"Country music is as close to the truth as you can get without going
to church."
By Allan Parachini
Two cultures could scarcely be more divergent, at least on the surface, than the drug-wrought domain of post-Beatles rock-and-roll and the simple, down-home essence of country music – un-homogenized and growing straight out of its backwoods roots. But country music isn't really rural any more except at heart. And it has become as difficult to identify "pure" country as it has to identify "pure" rock, so great is the merging of the two into "country-rock," a vast polyglot field that is as hard to define as any of the other hyphenated music of the early Seventies.
Simply put, more artists from country music are "crossing over" in an attempt to appeal to the straight rock audience, following, in reverse, the Grateful Dead, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Poco, and Linda Ronstadt, among others, who introduced the country sound to rock.
And, of course, there is some resistance among country enthusiasts both to the influx of young, long-haired musicians and to the escape (some would say desertion) of traditional country artists seeking to widen their appeal by actively courting the rock audience. Then into this peculiar cultural conflict entered Waylon Jennings, a respected country star whose credentials also include a close identification with Buddy Holly, a man at whose door some lay a great deal of the responsibility for what rock has become.
Interviewing Jennings presented an opportunity for a study in contrasts. He was playing a week-long engagement at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, one of the most important folk-rock clubs in the country, and was staying during the gig at the Bel Air Motel, one of the plushest, most exclusive hotels in Southern California.
But, despite the sumptuous surroundings, there was no doubt that this was the same Waylon Jennings who re sides in Old Hickory, Tennessee. He looked very relaxed, sporting the same black cowboy hat, red shirt (a Gemini sign on a chain around his neck), black leather vest, and black pants he'd been wearing on stage the night before at the Troubadour. He sprawled haphazardly on a couch, planted his boot-clad feet on a coffee table, ordered coffee from room service, and turned on a radio tuned to KLAC, one of three full-time country music stations in Los Angeles. And then he talked about himself, his mu sic, and "crossing over." Jennings was born in Littlefield, Texas, spent some of his adolescence as a disc jockey, and started recording on his own when he was about nineteen. By the time he was twenty, he was playing bass in the Crickets, Buddy Holly's back-up band. On February 3, 1959, the Holly troupe, including singer Richie Valens and the Big Bopper (a disc jockey whose real name was J.P. Richardson), had finished a one-night stand in Clear Lake, Iowa. Jennings was supposed to join Holly and Valens for a charter flight to the next date, in Moorhead, Minnesota, but Richardson complained of the flu and Jennings offered him his seat on the plane. The aircraft crashed and the three were killed. Shocked "beyond description," Jennings gave up music entirely for a couple of years, returning to work for a radio station in Lubbock, Texas.
Ultimately, he drifted back--to performing and put together a group called the Waylors. They played in Lubbock for a while, then in Phoenix at a club called J.D.'s, where Chet Atkins eventually heard them. Atkins urged Jennings to move to Nashville and develop his solo talent. Thus began a renewed career that has continued for more than ten years.
BUT even as he emerged as a country artist, Jennings told me, he wanted to broaden his appeal and speak musically to the generation that has been influenced so greatly by the rock explosion, which he believes is largely the legacy of Buddy Holly. "I can't be a conventional country singer, I guess, because I don't sing through my nose," Jennings said and laughed. At the same time, he has what might be loosely called a rock-and-roll soul, nurtured by the close Holly ties. He may be risking alienation from some of the country-music industry to reach an audience that is as broad-based, though perhaps not as large, as Jerry Lee Lewis' or Kris Kristofferson's. Still, only two months prior to his date at the folk-rock Trouba dour, he had been in Los Angeles to play at the Palomino, a "stone country" club in the San Fernando Valley.
"Country music is universal," he said. "I really believe that. Especially now. Country music is real. It's about people and their ups and downs and good and bad. People are looking for something that's real. For the last ten years, not that I don't dig it, they've had to listen really hard to get anything out of music, especially the words.
Acid rock and hard rock are like that. Sort of superficial musically. Everything was done in the recording studio with gadgets.
"But country music isn't like that. Even people in the North can relate to it. There's something in it for every body. Country music, to me, is people singing the blues about their good and bad times. There's sadness in the tempo, even. Black blues and country are just about a beat apart, really. They come from the same thing and they're about the same thing. Country music is as close to the truth as you can get without going to church." Some country "purists" profess disdain for those who have contributed to the drift of "their" medium out of its Southern and Southern-flavored traditional strongholds into the entertainment world at large, but Jennings does not feel that the country audience in general cares much one way or the other.
"I think some disc jockeys and program directors of radio stations resent what's happening, but the country people point to it with pride. It's like something of theirs that went big. The city folks finally found out what's good. The gripers are people in the business. If they think you're going in a crossover direction, they'll put you down." The crossover is a curious thing. Pedal steel guitars are now a normal accoutrement of many rock bands, and a recent Jennings album, "Lonesome, On'ry and Mean" (RCA LS P 4854), contains several tracks that are backed by a meticulously arranged string section. He has defined his sound in the past as "not country, not western, but Waylon." "The important thing is to know what makes a country record. It's not instruments. There was this kick in Nashville to keep country music pure. But if we do that, we're going to have to go back exclusively to acoustic instruments. A country record is an art form all to itself. You can even put a kazoo on a country record and be authentic- if you know what you're doing." Jennings sees the country "industry" (he makes an important distinction between the industry and the audience) as unwilling to give up what many Nashville people believe is a battle against alleged musical interlopers from the two coasts. "I heard an agent say one time, 'I wish New York and L.A. would leave us alone.' Well, hell, that's not right. Glen Campbell had been recording country stuff for years and he had to have a pop hit (Gentle on My Mind) before the country industry would recognize him. But now they holler 'He's our boy!' I think the problem is that the business is afraid of prostitution of the music, but there's very little reason for that fear.
"I've had so many people say to me, 'You ain't country.' But I taught a lot of those dudes how to play chords.
At first they called what was happening 'folk-country,' but I was doing it in 1965. I don't have any problems with the people who are listening. I get a lot of air play and my records always sell well. But the, country music industry as a whole is afraid of me. They think I'm trying to change things. I'm not, but I'm not going to let them ...
----- Buddy Holly: the rock explosion
is his legacy.
... change me. If I'm not country, I'm a Mongolian idiot." Stylistically, Jennings certainly is a country artist. But his material is culled from a variety of sources, and the lyrics are a cut above most c-&-w tunes. He writes a good bit of his own material and performs songs by such people as Mickey Newbury (another "crossover" performer) and Kristofferson, occasionally even adding some Len non/McCartney. That he uses rock sources and has a rock audience is not really surprising, considering his ideas about the nature of country music and, perhaps most important, that youthful association with Buddy Holly.
"Buddy was such a great guy. I dare say very few days go by that I don't think about him. He was the first person who ever had any confidence in me. Musically, he had a lot of influence on me. [Actually, Holly was himself something of an early crossover artist who drew on a country background.] After he was killed, I didn't do any thing for a couple of years; I wouldn't even play a guitar.
I had a fear of planes that I had to get over. It was such a waste, him being killed like that. You see, people didn't realize and I didn't realize how far ahead of his time he was.
"Buddy and I were laughing and joking the last night.
I've never told this before and maybe I shouldn't, but what happened is we had this old school bus and the engine froze up on us so it was going to take most of the night to drive it from Mason City to Moorhead. That's why we were going on the plane. So after I'd told J.P.
Richardson he could have my seat, I went out to get some hot dogs for me and Buddy and we were kidding about the bus.
"He said, 'You're not going with us and I hope your bus freezes up solid,' laughing, you know. And I told him, 'I hope your danged old plane crashes.' The next morning they came to the door of the bus to tell me about the crash. Somehow, I knew what had happened." JENNINGS has kept in contact with the other Crickets, one of whom resides in Los Angeles, hoping to revive a Buddy Holly song as a hit single or to record a Holly tribute album. In the early Sixties, he did record a short narrative in memory of Holly, Richardson, Valens, and Ed die Cochran, another early rock star who was killed in an auto crash. "But they must have sped up the tape or something and it just sounded terrible. I finally managed to buy the tape and destroy it. That was the only thing I've ever recorded I was really ashamed of." Jennings both is and is not a man haunted by a memory.
He is happily married (his charming wife, Jessi, is also a singer), has a houseful of children, and has found success as a country artist and repute in the rock culture. He has actively sought to raise the level of the material he per forms, and he has shown that he wants to reach as wide an audience as possible while retaining an authenticity and flavor that are beyond dispute.
He has often been compared with Kris Kristofferson, who, some say, cares more about his new rock audience than about the country crowd that gave him his start. But Jennings seems determined to remain a country artist, convinced that broad-based audiences will continue to seek him out. He thinks the people who really listen to what he does won't care who else likes to listen to him.
Waylon Jennings is perhaps as good an indicator of the true appeal of country music as you can find, and he's been right so far.
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Also see:
J. Mark's HALL OF OBSCURITY--REVISITED--New acquisitions for the Gallery of Beautiful Losers
THE BASIC REPERTOIRE--Schubert's Symphony No. 2