Country Music

Country Music Hits

Uncategorized

HE LOST HIS LEFT FOOT IN DECEMBER 2001 — AND TOLD PEOPLE HE’D BE BACK ON TOUR IN A FEW MONTHS. HE HAD TWO MONTHS LEFT. In 1997, Waylon Jennings stopped touring. The road had worn him down and the diabetes was getting worse. Most people assumed that was the quiet end of it. It wasn’t. A year later he called up Bobby Bare, Jerry Reed and Mel Tillis, and the four of them cut a record together as The Old Dogs. Then in 1999 he put together the Waymore Blues Band — the band, he said, he’d always wanted. Sick men don’t usually start bands. Waylon started two. In January 2000 he played two nights at the Ryman in Nashville. It turned out to be his last real concert. Then 2001 got hard. Two surgeries. Circulation failing in his legs. And in December, doctors took his left foot. Here’s the part most people never hear. When his spokeswoman talked to reporters that January, she said Waylon had been hobbling for more than two years — and that he was walking again on a prosthetic. He told people he’d be back on tour by spring. He wasn’t putting on a brave face for the press. He meant it. He never got there. On February 13, 2002, he died in his sleep at home in Chandler, Arizona. He was 64. Jessi said he did it his way, right to the last minute. At home. On his own terms. Sixteen number-one hits behind him, and not one apology for how he got them.

Waylon Jennings and the Final Months That Refused to Look Final

In the last stretch of his life, Waylon Jennings did not behave like a man quietly closing the book. He kept moving, kept planning, and kept talking as if there were still another run ahead of him. Even when his health was failing, he sounded less like someone giving up and more like someone refusing to let the story end too soon.

A career that never really fit the rules

By the late 1990s, Waylon Jennings had already lived several musical lives. He had helped define outlaw country, made his name by pushing against polished Nashville expectations, and built a fan base that loved him for his rough edges as much as for his voice. But in 1997, he stopped touring. Diabetes and other health problems had worn him down, and many people assumed the road had finally taken its toll for good.

Waylon Jennings was not the kind of artist who stayed still for long.

In 1998, he recorded with Bobby Bare, Jerry Reed, and Mel Tillis as The Old Dogs. Then, in 1999, he formed the Waymore Blues Band, the band he had long wanted to have. For someone in poor health, Waylon Jennings kept building new plans instead of retreating from them.

The last great nights in Nashville

In January 2000, Waylon Jennings played two nights at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Those shows became his last major concerts. They were not framed like a farewell tour, and they did not feel like a public ending at the time. They felt like a working musician still trying to give people one more honest night of music.

After that, the decline became harder to ignore. In 2001, Waylon Jennings underwent two surgeries as circulation problems worsened. By December of that year, doctors amputated his left foot because of complications tied to diabetes.

Hoping for spring

What makes the final chapter so striking is how openly Waylon Jennings looked ahead. In January 2002, a spokeswoman said he had been hobbling for more than two years and was now walking again with a prosthetic. Waylon Jennings also told people he expected to return to touring by spring.

That detail matters because it shows a man who was not performing optimism for the crowd. He genuinely believed there was still time.

Waylon Jennings was still making plans for the road, even when the road had already narrowed to almost nothing.

The ending came at home

Waylon Jennings died in his sleep on February 13, 2002, at his home in Chandler, Arizona. He was 64. The ending was private, simple, and far from the spotlight that had followed him for decades.

Jessi Colter later reflected on the life he lived and the way he lived it: on his own terms. That is the part that still lingers. Sixteen number-one hits, a legacy that reshaped country music, and a final season marked by pain, determination, and unfinished plans.

Waylon Jennings never made it back to tour that spring. But in those last months, he was still thinking like a working artist, still reaching for the next stage, and still refusing to let illness define the whole of his story.

 

Related Post

Uncategorized

THE CREW FILMING THE HIGHWAYMEN AT NASSAU COLISEUM IN 1990 HAD ONE RULE: JOHNNY CASH COULD ONLY BE SHOT FROM ONE SIDE OF HIS FACE. It was March 14, eleven days after Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson opened the first tour they ever ran as a group, out behind Highwayman 2. The cameras in Uniondale were not there by chance. Lou Robin, Cash’s longtime manager, said everyone knew this was the show to film: a big crowd, and four men who had finally been on the road together long enough to trust each other onstage. They gave the crew two hours and thirty-nine minutes. They raided each other’s solo catalogs, “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Always on My Mind,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and kept stepping back so the next man could take a verse. At the end of Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim: Chapter 33,” he pointed at each of the other three and grinned. Jessi Colter, Waylon’s wife, said they were always on it, but that one was fantastic. And Johnny Cash sang every minute of it with one side of his face turned away from the lens. Robin gave the reason in the liner notes, decades later, when the complete film was finally released in 2016. It was not the lighting, and it was not vanity.

