Waylon Jennings

PopPop and Dave talk about the Outlaw, Waylon Jennings: his life and his music

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hello again, and welcome to TalkingCountry with Pop Pop and Dave. We
are brought to you, as alwaysby our sponsor Pop Pops, Snoot Juice
Brand, Nasal d Congestan's Pray It'llclear your snoop. How you doing Pop
Pop? I'm doing keep a fakead that we do. Yeah, well,

(00:28):
yeah, all right when we're we'retalking all right, this is episode
seven. I believe our first seasonis gonna be eight episodes long. We
started with Hank Williams. We didJohnny Cash. Second, we did Patsy
Klein, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson. Today we're doing Willie's

(00:50):
partner in the outlaw movement, WaylonWatasha Jennings. And we're gonna wrap up
season one. Next time we're gonnabook end it with the Williams. We
started with Hank Williams an episode one, episode eight. It's gonna be Hank
Williams Junior, who was also afriend of Waylon Jennings. Anyway, today
we're talking about all Wahylan, Idid my heart tell you what I did

(01:11):
my homework for this. I preparedby listening to a bunch of Waylon Jennings
music in the last couple of weeks. Uh, and so that was hard
work. I'm telling you, havingto listen to Waylon Jennings music. It
was really hard on me. Yeah, this is that's that's that's rough.
I wish I was getting paid forthis job, because that's hard to have
to listen to Willen No, Yeah, that's d I didn't grow up with

(01:34):
Waylon Jennings to the same extent thatI grew up with some others because by
the time he was at the peakof his career when I was a baby,
right, yeah, And I knewhim primarily as the balladier on the
Dukes of Hazard. People of myage group who watched The Dukes of Hazzard
moving little kids on Friday Night.Right, he was the one episode he

(01:57):
came in and played himself where hewas apparently driving. I remember the episode.
He was driving a van by himself. He didn't have a crew or
anything personally driving this van that wassupposed to be Whalen Jennings Mobile Country music
Museum. I guess he must inthe world of the Dukes of Hazard.
I guess Whaland must have fallen onhard times because he was he was personally

(02:22):
driving this van around the country andhe got he got hijacked on the road
to Hazard, and they took himout of the truck and tied him up
and left him on the side ofthe road and drove off with his van,
and Luke and Duke came along.And it's implied that they already knew
whaland that he was an old familyfriend of the Duke clan. That's why
he was always telling their stories.You know. The song, the theme
song, the Good Old Boys,was actually the biggest hit of his career.

(02:45):
Yeah, well, I didn't eithertill I did my homework for doing
this today. There's a there's anextra lyric that plays in the single and
if you hear it on a CDor it used to. I remember hearing
it on the radio in the eightiesas a kid, and that's the Dukes
of Hazzard song, you know onthe radio. I've Well, there's an
extra verse on the single that wasnot, of course, in the TV

(03:07):
show. In the final verse,he says, I'm a good old boy.
My mama loved me, but shedon't understand. They keep showing my
hands and not my face on TV. Because the beginning of the of the
show opens with an image of himpicking guitar, but you don't see his
face, just his hands and theguitar. That was always the first thing
you see at the beginning of theshow, and you can tell it's Whalen

(03:28):
because he's wearing that black vest healways wore. You hear him called Whalen
Watasha. That's not his middle name. Hank Williams Junior game him, Yeah,
like Bocephus is Hank Junior gave himthat nickname. You know where it
comes from? It? I thinkit's Japanese. Apparently. It's a nickname

(03:51):
that Hank Junior gave him. That'sJapanese and it means old number one apparently,
So I don't know where. Wellit's it's according to this Hank Junior
came up with it or heard itsomewhere and applied it to him. So
he even sings it in some ofhis songs like leave Them Boys Alone I
or if you don't like Hank Williams, you can kiss my rear sight where

(04:12):
he calls him Whalen Watasha Jennings youknow, in the in the lyrics to
those songs. So no, Ididn't grow up with Whalen because by the
time, other than the dukes ofHazzard, by the time I was old
enough to kind of pick my ownmusic, he was kind of well pad
he was. He was no longercommercially viable. He didn't have any more
hit songs on the radio the lateeighties and early nineties. But you kind
of heard of him here and there, and you might hear Mamas, don't

(04:34):
let your babies grow up to becowboys or something like that every now and
then, but for the most parthe was done with in terms of radio
airplay. At the time he camearound, he was he was on the
day he has idea. But whathappened I discovered and I don't really remember
how I discovered it. Maybe Ibought it on a whim or something.

(04:56):
But I discovered Whalen's music just atthe right time. I was sixteen,
had a car driving, and you'rea you know, teenage rebellious kind of
attitude or whatever, and Whalen Jenningsmusic was perfect for that, you know,
And so I discovered his music andMerle Haggard's music around the same time,

(05:16):
years before I discovered Johnny Cash orWillie Nelson. As far as actually
listening to them. I mean Iknew who they were, but I was
not really a fan of Willie orJohnny Cash when I was a teenager.
But I listened to a lot ofWhalen, Jennings and Merle Haggard when I
was sixteen seventeen years old, andI got it from that first Whale and
Jennings Greatest Hits cassette that came out. I think there was actually issued in

(05:42):
the early eighties, but you know, I bought it in the mid nineties
and it had like eight or tenof his more famous songs on it.
So that was my main introduction toWhalen, and then later I learned some
of his other songs that weren't onthat cassette. What do you remember about
Whalen? You were actually pretty muchsquarely in his time. Well, he
was really out there for a fewyears in the in the uh suddendies at

(06:10):
early eighties. I guess if youturned the radio on, you know,
country station, he'd come on thePretty Rector he was on out who uh
well w Wi and Montgomery. Iwas a big country a big country stashion
Ben and he would own allowed himwith Downy Cash and also really they left

(06:31):
Nashville him and really did, andthey gave him the name, the term
outlaws because they went against us.They established Unday in Nashville right and once
Protections and really called or not reallyWhaling, oh Wally and said, man,
you need to come down here.They spokes like what I'm doing.

(06:54):
Yeah, I thought it was theother way around. I thought Willie did
it first in Whaling? Was itWhalon? The cod Willen remember right?
Whyland David first down all had aboutthe second tack early seventies. Chris Christofferson
and of course Johnny Cash predated allof them, but he kind of became
unofficially part of their movement because itsuited him. He was a kind of

(07:15):
an outlaw rebel type, you know, from that whole movement. Of course,
several others, Johnny Paycheck and Davidallen Coe. I think Charlie Daniels
a little bit on the outskirts ofthat because he was a little bit more
of Southern Rock. He kind ofcrossed a little bit further onto that line,

(07:36):
but he still had a little bitof that that style to him,
that that outlaw rebel style, andof course that continued made good New to
go him well, and here's thething, even though they were outlaws,
and even though they were rebelling againstthe Nashville establishment, you could argue that
they were not rebelling. Whalen moreso than Willie had elements of rock and

(07:59):
roll and there because he's another goodexample like Johnny Cash, like Jerry Lee
Lewis and Elvis and even early GeorgeJones of some of those early guys like
that actually came along about the sametime as as the early rock music that
was coming out of Memphis from theDelta Blues, and they shared some similar
influences, so that there's there's youknow, he worked with Buddy Holly and

(08:20):
the Big Bopper and Richie Valens andall these people, so right, so
it's it's understandable that Wayland's music hadsome of that rock influence, but he
was not a rock artist. Hehad a little bit of rock infused in
his country. You could argue thatthe country politan sound that was coming out
of the so called Nashville sound inthe sixties was not traditional country. It

(08:45):
was more pop. It was itwas artists, first of all, did
not have creative control the way theydid on the rock side. The Beatles
and the Rolling Stones didn't have sessionsmusicians. They went in and did their
own thing. They wrote their ownmusic, they picked their own stuff,
and they were of course outlaws,getting in trouble with the law and all
that. But on the countryside,an artist came in and a producer told

(09:07):
him what to sing, how tosing it, and they used these studio
musicians to play the music, andthe artists had very little control over any
of it, you know. Andthe outlaws well, and they did away
with a lot of the traditional countrymusic instruments. They didn't sound like Hank
Williams. Then the Nashville sound wasvery polished and very smooth and very pop

(09:30):
oriented. That's not to say thereweren't some good songs that came out of
it, but you could argue thatthe outlaw people weren't rebelli against country music.
They were actually bringing it back toits roots. Willie Nelson is actually
very traditional and a lot of hissongs right serious, and to some extent,
so is Whalen. They just didn'twant to say they didn't want to
be told what to do. Theywanted to do their own thing. Hank

(09:52):
william Senior would never he would havechafed under the Nashville machine. He was
an outlaw, yeah, you know, and think where you're junior when he
got so flamed with him soap popular. They didn't have the technology. Then
that came about after he died,Hank William Senior, You mean I said,

(10:13):
I think he said, Junior,but anyway you meant Tank Senior.
Yeah, you know, he died. He made it have all the technology
that they did a few years later. He really it could have been differinated
ly of I think now that's me. I don't know. Who knows what
would have happened. It's impossible toyou know, speculate if he would have
continued to be successful or fizzled outlike a lot of other artists do over

(10:37):
time. He might have, hemight have not. He might have never
had another hit if he had lived, you know, I mean you only
usually only have a few years.Because he might have continued the way George
Jones did and lasted for decades.And who just it's hard to say.
Hank Junior mentioning him was really partof the outlaw movement too. He he
kind of broke away. Well,he did the exact thing he you know,

(10:58):
his mom. Parrett will get intothat when we get into his episode,
But his mom paraded him around asa Hank Williams cover artist basically,
and he determined that he wanted todo things his own way, and he
mixed some Southern rock and other typesof rock with with country blues and all
that, and he mixed all thesedifferent musical styles a little bit, and

(11:18):
he really started having the peak ofhis commercial success just as Whalen and Willie
were starting to go down. HankJunior kind of was when he hit his
peak. But he was friends withthose guys and they all kind of hung
out together back then in ways thatartists since then have not really done.
I don't think I don't know aboutit. I mean, I know Travis
Tridd and Marty Stewart made it.There's a handful of collaborations, but for

(11:39):
the most part, it seems tobe very commercially in a way. You
could say, you know, theoutlaw movement. In the long run,
the studio system won you know,because I don't think that anybody does it
the way Willen and Willie did it, or if they do now, I
have no idea, but I don'tthink they were doing that anymore. In
the eighties and nineties, I thinkthey pretty much went right back to the
Nashville sound. They just learned howto come marcialize what Whalen and Willie did

(12:01):
and turn it into a factory typething. Let's get into a few things
about Whalon. I did a littlebit of homework here. His actual middle
name is not Watash, it's Arnold. And his name is actually way Lund,
not Whalen. W A y lA n D Wayland. Yeah,

(12:22):
he was born in nineteen thirty seven, so he's just a few years older
than you in Littlefield, Texas.Learned to play guitar young, the same
kind of stuff that you hear froma lot of people. He worked as
a laborer. He sounds to melike, and you read his autobiography,
what a year or so ago.He sounds to me like if he hadn't

(12:43):
made it as a musician, I'mnot sure what he would have done,
because he doesn't seem like somebody whowas ever gonna do what other people told
him to do, Like if he'snot he didn't sound like the kind of
guy you'd want to have working foryou as an employer, because he's gonna
always buck up at being told whatto do. When when you work for
somebody, they get to tell youwhat to do. That's what they're paying

(13:03):
you for, you know. Andit seems like he just had that personality
that he was gonna he was gonnabuck up to that no matter what.
But he was influenced early on byBob Wills being in Texas of course,
the Western Swing Bob Wills and theTexas Playboys, Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams.
He lists Elvis Presley as an influence, but he was already working in

(13:26):
music by the time Elvis really camearound. He was a teenager anyway,
he was, he was, hewas. He would amorized, I believe
it was the right word, bioshamorized, enamored. I don't know.
He liked him, is what you'resaying, right acting, Yeah, he

(13:46):
d, but he didn't grow uplistening to him. I'm saying he was
about the same age. But Heedand you know, they was card A
trying did country music well, likeI say, and Whyland's another good example
of this, like we said,but when they started what became what we
think of as country music. Byby the time Johnny Cash comes along Waylon

(14:07):
Jennings comes along, George Jones comesalong, and what the beginnings of rock
and roll out of Sun Records inMemphis. There wasn't a whole lot of
difference. They both were influenced bythe Delta Mississippi blues black man in the
black people's music that came out ofout of from the slave era, from
the from the Civil Civil War andConfederate era. They had passed down those

(14:31):
spirituals and everything, and then thatinfluenced generations of blues musicians, which in
turn influenced guys like Hank Williams whowould learned from an know, an old
black man, and Yeah, andElvis and those those they I guess you
could say they stole it, butthey were influenced by that musical style,
and it gave birth to two differentgenres about the same time, that particular

(14:54):
type of country music, the honkytonk, you know, country blues sound
and rock and roll. And whenthey started, these two twin styles had
a lot in common. They startedto diverge over the a few years after
that. But he formed his firstband as a teenager that he called the
Texas Longhorns, all right, andhe tried to blend a style of a
country western and bluegrass. Whalen droppedout of high school when he was sixteen

(15:18):
years old. The superintendent of theschool told him to drop out. He
worked in a family store with hisdad, took on various temporary jobs and
started playing along at these local dancesand that sort of thing. Drove a
cement truck for a little while forRobert's lumber company. There's a connection with
the logging industry, the force productsindustry. Didn't didn't get along with the

(15:39):
owner, so he quit after aminor accident. You know, he just
I think he was the kind ofperson that probably had an attitude. It
made him a great musician. Itmade him a great artist and musician.
It probably wouldn't have made him avery good regular laborer as an employee.
Yeah, they want right, butyou'd get done out of his book.

(16:04):
The attitude, well, I don'tthink he ever made any bones about it.
Never could tell the mark, nevercould walk the line. You know,
it's all in his lyrics, alyric in the sound. Because I
always been great as kid, hadn'tgoing inside. Yeah, but he's never
been one that he never yeah,exactly so he started performing at this local
country station. He met Buddy Holly, who was an up and coming,

(16:27):
you know, early rock and rollsinger there at Lubbock, at a restaurant
Lubbock. He eventually became a DJat this local one of the local country
radio stations in nineteen fifty six.I mean, he's still just a kid
himself here. You know, he'seighteen, nineteen years old. He got
to do what they were calling classiccountry at that time, which you know,
this is pretty early in country.So I'm thinking like stuff from what

(16:48):
the Carter family, Jimmy Rodgers,I mean, really old stuff with U
with at that time, current countrymusic, which would have been Johnny Cash,
maybe some early George Jones, peoplelike that. And then and then
he also mixed in some early rockand roll stuff from Chuck Berry, a
little Richard. Well, that gothim in trouble with his boss. His
boss told him not to do thatanymore. So he turned around and played

(17:10):
two Little Richard songs in a row, so they fired him. I think
that's just the kind of guy hewas. I got another story about him
from later in life. He wasinvited. This is early before he really
became a big star, but hehad some marginal success, you know,
in the sixties. He was invitedto perform at the Country Music Association CMA

(17:30):
Awards. I guess they were runningshort on time, so they asked him
if he could cut down his songto just the one verse and the chorus,
which is actually pretty common now.They usually don't perform whole songs,
you know, on those awards showsand that kind of thing. But he
didn't like that. He didn't likethat that they that they did that to
him. So he said, hesaid, well, why don't I just

(17:51):
go dance across the stage and grin. That'd give you more time. And
they said, you know, wereally don't need you to continue, because
he wasn't really that biggest star yet. And he said fine and walked off.
He was never going to kiss anybody'sbutt. If you don't need him,
fine, he doesn't need you,you know. He he couldn't bend
and bow to people. He wasdefiant. So I'm saying though, if
he hadn't managed to make it assuccessful he that wouldn't have served him well.

(18:14):
Probably in other contexts only as amusician. Could you really get away
with that? Yeah? But anyway, he became a he became a DJ,
and he and he started, youknow, playing and struggled along,
and finally he did record a coupleof little songs he had won in nineteen
fifty nine called I don't even knowhow to pronounce this, Jolie Blonde.
Does that ring a bell to you? Joel Blonde? I have no idea

(18:37):
if I'm saying it right. Buthe performed some local show and Buddy Holly's
dad, who had convinced him toplay some of Buddy Holly's songs you know,
on him when he was a DJ, Buddy Holly hired him to tour
with him in nineteen fifty eight onwhat he called the Winter Dance Party Tour.
Right yeah, Buddy Electric Ad hada week there's some like to learn

(19:03):
to play that base right in thevan. They started the tour in January
fifty nine. Their problem was theirbus wasn't heated and it got really cold.
The bus actually froze up right acouple of times. One of the
guys in the band had to goto the hospital for frost bite because it
was so cold that. I meanthey're playing in in you know, Minnesota

(19:25):
in January. I mean it's coldup there. They chartered a plane to
get to their next venue for Ithink they were in Iowa and they were
supposed to go to Minnesota. Planethey didn't have enough room for everybody.
One of the guys lost a cointoss and gave his seat to Richie Vallens.
You know LaBamba, right, yeah, I think Richie Valens was LaBamba,
and Jennings did. Whalen didn't wantto go on the plane, so

(19:48):
he voluntarily gave his seat to aman name of J. P. Richardson,
better known as the Big Bopper ChantillyLeis and a pretty face, you
know. And these guys are allplaying together back then. Big Bopper had
the flu and he was complaining thatthe bus was too cold and it was
hard for a guy, because hewas a big guy to sit on that
bus. So he wanted to beon the plane, and Whalen said.

(20:11):
Whalen was nice, you know,and said here go ahead. I think
in his own way, for allhe might have been angry and ordinerary like
he says, but I think hewas a pretty nice guy. Actually.
Some of the stories I've read abouthim, he seemed like he was kind
of bighearted and kind in some ways. Yea. In fact, he seems
a little bit naive. I've hearda story that that the reason him and

(20:32):
Whalen are I always wondered why MerleHaggard wasn't one of the highwaymen, and
this might be why I heard astory. I believe that Whalen has told
what did tell the story that earlyon in their career, when he didn't
have much money, he was playeda late night poker game with Merle Haggard,
and he believes that they Merle andsome guy that he was with intentionally
took advantage of Whalen knowing that hedidn't have enough money and didn't care.

(20:56):
You know, he just took itfor which Merle's like a hardened criminal,
what I mean, It's like he'sbeen to prison. He probably said,
Hey, that's your problem. ButWhalen, I think, being a little
more soft hearted, maybe a littlemore in his mind, you should have
let me keep that money. Youknew I needed it, you know what
I mean. I think he wasa little more tender hearted in some ways.
For the big tough exterior, hein some ways was maybe a little

(21:18):
bit simple, maybe even a littlebit naive about some of this stuff,
you know, so I remembering theloved Yet that was the impression I've had
from different things. I just don'tthink he was quite as harsh as his
exterior might have made you think.I think George Jones and Merle Haggard were
both much less nice men. Theyhad a mean streak more than I think
Whalen and Willie did. In myopinion, I don't I never, of

(21:41):
course, don't know anything about anyof them, but just what I've read
and seen, I don't think Whalenand Willie had the kind of mean streak
that I think Jones and Haggard probablyhad seemingly so anyway, Yeah, Whalen
gave up his seat to the BigBopper because Bob Bopper said it was the
bus was too cold and uncomfortable.Well, that ended up being a bad
choice for the Bopper and a goodchoice for Whalen. As they were getting

(22:02):
ready to depart, they had alittle friendly banter between them, and Buddy
Holly said, picking on him fornot getting on the plane with him,
said well, I hope your oldbus freezes up, and Whalen responded jokingly,
well, I hope your old planecrashes and an hour and a half
later it did. This is onlylike a week or two into their little
tour they were doing, and sohe wasn't really with Buddy Holley's band for

(22:23):
a long time, but he knewhim for a few years and toured with
him for just a few weeks beforeHolly died. Well, Buddy Holly had
only just gotten started with Peggy Sueand he had a Viger's career was cut
very short. All of those guys, Richie Valen's a big bopper, only
had had a few They were justgetting started. Plane crash killed them all

(22:45):
instantly, went down in the field. The news announced the next morning that
Buddy Holly's band had been killing theplane craft. Whalen's family then have cell
phones and texting. This is nineteenfifty nine, heard it on the news,
so Whalen. They thought Whalen wason the plane, so we had
to call around and he ended uphaving to finish the tour after he let
everybody know he wasn't dead. Andthe company that was supposed to pay them

(23:07):
for these concerts that they were supposedto be doing, but with Buddy Holly,
they said, we will pay foryou to fly to be at Buddy
Holly's funeral if you will honor thecontract and perform anyway with Whalen as the
lead singer. So he agreed todo that. Well, of course,
they they didn't hold up to theirend the bar, and they didn't play
it, pay for the flights forthe funeral, and they tried to get

(23:27):
out of paying him at all,and then they ended up paying him less
than what he was owed. Sobut Whalen finished the tour and then when
he got to New York, hetook Buddy Holly's guitar in his amp and
put it in a locker at GrandCentral Station and mailed the keys to Buddy
Holly's widow. And then he wentback to Lubbock, Texas. Yeah,

(23:48):
he wrote a song in the earlysixties, of course that this is He's
still long way from being very successful. Yet there was a tribute to all
those guys that died, called theStage Stars in Heaven. And he felt
guilty about that and felt survivor's guiltand about the joke that they had made.
Obviously none of this was his fault, but he just felt that survivor's
guilt. He released that song infifty nine that I said, Joel Blonde,

(24:11):
but what didn't make a big hit? So he was, you know,
he was struggling. He moved toPhoenix, Arizona after a while in
Texas, Odessa Coolidge. He's playingat these different radio stations as a DJ
and playing in different clubs and thingslike that. And that's when he starts
to form his backing band that hecalled the Whalers. He gets to know
Willie Nelson right, and he recordsa few songs. He signs with a

(24:32):
company, a couple of different companies, Trend Records and then A and M
Records, and he records a fewdifferent songs, some of his own original
recordings, like just to Satisfy You, which he would later rerelease to more
success, The Race Is On thatwas a George Jones song, and a
few other songs that were kind ofknown to people, but none of them
really made a big splash. Hedidn't make a lot of hits out of

(24:52):
any of this. But still afterhis song from A and M, just
to Satisfy You comes on the radio, Bobby Bear, here's it on the
radio, drive through Phoenix, andanother song that he had done called four
Strong Wins Bobby Bear calls chet Atkinsat RCA says, I think you should
sign this guy. But Willie Nelsonwas already at RCA and Waylon knew him,

