Beginnings With Buddy Holly
Waylon Jennings rose from hardscrabble poverty in West Texas to become Buddy Holly’s bassist. Then, he went from Nashville rebel to Outlaw star.
Jennings escaped what he considered the futureless world of Littlefield, Texas, by working in radio in Lubbock, and by picking up the guitar. His big break came when Buddy Holly tapped Jennings to play bass in his new band on a tour through the Midwest in late 1958 and early 1959.
In an oft-told moment, Jennings gave up his seat on an ill-fated flight that would claim the lives of Holly, J. P. Richardson (“the Big Bopper”), and Ritchie Valens. After the crash, Jennings’s musical world crashed around him. Holly had been his mentor, producing his first record (“Jole Blon,” Brunswick, 1958), and Jennings felt responsible, because his last words to Holly had been the joking refrain, “I hope your ole plane crashes” (in response to Holly’s “I hope your damned bus freezes up again”).
From West Texas to Phoenix to Nashville
It took Jennings years to regain some career equilibrium. He first went back to radio in West Texas, then began performing again, ending up at a bar in Phoenix, Arizona, called J. D.’s. Jennings became a local celebrity there, and when Nashville performer Bobby Bare passed through Phoenix and heard Jennings, Bare headed for a pay phone to tell his producer, Chet Atkins at RCA in Nashville, about this raw young talent out in Arizona.
Jennings had already cut some songs in the country-folk vein for then-fledgling A&M Records in Los Angeles, but A&M demurred to Atkins, who signed Jennings to RCA. The singer’s first session for RCA took place on March 16, 1965.
Jennings moved to Nashville and, by sheer chance, became roommates with Johnny Cash; the pair soon cemented their legends as hellraisers. Jennings starred in the 1966 movie Nashville Rebel, scored Top Ten hits with songs such as “The Chokin’ Kind” (#8, 1967) and “Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line” (#2, 1968), and his 1969 collaboration with the Kimberlys on “MacArthur Park” won a Grammy.
But Jennings chafed under RCA’s tight rein, and at one point he also took a dramatic stand against the status quo: when Chet Atkins turned him over to staff producer Danny Davis, Jennings pulled out a pistol in the studio to protest Davis’s practice of what Jennings felt was studio bullying.
