If you crack open the dictionary and look up the definition of “cool,” you’re gonna get a full page picture of Waylon Jennings.
He was as badass as it gets.
Just watch this performance from Cowboy Jack Clement’s TV show from back in the day.
Sitting alongside his wife Jessi Colter, Waylon asks if they want to hear “Waymore’s Blues,” to which, Jack responded “I never heard it,” (which was an obvious joke because he produced it for Waylon’s 1975 album Dreaming My Dreams).
So with a cigarette in the guitar strings, Waylon locks eyes with his wife and you can just feel the chemistry, you can feel the cool.
Waylon was performing like nobody else was in the room… so effortless, so authentic… he was simply one of a kind.
“Every woman she sees looks like a place I came in, like a place I came in,” he sings with a laugh before calling that line “poetic license.”
“You’ll need a lot of poetic license for that,” she replied.
Their banter back and forth during the song make the entire performance, but ultimately, Waylon concludes saying the song makes no sense.
“It don’t make any sense. It does, but it don’t. I had to really dig to get a story out of it.
I’ll tell ya about it someday… the first part is about Jimmie Rodgers, the second part I don’t know what it’s about.”
Whether makes it any sense or not, it’s an all-time classic that’s been covered by everybody from Johnny Cash with Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, to Cody Jinks with Tennessee Jet, Daniel Donato, J.J Cale and more.
Written by Waylon and Curtis Buck, it was originally released on Waylon’s 1975 album, Dreamin’ My Dreams. While in the studio, Waylon actually stormed out (misunderstanding with the producer), and when they got back in to try it again, they failed to capture the magic of that first recording.
If you listen closely to the studio version, you can hear Waylon say “one more,” but then then song quickly just ends… that’s because Waylon walked out.
And the rest is history…
The studio version: