas, I got to understand (and love) Bob Wills and Country Swing and how far away it sounded from Nashville. I listened to more Willie and more Kris. Through those two guys, and through the old Live Oaks and the mold in the air of Hill Country, I finally found Waylon Jennings. I learned about his year as Buddy Holly’s bassist and protege. I learned about his time as a DJ in Arizona, broadcasting to nearby Navajo reservations. I learned about his days as Johnny Cash’s roommate in Nashville. And, most of all, I learned about that magical run he had, from 1972 to 1978, when he was wild and free and making the finest Country music in the world.
Waylon Jennings spent a third of his life high on pills and coke, but he was always as straight as they came. Willie Nelson was preternaturally sensitive and poetic. He sang behind the beat. Even when he was a rascal, he exuded Hippie ideals. Kris also turned left, taking his suitcase of songs and his leading man looks to Los Angeles. Johnny Cash, the oldest of the outlaws, got famous first, got fucked up first, and got lost and dark throughout the later 70s and 80s. Merle turned right early on, temporarily leaving California for Texas and preferring nostalgia and country life to big city ideas. Merle and Willie got on fine, because they shared mutual respect and a libertarian spirit. But, on Country Music’s “X axis,” Willie was way left and Merle was further right (though left of Glen Campbell). Waylon, on the other hand, was dead center. His voice was somewhere between Willie’s and Johnny’s. It was heavy and honest, but with a hint of Roy Orbison wiggle. It was honey and molasses on a biscuit, topped off with a pack of Marlboro Reds.
Compared to his outlaw buddies, Waylon was kind of parochial. The rascal cowboy image was mostly marketing. It’s true that Waylon wanted to be free. But, more than anything, he wanted to be good. He lacked the dark grays of Johnny Cash and the bright colors of Willie Nelson. By today’s standards, his abiding sense of right and wrong was almost naive. Whenever he fucked up -- and he did many times in his life -- his reparations were always more spectacular. In 1959, he gave up his seat on the plane that ended up crashing and killing Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. Waylon never stopped regretting his act of generosity. He worshipped Buddy Holly as much in death as in life. Similarly, he sabotaged three marriages, but acknowledged his own guilt each step of the way. And he swore to make things right with his fourth wife Jessi Colter. He did exactly that -- for thirty three years. He got hooked on pills in the early sixties and was a legendary cokehead by the early eighties. But he promised Jessie and his son, Shooter, that he’d get straight. He holed up in Arizona and, without professional help, detoxed and never took drugs again.
Once, Waylon refused to play a Country Music Awards show because they kept moving and shrinking his set time. It was unfair -- plain as that. In 1985, he was one of the forty or so American musicians asked to join USA for Africa for “We Are the World.” He showed up, ready to work. But when the leaders couldn’t decide if they should sing a line in a made up language or Swahili (which is not even the language of Ethiopia), Waylon decided it was a waste of everyone’s time. He up and left. Most famously, he left Nashville in the early 70s for Austin’s weirder hills. The move wasn’t a political act. It was simply that Nashville was old fashioned and pigheaded. The labels there wanted to choose songwriters for him. They wanted to approve his band. They wanted to add strings. They didn’t want any Rock and Roll. And Waylon didn’t think any of that was fair. Or right. So he moved to Texas, wrote with Willie and Billy Joe Shaver, and made Country Music with more rhythm and blues. It was less a creative decision than it was a righteous one.
All those years -- those brushes with greatness, those fuck ups and those ultimate triumphs -- took their toll. In the mid-60s, Waylon was a handsome, swarthy leading man. He wore suits. His hair was medium length and combed back into a pompadour. By 1972, though, following his hospitalization for hepatitis and years on speed, he emerged shaggy and bearded. He had one foot out of Nashville and both feet in blue jeans. During the seventies, speed kept him thin, but he got sweatier and more fidgety. The image of Waylon Jennings was born in the middle of that decade -- cowboy hat, goatee, long hair and sturdy like a genuine cowboy. He was busted for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute in 1977. By 1986, he’d cleaned up and did a few victory laps with The Highwaymen. That version of Waylon that appeared after detox still had his beard, boots and black jacket. But he’d put on the weight that speed kept off. He jittered far less. He was slower and more contemplative. He no longer looked like a Country star. In his barely fashionable Members Only jacket, he looked like a Southwestern grandpa.
That journey, from young sharecropper to past prime Country legend was destined for an autobiography. With all the conflict and redemption and legend and fame and infamy, it was just too good to remain unwritten. By the mid-80s, when The Highwaymen formed and Waylon had kicked coke, it seemed like the timing could be right. Publishers who had been calling for years, started calling more frequently. And, as popular as he was, Waylon was well past halftime and, sadly, still needed the money. He’d spent a couple decades being fiscally reckless and, as with everything else in his life, was committed to making things right in that department. But Waylon was never a prolific songwriter and, it seems, he even more tentative as a biographer. He mulled some deals. Met with some ghost writers. He even put pencil to a few pages. However, nothing materialized. He was finally clearheaded, but something just didn’t feel right. And Waylon always wanted things to be right.
So, in 1987, instead of writing a book, Waylon invited Roger Murrah, his songwriting buddy from Nashville, to help him make an autobiographical concept album. They came up with ten songs for ten chapters, spanning his poor, West Texas childhood, through his sober, middle-aged rebirth. They even wrote first person narration to accompany the songs. In their tiny box of an office, Roger organized his pencils and wrote in his meticulous notepads while Waylon crumpled up ideas and emptied cigarette boxes. Together, they somehow managed to reduce a fifty year saga to roughly thirty minutes. Then, they invited Jimmy Bowen, who’d worked with Frank Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood, to help produce and add some velvet to Waylon’s aging voice. They brought in a band and added some strings and horns. By October of that year, Waylon Jennings was ready to release his musical autobiography — the lovable, but lightweight “A Man Called Hoss.”
Though his life story was sprawling, Waylon’s “audio biography” (his words) is surprisingly quaint. Every song title is preceded by a chapter number. Excluding the spoken word prologue, there are ten chapters in all. Eight of them are less than three minutes long. Taken together, Waylon reduced his life story to twenty nine minutes. Musically, the album is the definition of professional. It’s rarely adventurous. It’s occasionally dated in the late 80s way. But, it’s generally bold and tight. The guitars jangle. The drums hop. The slide paints the edges. And the horns celebrate. As snapshots of moments or as representative cliches of Waylon Jennings, signified, it feels accurate. However, as autobiography, it’s impossibly thin.
Sonically, “A Man Called Hoss” resembles a half hour radio show from a bygone era or “A Prairie Home Companion,” the more modern equivalent. But there is also something about its neatness that sanitizes the material, as though it were made for Disney. It simulates a life story, but says almost nothing new. It wholly lacks motivation and character detail. From the very outset, Waylon let us know that he struggled to write his autobiography. He claimed that, had he written the full, unvarnished truth, a lot of people could have gotten hurt (or worse). Whatever part of that disclaimer was true, though, seemed outweighed by a sense that Waylon just wasn’t ready to sit down and tell the whole story. Maybe he was waiting for a better ending. Maybe he just needed more time to gather himself. Whatever the reason, “A Man Called Hoss” ended up an all too short, all too safe, but completely likable, slide show of Waylon Jennings through the years.
Never known to be verbose, in life or in song, Waylon and Roger Murrah kept things very simple. Most tracks are two verses (or less) and a chorus repeated two times (or more). It opens in the sands of West Texas, in 1937, with Chapter One – "Littlefield.” There’s a little Bob Wills swing to it and more honky than tonk. But it all sounds alive, like the house band from some 1940s Country Music dance hall. It’s a quick warm up for the line dancing that follows in the next chapter, "You'll Never Take the Texas Out of Me." That song, with its proud chorus and “come and take it” energy, is classically Country. The title is so good and so obvious that I wondered if it was a cover or if something similar had been used before. But -- nope -- Waylon was the first to sing those words. It keeps the boots moving but there’s not enough rhythm to shake your ass at. It’s not an elite Waylon Jennings song. But it’s dead center, which, I guess, makes it a “very Waylon Jennings” song.
While most of the album paints old pictures with broad strokes, there are moments that carry the poignancy of great truths. The seventh chapter, "I'm Living Proof (There's Life After You),” is the one about drugs. It’s a slow crooner -- a real Broken Spoke, head on the shoulder of your dance partner, kind of song. Waylon croons it, trying his best to recapture his inner Roy Orbison and that sense of doom and heartache. His voice can’t quite get there, but the music and the words make up for it. It’s the rarely honest song that acknowledges how quitting drugs is like breaking up with somebody you love. You are in a full fledged relationship. It hurts like hell. But, there is a light, or something, on the other side. Chapter nine, “Turn it All Around,” is perhaps even sadder and more true. It’s barely a song -- just a verse and a chorus about a man who had everything, lost everything, got clean, tries to do the right thing, but feels the weight of time. He’s a big, broken down ole boat. It’s hard to turn him around. Neither of these songs rank among the album’s best. But they are certainly the most gutting.
“Rough and Rowdy Days,” was the album’s hit single. It’s something of a modern Folk Rock song and far less raucous than the title implies. There’s a dark jangle to the melody and some hop in the rhythm. Waylon’s voice gets real deep on this one, into a space that he could still fill. But when he tries to stretch it to the top in the chorus, you can really hear what’s missing. It’s not the weight or character of his voice. That’s all still there. And the middle and bottom are solid as ever. It’s the top of his range and the vibrato. They’re gone. The pills and powder and smoking delivered their bills. In 1987, Waylon sounded a lot like Waylon Jennings. But he didn’t sound like the most darkly romantic man in Texas any more.
There’s plenty to wonder about or quibble with on “A Man Called Hoss,” but there’s not much to dislike. The song for Jessi Colter, "You Deserve the Stars in My Crown,” is lite and sweet, but never matches what he said about her in old interviews or how he looked at her in old TV performances. And, the chapter about modern Nashville, "If Ole Hank Could Only See Us Now,” is both obvious and unnecessary. It’s a bunch of softball jokes but without any punch or real laughs. It sounds like a check in the box on the checklist of a Country outlaw’s life.
In many ways, “A Man Called Hoss” was something of a half step forward. It was better than “Hangin’ Tough” (also from 1987) and “The Eagle” (from 1990). It sounded more assured -- something you expect from Waylon -- and focused -- something you don’t always expect. And though it was not the fully story, Waylon thought enough of the effort to briefly perform a theatrical version of it. Obviously, he would never return to that untouchable, eight album run rom “Ladies Love Outlaws,” in 1972, and “ Ol’ Waylon” in 1978. But that wasn’t what I was expecting. I was expecting something more candidly biographical. I was expecting things laid bare. And there was not a whole lot of that. Meanwhile, his voice was still and able instrument, but he hadn’t figured out how to leverage its age, the way Johnny Cash did on the “American Recordings” series.
Through the mid-90s, Waylon stayed pretty busy as a solo artist and as a Highwayman. He had a big personal and financial hole to dig himself out from and a young son named Shooter that he hoped to make proud. He eventually gave up the six pack a day cigarette habit, only to find out that he had type II diabetes. In his last ten years, he seemed to age twice as fast as he had in the previous thirty. He had heart bypass surgery. He had surgery to offset the effects of diabetes. In 2001, his left foot had to be amputated. But, in the middle of the end, two amazing things happened. In 1996, Waylon did finally release a proper autobiography. He worked with writer and guitarist Lenny Kaye to tell the whole story, hurt and all. And, the next year, he fulfilled a promise to his son and got his GED. He’d lived most of his lifetime with the profound shame of leaving school as a teenager. Even at sixty, and in failing health, his sense of right and wrong was mythic. He did the work and marched forward. He fixed the thing that needed fixing.
That’s who Waylon Jennings became to me. Not the guy from my childhood singing the “Dukes of Hazzard” theme. Not the guy from Buddy Holly’s band or Willie’s partner in crime or Johnny’s troublemaking roommate. He was the guy who once had a perfect voice and who fucked everything up, so that he could make it all right again.