(25:12):
and he said, do you thinkI should quit the job that I've
got and go to RCA Records orstay where I'm at? Well, he
was doing pretty well. He wasmaking pretty good money where he was in
Arizona, So Willy told him staywhere you are, don't don't come.
Apparently Willy wasn't really happy with hisdeal with RCA. He did he on
Willy's advice, he did not andhe got out of his contract with A
and M. He does later signwith RCA. Later he keeps his job

(25:34):
in Arizona at first, but heeventually signs at RCA in the mid sixties,
and they released a few albums thatstart to have some sort of middling
success. You know, these arenot the kind of things that are going
to make you an icon, butthey get some airplay, people start to
know who he is a little bit. Well. Sixty seven they rereleased Just
to Satisfy You, all Right,which the version of that I know is

(25:55):
from the eighties that he did withWillie Nelson. But he one had one
called the Choking Con That Never Heardin sixty seven, and then he released
a song that went to number twocalled Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line,
and I gotta tell you I hatethat song. Do you remember when that
It was a number two hit?But I've always hated that song. I

(26:15):
can't stand that song. Only DaddyThat'll Walk the Line. Yeah, it
just doesn't sound like Whalon to me. It sounds like that Nashville song.
It was a big hit, butit was in the sixties and they had
that Nashville song and I've just neverliked to me, it does not sound
like Whalon Jennings and beyond that,I just don't like it as a song,
but it was. It was abig hit for him. Then he

(26:37):
had another one that I like evenless, Brown Eyed Handsome Man. All
right, So he does go toRCA after Willie tries to talk him out
of it, and in the latesixties he does have a few successful songs
with just to satisfy You, OnlyDaddy That'll Walk the Line. He does
a duet with the Kimberly's on MacArthurPark. Now MacArthur Park is Melting in

(26:59):
the Dark, or something like thatthat was kind of a pop type song.
And then he had only Daddy thatWill Walk the Line and Brown Eyed
Handsome Man, Handsome Man. I'venever liked either one of those songs.
Yeah, I just I don't likehim. They sound too much like that
Nashville sound to me. Around thesame time, he rents an apartment in

(27:21):
Nashville with Johnny Cash, who Ithink had just gotten out of his was
going through his divorce from Vivian Liberto, his first wife and mother of his
first four kids before he married June. Carter has depicted and Walked the Line.
You see what Whalen and Johnny livingtogether in the movie Walk the Line.
And there's a line it's Shooter Jenningsplaying Whalen in that movie, Whalen's
Son. There's a line where Johnnysays something we're being kicked out or the

(27:47):
powers not on or something like that, and Whalen's just sitting there picking on
his guitar and he says insufficient fundulation. And I don't know if that's something
he really said or not, butthat sounds so much like the way he
would phrase things. He had thesesort of creative ways of magic in there.
Yeah, it's I'm sure Shooter wouldknow growing up with him, But
in his songs and in his interviews, he had a he had a unique

(28:10):
way of coming up with kind ofa little bit like you do. Actually,
his own words and his own waysof saying things. And that sounds
like something Whalen would say, insufficientfundulation. Yeah. Anyway, they were
both managed by the same manager atthis time, but they were having trouble
with the tours, and this iswhen he got started having problems with pills

(28:30):
amphetamines. He was traveling, playingon the road three hundred days a year.
I do not envy these guys.I guess they like it. I
would not. I travel a lot. I don't want to travel like that.
That's ridiculous. Three hundred days ayear. Oh, I might travel
thirty days a year. Well,that's true. But he wasn't making that
much money at this time. Infact, he was going deeply in debt.

(28:52):
Well, until they make it big, they can't. The advances that
the record company was giving him onthese gigs that they would book through his
manager weren't even covering the cost ofgetting there, and they just drove themselves
and cars back then they weren't bigyet he was actually going into debt because
he wasn't making enough money to evencover the cost of going. He was
actually losing money touring. Then nineteenseventy two, that's the year. Now.

(29:17):
You see, if you go backand you look at Whalen, if
you only knew Whalen from later inlife, you might not think. You
might think, oh, he's justthis ugly, old, grizzled looking guy,
kind of like moral Haggard looked laterin life. Haggard started looking haggard
when he got older. Go backand look at Whalen Jennings earlier in life.
He was a very handsome He hadlike movie star good looks, and
he didn't wear that beard yet.In the sixties he was clean cut,

(29:40):
clean, smooth, shaved, slippedback care all that the Nashville look.
At that time, he had beenon kind of a hiatus for a while,
or I think he was actually inthe hospital recovering from something and he
yes, right, he contracted hepatitisand he was hospitalized and during that time
he grew his beard at he justdidn't shave while he was recovering. He's
getting a frust rated with the Nashvillething, and he's he's actually considering retiring.

(30:03):
My gosh's career hasn't even started yet, and he might have retired,
but from you, he's been doingthis for twenty years by this point,
and he's not getting anywhere, andhe's just going into deeper and deeper into
debt. And he's frustrated with thewhole Nashville system where they just the country
politan sound, the Nashville sound.They didn't want to let him use his
backing band, the Whalers, theguys that he played in Live With,
That's who like. They didn't lethim write his own songs. They told

(30:25):
him what to sing, they toldhim how to dress, they told him
how to look, and they wantedto have that country politan, polished,
smooth Nashville sound, and he didn'twant to do that. You know.
They wouldn't even him play his ownguitar in recording sessions. People pick on
the Monkeys, you know, I'mtalking about the TV show from the sixties.
Oh, they're not a real band. They were just put together by
a TV show to pretend to bea band. But here's the thing,

(30:47):
they were as much a real bandas any of the country singers in the
sixties that came out of the Nashvillesound. What they make fun of the
monkeys. Oh, they couldn't writetheir own songs. They didn't let him
play their own music, their owninstruments, you know, in the studio.
That's what they did with every countrysinger. So what Whalon and Willie
Lyon? Yeah, and he justhe wasn't wired that way, you know,
he couldn't handle it, as hesaid. He said, they were

(31:10):
trying to destroy me. I wentabout my business and did things my way.
But you start messing with my music. I get mean. He wanted
to make his own music, singhis own songs, play his own guitar,
play with his band, be himself. How you can be artist if
you're not expressing your own truth.Nineteen seventy two, was considering retiring and
he gets visited by this new manager. They try to negotiate a new contract

(31:34):
for him at RCA. He doesn'tlike the contract, rejects it, hires
this new guy. He meets ina Nashville airport with the new manager and
Willie Nelson. The new manager takeson Willie Nelson as well or Willie Nelson
takes him on. They get thema new deal for a lot more money
than RCA was paying him and artisticcontrol. By this time he had released

(31:55):
a song that is the beginning ofwhat I consider real Whalon Jennings, and
that song was Ladies Love Outlaws.You don't remember, you do remember?
You don't remember? I don't.I can't sing, and I certainly can't,
but ladies love outlaws like babies lovestray dogs. I don't remember this

(32:15):
song. I can't believe I hadnever delay it. Well, it came
out in seventy two. Was thefirst what I considered the first time he
sort of leans into the outlaw thing. Confederate Railroad actually did a cover of
Ladies Love Outlaws that was on thesoundtrack album to the movie Maverick, the
Mel Gibson Western comedy in Yeah,nineteen ninety four probably, And it was

(32:38):
this new manager of Russian who convincedhim. He said, the beard looks
good. Keep the beard. Youknow that he grew while he was in
the hospital, so that becomes hislook. The beard, the black hat,
the black vest. And he says, we're going to really lean into
this outlaw thing, and that's goingto become your you know, your image.
So him and Willie go back toAustin, Texas. It says right

(32:59):
here was Nelson says. Nineteen seventythree, Willie Nelson had found success with
Atlantic Records. He was now basedin Austin, Texas. He was beginning
to attract rock and roll fans tohis live shows, which was getting him
some notice in the press. Hejust put together all these traditional cowboys singer
or music fans with hippies and bikers, and that becomes the mix of fans

