Day 159: Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson - Waylon & Willie
I’ve got a few projects on the go at the moment, one of them obviously being this but another is going through lists of classic films. Through that, I’ve come to find that I do somewhat enjoy a Western, once I get past the fact that it makes me feel like I’m growing up to be like my father. I thought I’d go for a bit of outlaw country today, and the description in Apple Music says that Waylon & Willie is a “musical equivalent of a classic Western buddy movie,” I thought I might as well give that a try.
Album cover courtesy of RCA Records
Waylon & Willie was released in 1978 by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. Waylon Jennings was a singer and songwriter from Littlefield, Texas, who was a pioneering artist in the outlaw country music genre, while Willie Nelson is a legendary country singer, songwriter, actor and activist who’s still going strong at 92 years old. They recorded Wanted! The Outlaws, which was the first country album to be platinum certified, and they were also in a country supergroup called the Highwaymen with Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash.
The duo’s 1978 release Waylon & Willie came at a time where both of them were already stars in their own right. It’s a tongue in cheek album that leans on the pair’s outlaw reputation to do fairly light-hearted country songs with a cowboy leaning, where they’re mostly staying on the usual country topics of women and bad behaviour. It also has a very good Waylon Jennings cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Gold Dust Woman.”
Waylon Jennings says that the whole outlaw thing was a marketing scheme that didn’t particularly come from anything real, it was just a label to stick on that could sell you some records. He added that Willie Nelson in particularly was no outlaw, saying “About the closest thing that Willie ever did to bein’ an outlaw is that he probably came to town and double-parked on Music Row.” However, both of them seemed to have a bit of a penchant for drugs, with Jennings facing charges for cocaine at the time, which were later dropped.
It’s a very warm album that’s comforting to listen to, sort of feeling like something you should hear in a rocking chair with a fireplace nearby. You wouldn’t think the collab between two famous “outlaws”, one of whom was sporting a casual $1,500 per day (!) cocaine habit at the time, would be so wholesome-sounding, but it is. And by the way, how do you even do that much cocaine without dying? Is it that they’re just getting the top shelf stuff or is it purely a volume thing? I’m interested I but wouldn’t ask anyone, it just doesn’t seem polite.
It’s nice to know a bit more about Willie Nelson rather than hearing a few songs here and there and knowing he’s the country guy who’s very fond of the devil’s lettuce. I’m also glad to be introduced to Waylon Jennings – seems like a fun guy, and he apparently he had a bit of a rep as the sexy long-haired bad boy of country. The album isn’t strictly speaking my thing, but I did still enjoy the nice, warm atmosphere that it invoked. I was originally going to give it a 7.5 but the closing song “The Wurlitzer Prize (I Don't Want to Get Over You)” was so lovely that I’ve bumped it to an 8/10.