(33:20):
for Willie Nelson. So you know, Willie kind of convinces him to come
out there and go his own way. In seventy three he releases two albums,
and these after Ladies Love Outlaws,these are the two that to me
become the defining Waylon Jennings Lonesome,ornery and mean and honky Tonk Heroes.
Yeah, that's two really wayland Town. That's well there. Albums that it

(33:40):
concluded several songs, including he hadin seventy four, he had two more
this time. This time He's goingto be the last time and the rambling
Man. All of these become bighits. So now he's a star.
Then In seventy five, he hasthe number one hit are You Sure,
Hank Done at the Way? Thatbecomes his first album to be certified gold

(34:07):
by the Recording Industry Association of America, and it was the first of six
consecutive Whalen Jennings albums that would becertified gold or platinum. Seventy six,
he releases are You Ready for theCountry? Are You Ready for the Country?
Are You Ready for Me? Inseventy six, after all the success
that him and Willie were starting tohave doing their own thing, RCA releases

(34:30):
a compilation album of previously recorded materialthat became known as Wanted the Outlaws,
and it included songs from Whalen,Willie, Tom, Paul Glazer, and
Jesse Colter that Whalen had recently marriedat that time. It was the very
first country album ever to be certifiedplatinum in seventy Yeah, well I didn't

(34:52):
either till I read that this afternoon. The next year, seventy seven,
RCA releases another album called Old Whalenin which contains a very famous song that
was a duet with him and Williecalled Luke and Buck Texas. In seventy
eight, Falling Up on how successfultheir duet there had been, they release
another an album of nothing but duetswith Whalon and Willie that's called Whalon and

(35:15):
Willie, and it produces a littlesong called Mama's Don't let your babies grow
up to be cowboys. Yeah.I want to Oh, I would want
to change the word in that songof Mama's don't let your babies grow up
to be the howriers, don't don'tdon't let him grow up to be lawyers.
Yeah, I want to rewrite it. May make it. They'll let

(35:35):
you maiers grow up to be doctorand lower right. Uh. And then
in seventy eight he released I've alwaysbeen crazy, but It's kept me from
going insane. Yeah. But aroundthis time, after you know, about
five or six years now of havinga lot of hits under this sort of
outlaw thing, he starts to kindof feel like this outlaw thing, you
know, that's not all he everwants to do, and he's a little

(35:58):
bit tired of the trappings of thatand starts to become a little bit like
the Nashville thing because now it's like, oh, now we're this outlaw thing.
Now we have to do this,we have to look like this.
We have to bake these kind ofsongs, you know. So he releases
a song called don't y'all think thisoutlaw bits done got out of hand?
Yeah, now that's I do too. Now he's talking about the musical style,
but he's also talking about the wayit's sort of life is imitating art.

(36:22):
People think because he's an outlaw,because you put that wanted poster on
that outlaw, and they talk abouthe's an outlaw, and he's he's rebell
he's a rebel, and he's he'she's a you know, he's rebelling against
the Nashville sound, which is reallyall the outlaw labels talking about. It's
not talking about his drug use becausethe traditional singers were using drugs too.
Yeah, it was going to rebelagain into Nashville. In the song,

(36:42):
it talks about what started out tobe a joke, the outlaw label,
the law don't understand. They startto think, oh, he's actually some
kind of a criminal, which hewas really, but no more so than
Haggard and Jones were, or HankWilliams or Johnny Cash. So in the
song it talks about the law comesto get him backstage before a show,
the room filled up with law.They wrapped me for possession of something that

(37:06):
was gone. When he's talking aboutas an actual incident that happened where they
got a tip that he had somecocaine. They came to arrest him.
While he was waiting for them toshow the warrant. They dumped all the
cocaine and then he got off.They knew he was doing it, but
they had no evidence because he flushedit all on the toilet, you know.
So the incident that that song istalking about, but he's saying they're
targeting me because of this outlaw image. He said that the movement had become

(37:30):
a self fulfilling prophecy. His GreatestHits album, a compilation RCA, put
out in seventy nine. That's thetape I'm talking about that I first got
in nineteen ninety four when I discoveredHis music, containing most of those early
hits throughout the seventies, was certifiedgold in its first year, and by
two thousand and two, when hedied, his first Greatest Hits album was

(37:51):
certified Quinn Tupple Platinum, five timesPlatinum. Seventy nine. He joins the
cast of Dukes of Hazard as theBalladier. No, here's the thing.
The Dukes of Hazard was actually alittle bit of a remake of a movie
that had not been very successful inthe mid seventies called moon Runners about these
Moonshine. It was the movie wasa little more you know, the show
was a little bit cheesy and PGrated for TV and silly and all that.

(38:15):
The movie was a little more straightforward, but it was the same basic
gist. You had these two cousinsand they're running Moonshine and they're out running
the law, you know. Andhe was the Balladier, and that Whalen
was and so then they just broughthim along when they adapted it into this
TV show, and he continued,at least that's my understanding. But as
the eighties dawn, he starts tokind of, you know, fade.

(38:37):
It's funny, you spent twenty yearstrying to start your career, you get
about ten good ones. If you'relucky, if you're one of the real
legends of all time, you getmaybe ten years, and then you start
to fade away. That's just howit goes for all of them. It's
it's very rare that somebody comes alonglike a George Strait or Ariba McIntyre that
can have sustained success with radio airplayand singles and all that in multiple decades.

(39:00):
Yeah, that's true, even evenWhalen. That's why I say we
don't really know what would have happenedif Hank Williams had lived, because even
Johnny Cash, George Jones managed tokeep it going for a good while.
But even Merle Haggard, even JohnnyCash, even Whaleen Jennings, even Willie
Nelson, other than a few littlehits here and there, they had a
little block of time where they werehot, and then they start to cool

(39:20):
off and people lose interest again.Well they might get like, you know,
Willie Nelson has had a few latersongs that were hits where he was
doing duets with Jody Messina and TobyKeith and people like that. And Johnny
Cash didn't have a lot of radioairplay, but he got a lot of
critical success with some of his laterrecordings near the end of his life.
But most of them, you know, you just you kind of run out

(39:42):
of ideas. They've only got somany great songs in them most of the
time, which is part of whyGeorge strait is such an amazing phenomenon that
he'd managed to do it for thirtystraight years, you know, yeah,
make you're saying, Dave right,so But anyway, so his his commercial
viability's still selling out shows and everything. He's not having hit records as much
anymore as the eighties come along,but he forms a supergroup, the Highwaymen,

(40:06):
with Johnny Cash, Chris Christofferson,Willie Nelson. Of course they have
a hit single with the song Highwomen. He had an album called Will the
Wolf Survive That did okay, andthen he had a late album in nineteen
ninety called The Eagle. Now Iremember the Eagle. There were two.
I remember The Eagle because that's justabout I was about eleven, twelve years
old, and I remember on CMTthey played the video for a song from

(40:30):
that album called Wrong, and Iliked that song. Should have known it
all along? Wasn't the Future LooksToo Bright? Can't be anything? Bud
right? Wrong? You know?Yeah? I liked it. And then
he had there was another one onthere I think called Where Corn Don't Grow?

(40:51):
Dawn't you ever dream about a lifewhere Corn Don't Grow? That was
his final top ten album, TheEagle one of the interesting appearances. And
I remember watching this movie when Iwas a kid. I remember going down
to the movie gallery in Prattville innineteen eighty five that was by Walmart at
that time. There was a moviecame out called Sesame Street Presents Follow That
Bird about Big Bird, and inthe movie Waylon Jennings has a cameo where

(41:15):
he plays a farm truck driver andhe gives Big Bird a ride and they
sing a song together. Later,he released an album of children's songs,
including a song he wrote for ason shooter called Shooters Theme. He was
had a brief cameo in the movieMaverick with Mel Gibson and James Garner and
Jodie Foster. Now, the lastalbum that I remember of his came out

(41:37):
I think in ninety four or ninetyfive, and I have this album mostly
gets overlooked, but I think thisis a great album. It's called Waymore's
Blues Part two. And if anybody'sa Waylon Jennings fan, if you haven't
picked up this album, to me, that's a great sort of end of
his career album because he has somesongs on there about getting older and he
has some songs in there about lookingback over his career and older characters looking

(42:00):
back on their lives and what it'slike being sort of a living legend and
all that. It's a good it'sa good album. I would suggest trying
it out. His final album recordedin two thousand. It was and it
was recorded at the Rhyman Auditorium therein Nashville, called Never Say Die Live.
I've not heard that one now.Whalen was married four times. He

(42:23):
had six children. He married hisfirst wife in nineteen fifty six when he
was eighteen years old. He hadfour kids with her, divorced her.
Married his second wife in nineteen sixtytwo. They divorced in sixty seven.
He married another one the same year. That's the year you and Nanna got
married, sixty seven. He gotdivorced and married in sixty seven. His

(42:45):
song this time is actually about allhis marriages. This time is going to
be the last time. And thenhe married Jesse Colter in sixty nine,
just two years after his third marriage, so it's first they stuck. His
first three marriages all happened within elevenyears. He had three different wives,

(43:06):
did one another time? No,he was married to three other women,
and most of his children came fromthose women. He and Jesse had one
child together in nineteen seventy nine.Whalen Albright Jennings, known as Shooter,
was basically my age he was.I was born in seventy eight. Shooter
was born in seventy nine. Hestopped touring in ninety seven, and he

(43:27):
finally got his high school graduate graduateequivalency diploma. His geed at sixty years
old, so he'd never finished fishschool. Yeah, of course, we
know. He had a problem withdrugs and fetamines. He got started taking
pills in the mid sixties when hewas living with Johnny Cash. Johnny was
a bad influence on him. Hegot on cocaine. In fact, Jesse
almost divorced him or in the earlyeighties because his a cocaine problem was so

(43:51):
bad. At that time. Hewas being electric cocaine fifteen hundred dollars a
day in nineteen eighty, which wouldbe something like forty five hundred dollars a
day. Now. You know,I don't care how rich you are,
how successful you've been. That's whathappens to some of these rock stars.
Aerosmith talks about that they lost alltheir money How could you lose that much
money? When you start talking aboutfive thousand dollars a day in ten days,

(44:15):
it's fifty thousand dollars in three months, that's a half a million.
You'll blow through a lot of moneyquick doing that. But he ended up
bankrupt and in debt. The samething happened to George Jones and Willie Nelson.
It's crazy, but he actually insistedon paying off all of his debt,
did additional tours to try to payit off. He spent a month
in Phoenix. He actually, youknow, he's from Texas, but he

(44:36):
actually spent most of his life livingin Arizona. Actually after he worked there
when he was young, and hespent a month detoxing himself. His intention
was, Oh, I'm gonna getover my addiction and then I'll just use
cocaine a little bit. I'll beable to control it. But once he
quit, he just decided to stay. Quit in nineteen eighty four, and
he says he did that for Shooter. I guess he didn't do it for
his first five kids, but hedid it for a shooter. Now,

(44:58):
Whalen didn't take good care of himself, he said later in his life that
he said, if I had knownI was going to live this long,
I'd have taken better care of myself. Yeah, yeah, something you can
relate to excessive smoking. Now youthink you had a three pack a day
cigarette habit for a long many decades, which is unimaginable to me. That's
sixty cigarettes a day. How manyHow could you possibly smoke that much?

(45:21):
Well, Whalen's got you beat.Whalen smoked six packs a day. That's
one hundred and twenty cigarettes a dayconstantly. How he didn't get lung cancer,
I don't know. But he didn'ttake care of himself. He was
obese. I mean he was abig guy, but you can tell as
he got older he was pretty fat. He didn't eat well. Obviously,
he developed type two diabetes, andhe quit smoking after he quit cocaine,

(45:44):
but by that time all the damageis done. He had heart bypass surgery
when he was about fifty years oldin nineteen eighty eight, but his diabetes
got worse. Eventually he had tohave a foot amputated in the early two
thousands and uh and eventually complications fromdiabetes took him out. He died in
his sleep February thirteenth, two thousandand two, at the age of sixty
four, twenty one years ago.No, Whalen was born five years before

(46:08):
you pop Pop. But you haveoutlived him so far by almost seventeen years.
I'm talking about in your a.It's been twenty one years since he
died. But but you're eighty goingon eighty one. He died when he
was just sixty four years old.Yeah, I probably did a lot time
ago. Well, but he tookworse care of himself than you did.
He had the diabetes, and hesmoked twice as many cigarettes and all that

(46:30):
and thirty dollars of drugs. Well, let's talk about the music. The
man's life's interesting enough. They oughtto make a movie about him in the
whole outlaw movement. I bet theywill one day. I wish they would.
Yeah, I'd like seeing that.You know, when we started doing
this, we said we're gonna doa top ten list. But I got
to thinking that's not gonna work becausethere's some artists I want to cover and

(46:50):
I don't know ten of their songs, you know that haven't had his bigger
career. There's others. How couldI possibly do a top ten list for
George Straight, you need a topthirty list. There's just too many.
You can't narrow it down to justten. And I got kind of the
same problem here with Whalon, SoI just said, forget that. We're
not gonna limit ourselves. We're justgonna talk about the songs, and it
doesn't really matter how many, becausepeople, look, there might be people
listening to this that maybe haven't reallylistened to Whalen. Maybe there's a song

(47:13):
they haven't heard that they should checkout. So I'm going to recommend some
songs that people should check out.One of them we talked about was Wrong
off the album The Eagle, andUh. I liked that song. It's
a sort of a it's It's okay, but it was probably one Well I'm
putting it at the bottom of mylist, but if you hadn't checked it

(47:35):
out, I think that's worth trying. You might not like it, but
you might Where Corn Oh, Ihaven't heard it in probably twenty years.
But another one from around that samealbum, I think either The Eagle or
The Wolf, but one of themwas where Corn Don't Grow, which is,
uh, well, it's a songabout a kid that grows on the

(47:59):
corn farms to leave and and hisdad. You know, hard times are
real. There's dusty fields no matterwhere you go. You might change your
mind when you try out life ina land where corn don't grow, you
know. And he he goes andtries to find a life away from the
farm, finds that it's it's hardin a different way. You know.
That's a good silent rambling Man,of course, that's one is more famous.

(48:21):
Rambling Man is not one of mymore favorite ones. But it's all
right, Amanda, Amand there's agood silence too. Amanda is good.
I like where you know, finallymade forty, still wearing jeans, look
in the mirror and total surprise atthe hair on my shoulders and the age
in my eyes as you get forty. You can relate to that, you
know. Yeah, how about thiswhen the Broken Promise land. That's an

(48:45):
eighties song from him, Mark chessWell. I don't think it was a
hit. It was just on analbum cut. But Mark Chestnutt recorded it
also on his first album, andI actually I actually prefer Mark Chestnut's version,
but it's basically the same. It'sa song about a man that's having
an affair and he calls his wifeand he's headed for the broken Promised Land.
And then he gets home he findsthat she's leaving him too. Yeah,

(49:07):
yeah, it's a sad good song. How about this one? Nineteen
seventy eight, he did a duetwith Johnny Cash called there Ain't No Good
Chain Gang. Yeah, that's oneI think you should try out. Are
you ready for the country? Areyou ready for me? How about?
He did a duet with Willie Nelson. He had actually record This is one

(49:28):
of his early songs that he wroteand recorded several times throughout his career,
but the one that was the mostsuccessful and that I'm more familiar with.
He released in the early eighties offof one of his duet albums with Willie
called Just to Satisfy You, andhe turned it into a duet with Willie
Nelson. Yeah that's a good.So of course, we know mama's don't
love your babies grow up to becowboys. And I like goodhearted woman better
than than mama's. She's a goodhearted woman in love with a good time

(49:52):
and man, ladies love outlaws.How about never could tow the Mark?
Do you know that one never couldtold the mark? And it never would
walk the line, Oh yeah,yeah. My number fourteen song is this
time, This time is going tobe the last time about getting married.

(50:17):
That was early in his outlaw career. How about Off of the Waymore's Blues
Part two from nineteen ninety four.There's a little song never was on the
radio. It's called Nobody Knows,and if you look it's you gotta pay
attention to the lyrics. It's afine song as far as how it sounds,
but the lyrics is what sells thehumor of it. And this is
one of those songs that I thinkexpresses Waylon Jennings particular quirky sense of humor.

(50:40):
He's saying that he's not really WaylonJennings, he's actually Elvis in disguise,
pretending to be Way, and thatElvis faked his death and pretended to
become a Waylon Jennings. Nobody knows, I'm Elvis, nobody knows. This
is me, black shades and hat. That's where it's at. I nearly
got called a burger king, butyou know, anyway, it's it's he's

(51:01):
hiding out, pretending to be WhalenJennings and he's actually Elvis. My number
twelve. Don't you all think thisoutlaw bit's done got out of hand?
We already talked about that. Howabout number eleven? This was from the
early eighties, when he starts tosound a little more rock and roll here,
Uh, women do know how tocarry on. I like what he
says here, and I like theway he says that. This is another
example of Whalen's way of phrasing things. It says that, you know,

(51:24):
during a breakup, it says,I never knew a man who could take
a fall. Men don't take havingtheir heartbroken very well. But women,
women know how to keep going.They might be be heartbroken, but they're
gonna go out there, and hesays they'll be right back putting men and
make up on. That's that wasa big hit. I like that one.
My number ten is Bob Wills isstill the King. Yeah, it

(51:45):
doesn't matter who's in Austin and Texas, Bob Wills is still the king.
You know. My number nine isthe Taker early seventies, early in his
sort of outlaw taught he had he'sa take her. He'll take her the
places she's never been. It's abouta guy that's you know, he's going
to seduce this woman, and andand maker believe that he's going to really

(52:08):
change her life around. And thenin the end he's just going to take
advantage of her. In the end, he'll take her for granted. He's
gonna show her the life she's beenhungry. In four, which is another
one of his funny ways of sayingthings. My number eight is I've always
been crazy, but it's kept mefrom going insane. It's got me in
some trouble, but it's kept mefrom going insane. My number seven the

(52:30):
conversation with Hank Williams Junior where theytalk about Hank Senior. Yeah, that's
good, Hank, let's talk aboutyour daddy. Number six for me,
and in some ways, I thinkthis is the most definitive and iconic whyl
And Jennings song, Lonesome, Orneryand Mean. Yeah. Number five for

(52:51):
me is one of my all timefavorites. And it's another one from that
Waymore's Blues album from nineteen ninety fourdidn't make a big splash, but I
remember the video being on cmt Rotationwhen I was about sixteen seventeen, and
I remember really like it and Istill really like it. It's called the
Wild Ones, and to me,this is a him at the end of
his career looking back on his lifeas a young man being a rebel,
and Jesse Colter makes an appearance inthe video. He says, we were

(53:16):
the wild Ones. We were thewild Ones. We were the ones they
couldn't control. Number four for me, They ought to give me the Worlid
surprise, for all the silver I'velet slide down the slot. Number three,
the worli surprize. Okay, Idon't want to get over you.
I'm not here to forget you.I'm here to recall. So he's not

(53:39):
going to the to the jukebox toplay songs to get his mind off of
her. He's playing songs to rememberso he can remember remember right right.
He wants to remember all of thegood times. Number three, Rainy Day
Woman. I really like the uh. I really liked the steel guitar and
that Mark Chesnutt in On his fourthalbum, he had an album called What

(54:00):
a Way to Live And on thatalbum he did a duet with with Whalon
of a cover of Rainy Day Woman, and It's very good too. That
actually might be what got me firstlistening to Whalen Jennings music was Mark Chestnuts
duet with him on that album,because I liked Mark Chestnut a lot.
Number two for me is another onethat you could almost call the definitive Whale

(54:22):
and Jennings song. Honky Tonk Heroes, Yeah, low down, leaving Sun
done, did everything that needs done. There wasn't another other there was There
was no other. There wasn't anotherother way to be for those lovable losers,
no account boozers and honky Tonk heroeslike me. The harmonica and that
one's great, And to me,the all time number one Whalen Jennings song

(54:45):
is are you sure Hank done itthis way? Yeah? That's a good
one. That's a really good one. If I could get away with it,
I'd play these songs on here whilewe're talking about them. But I
think we'd get in trouble for that. We did that in a few early
ones, but I think you're notsupposed to do that without paying for a
license. And I can't afford topay for a license, so we would
not do that. Yeah, Ilike that, Well we did it,

(55:07):
but well you can pay for alicense, but I'm not making any money
off of this, like sure,I can't invest fifteen hundred dollars into a
license. I don't. Uh.Anyway, you got any other whil and
Jenning songs that you want to mentionor add to this? You and I

(55:28):
go out aloud when you're niest.They were one of them a similar of
my life, bet another, Well, some of them I life better than
this. Why I listed those atthe bottom. I'll tell you one that
I didn't put on there that Iwould suggest people check out is uh Rose
in Paradise. She's my Rose inParadise. That's a good song. I
hadn't heard. That's from the eighties. I think people should say if you're

(55:50):
if you want to look up someOil and Jenning songs. I didn't list
Brown I had a Handsome Man oronly Daddy That'll walk the line because I
really hate both of those songs.Yeah, well, I like Mr Not
my Vigers, but no mean butthey're okay. Now, Well, I
guess I should have put in atnumber twenty five because I don't hate it
the way I do those other two. But it is my least favorite of

(56:10):
as far as big hits that Whaleand Jennings had. I we should mention
Luke and Bock Texas. Yeah,that's really good. So that's a good
song. But I would put itnear the bottom of my list just because,
not because it's a bad song,just that I like the other ones
more. You know, Roger wereSteel Mel didn't know. We've been so
busy keeping up with the Joneses.Maybe it's time we got back to the

(56:32):
basics of love. Let's go toLuke and Bock Texas, Willie and Whalen
and the Blue One and twenty five. For you, you'd put it at
one, but for me, I'dput it probably somewhere around twenty. I
don't know if I put it one, it'd be hard made to pick more.
And all his South well, hehad so many that though I really

(56:52):
lack, are you sure ain't doneit this way? The Warlord, Serprize,
Honky Tonk here was the lonesome Ornerand mean the rainy day Woman.
To me, all of those,any one of them could just about be
number one. Okay, Well,I think that's all we got to say
about Whalen Jennings. I think we'vecovered the subject. Do you remember when

(57:13):
you first here heard of whaling what'syour first encounter Rhythm was I can't I
can't give you a year over now, but it was a long time ago,
probably probably you know, you playeda radio out there in the shop
all the time. I'd be workingout there, in which I did work
out out a lot, working onmachines and stuff at the barn. We

(57:36):
had a barn out out in thecountry, and my cousins used it for
their horses and barrel racing, andsome we had goats out there and some
farming, and then uncle Uncle Markused it for his race cars, to
work on his race cars, butPop Pop used it to work on his
logging equipment in the middle of thebarn, you know, in the shop
area. Yeah, uh, skiddersand tractors and trucks, mack trucks and

(57:57):
everything in there. When then hehad work and he had welding machines full
well. Yeah, So some ofmy best memories from growing up, We're
going out there to the barn withme and my cousins Mark and Michael,
who live basically next door to thebarn with their dad, and we took
one of the empty stalls in theback and cleared it out and made it
our clubhouse. We built stuff.We made a sign. We called it

(58:22):
the MDM Club for Mark David Michael, and we'd go out there and practice
with the ropes and play with thehorses and shoot BB guns and and then
I'd go out there with you onthe weekends and work either help you work
as I could, but learn howto use the drill press. Or we'd
welled some things out of scrap metal, yeah, killing out belly pans and

(58:44):
paint primer things, grind things down, and then we'd list. Yeah,
we'd have a little alarm clock radioon the shelf and it was always tuned
to WLDBI. So a lot ofthe country music songs that I heard growing
up came from being out there atthe barn in the late eighties in the
early nineties. Oh, that wasa great time to be listening to country
music because you still had some ofthe some of the slightly older ones at

(59:07):
that point was still in rotation,like Hank Junior and a little bit of
George Jones. But you had allthese great at that time, new guys
that were so good. You hadGeorge, George Straight and Alabama and Randy
Travis and Dwight Yoakum and Alan Jacksonand Clint Black and Travis Tritt. We
should mention talking about Whalen Jennings theinfluence he had on people like the southern

(59:28):
rock types like you know, SteveRoland people like that, but at the
Marshall Tucker Band, but also thelater country artists like Travis Tritt and Confederate
Railroad and people who kind of carriedon his legacy, you know, his
style a little bit Danny Shirley atConfederate Road. I saw a Confederate Road
twice in the nineties and they alwaysperformed Mama's Don't let your Babies grow up

(59:49):
to be Cowboys, and he soundedit. He could sound like Whalan when
he wanted to. And yeah,you know, I never saw him live.
I guess, yeah, you didn'tgo see him at Jubilee City Fest
with us that one time about nineteenninety three or four, and then there
was I've seen Travis Tripp three times, and I think he's always made a
point to cover Whylan and he cansound a lot like Whalen when he wants

(01:00:15):
to. I remember when I heardthat Whalan had died. I was working
at Ruby Tuesday. I had justgraduated from college kind of looking for jobs.
So I was working at Ruby Tuesdayand we were out back talking with
some of the managers and they toldme Willie Nelson had died. This is
two thousand and two. Obviously theywere wrong, because Willie Nelson is still
alive in two twenty three as faras I last heard, but they said

(01:00:37):
that, yeah, they said,they said, at first Willie Nelson had
died. And I didn't really carefor Willie Nelson at that time. I
said, oh, well, itkind of sucks, and they said,
oh wait, no, wait,it wasn't Willie Nelson, was Whalen Jennings.
I said, what, I wasso upset? Yep, but I
knew he had been sick, andI knew he wasn't touring anymore. And
I've seen a lot of country acts. I've been to about seventy five or

(01:00:57):
eighty different concerts, mostly of countryartist. And I've seen just about anybody
that I you know, I've seenHank Junior many times, I saw Haggard,
I saw Willie Nelson, I sawGeorge Jones, George Straight, Alan
Jackson, you know, you nameit, Garth Brooks, Dwight Yoakum,
Randy Travis, Patty Lovelace, RebaMcIntyre. I never saw the judge,
but my senior I really lackintyre.Well, she'd put up on a good

(01:01:20):
show. But one of my bigregrets, two of my big regrets I
never got to see live was JohnnyCash and Waylon Jennings. Yeah I've seen
both of them. Yeah you did. I never got to I've seen I've
seen Johnny Cash two three times.The Highwayman I saw once and I would
disappointed was that in the seventies wouldhe play at Garrett Colisseum in Montgomery.

(01:01:44):
No, I wouldn't Garrett Colseum.It was the UK. The name of
used to be down there by theriver and Tore Damn put a motail in
there. Oh, I don't know. It's before my time then, yeah,
before you were born. Yeah.Well probably near where Riverwalk is now.
Yeah, and the Impact and allthat. That's where we saw Willie

(01:02:06):
Nelson GC. Well, uh,you know at that time he was probably
stoned. When you would have suedhe didn't need him put on much,
didn't you tell me? He justcame in and played a couple of songs
and left or something. Did comein late, played Third Horse sound.
He was probably high out of hismind or something. Yeah, at that

(01:02:30):
time, in the late seventies,he would have been bad on cocaine by
then, I'm sure, yeah hedid. He didn't put on I would
never have played to see him afterthat. But after that he had some
good sound. Well, at oncehe settled down. I can't believe we
should have gone to see the highwaymen. They were still touring. Oh yeah,
if we had done that, wecould have knocked out four of them,
you know, because I've never seenChris Christofferson either. Although I wouldn't

(01:02:52):
necessarily go just for him, butI wouldn't mind seeing him with those other
guys, you know. Yeah,he would more sound rider than the Yeah.
He was a great songwriter. Hehad a few hits like why Me
Lord, and well he wrote alot of his for other people like help
Me make It through the Night andSunday Morning Coming Down. I'm trying to
think of besides why Me Lord.Oh, and of course he wrote me
and Bobby McGee for Janice Joplin.But Chris Christoffson was more of a songwriter.

(01:03:15):
Did you know? He was aRhodes scholar too. Yeah, came
from a came from a military family, disappointed his family when he just wanted
to go be a songwriter. Youknow, yeah, he was supposed to
be a big army brass or something. But you know, yeah that wanted
to make a general or something.Well, I guess he just liked the
other outlaws. He followed his ownpath and did what he wanted to do.

(01:03:38):
Yeah, that wasn't what he wasmade for. He was made for
was being a songwriter. Anyway,I would have loved to have seen the
Highwayman when they were all touring together. It's a shame we didn't get to
do that. Whalen died in Otwo and Johnny followed about a year and
a half later, in oh three. Uh, they both really did not
take me about eighteen months apart.Whalen was February of two and I think

(01:04:00):
Johnny was September of three, Augustor September. Now, I gotta say,
out of the seven episodes we've doneso far, Willie Nelson is the
only one that we've done a podcaston who's still alive and he turns ninety.
We did Hank Williams, of course, he's been dead for seventy years.
We did Patsy Kline's been dead forsixty years. We did George Jones,

(01:04:23):
who died in twenty thirteen. MerleHaggard died in twenty sixteen. We
did Johnny Cash and Whale and Jennings. Willie somehow is still alive at the
age of turning ninety and about amonth from now as we're recording this next
time, we'll do Hank Williams Junior, who hopefully will be our second person
who's still alive at the time wedo the podcast. So he's about seventy.

(01:04:45):
He's over seventy. I think he'sa sixty. He was born in
nineteen fifty. Oh good, hewas. He was three when his daddy
died, and his daddy this isthe seventieth anniversary his dad's death. You're
right, You're absolutely right, hesaid. He's two years older. And
Big Mark and Big Margaret we savedit this year. Hank Wims Junior was

(01:05:09):
born in nineteen forty nine, justabout six months after now and was born,
and he is seventy three. Hewill be seventy four in about two
months. Yeah, he laugh.He wife died about a year ago.
Yeah, anyhow, we'll talk aboutthat. Next time. But all right,
well that's all about all we gotto say about Wail and Jennings.
So okay, it's a really goodone I think. All right, we'll

(01:05:30):
see you next time. If youlike what we're doing, hit the like
and follow button. You'll be notifiedwhen we upload new episodes. Catch you
next time. Take care,