Uncategorized

WAYLON JENNINGS RECORDED 12 SONGS WITH ONLY HIS GUITAR, HIS VOICE AND ROBBY TURNER’S BASS. TEN YEARS AFTER WAYLON DIED, THE MAN BESIDE HIM RETURNED TO FINISH THEM. During the final years of Waylon’s life, he spent hours in the studio with Robby Turner, his longtime musician and close friend. Waylon sang and played guitar. Robby played bass. Together, they recorded the foundation of 12 songs and discussed the instruments that would eventually be added. But Waylon’s health was failing. He died on February 13, 2002, before the album could be completed. The recordings remained untouched for years. Then Robby received Jessi Colter’s blessing and brought several of Waylon’s longtime musicians back into the studio. Their guide was simple: finish the songs as Waylon would have wanted them. The work was not easy. While adding steel guitar to one track, Robby looked down and saw one of his tears fall onto the instrument. In 2012, the finished album was released as Goin’ Down Rockin’: The Last Recordings. Waylon was gone. But the men who had once played until he smiled came together one last time and finished what their friend had started.

Uncategorized

JANIS JOPLIN PLAYED THE GUITAR PART HERSELF ON THE ONLY NO. 1 SHE WOULD EVER HAVE, AND SHE NEVER LIVED TO HEAR IT ON THE RADIO. She cut “Me and Bobby McGee” during the Pearl sessions in 1970, in the weeks before October 4, when she was found dead in a Hollywood hotel room at 27. Kris Kristofferson, who wrote the song with Fred Foster, was off in Peru working on a film. Bob Neuwirth had taught it to her. Kristofferson didn’t know the recording existed. The day after she died, her producer Paul Rothchild asked him to come to the office and listen. He said he walked all over Los Angeles afterward, in tears. In March 1971 the record reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, one of the first posthumous chart-toppers in the history of that chart, and the song that made his name as a writer. Then came the part nobody prepares for. Every audience wanted to hear it, and he couldn’t get through it. So he sat down with his friend Donnie Fritts and they played Joplin’s version over and over, until he could listen to it without coming apart. He sang it for the rest of his career. He said he thought of her every single time.

You Missed

Uncategorized

THE CREW FILMING THE HIGHWAYMEN AT NASSAU COLISEUM IN 1990 HAD ONE RULE: JOHNNY CASH COULD ONLY BE SHOT FROM ONE SIDE OF HIS FACE. It was March 14, eleven days after Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson opened the first tour they ever ran as a group, out behind Highwayman 2. The cameras in Uniondale were not there by chance. Lou Robin, Cash’s longtime manager, said everyone knew this was the show to film: a big crowd, and four men who had finally been on the road together long enough to trust each other onstage. They gave the crew two hours and thirty-nine minutes. They raided each other’s solo catalogs, “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Always on My Mind,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and kept stepping back so the next man could take a verse. At the end of Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim: Chapter 33,” he pointed at each of the other three and grinned. Jessi Colter, Waylon’s wife, said they were always on it, but that one was fantastic. And Johnny Cash sang every minute of it with one side of his face turned away from the lens. Robin gave the reason in the liner notes, decades later, when the complete film was finally released in 2016. It was not the lighting, and it was not vanity.

Uncategorized

WAYLON JENNINGS RECORDED 12 SONGS WITH ONLY HIS GUITAR, HIS VOICE AND ROBBY TURNER’S BASS. TEN YEARS AFTER WAYLON DIED, THE MAN BESIDE HIM RETURNED TO FINISH THEM. During the final years of Waylon’s life, he spent hours in the studio with Robby Turner, his longtime musician and close friend. Waylon sang and played guitar. Robby played bass. Together, they recorded the foundation of 12 songs and discussed the instruments that would eventually be added. But Waylon’s health was failing. He died on February 13, 2002, before the album could be completed. The recordings remained untouched for years. Then Robby received Jessi Colter’s blessing and brought several of Waylon’s longtime musicians back into the studio. Their guide was simple: finish the songs as Waylon would have wanted them. The work was not easy. While adding steel guitar to one track, Robby looked down and saw one of his tears fall onto the instrument. In 2012, the finished album was released as Goin’ Down Rockin’: The Last Recordings. Waylon was gone. But the men who had once played until he smiled came together one last time and finished what their friend had started.

Uncategorized

JANIS JOPLIN PLAYED THE GUITAR PART HERSELF ON THE ONLY NO. 1 SHE WOULD EVER HAVE, AND SHE NEVER LIVED TO HEAR IT ON THE RADIO. She cut “Me and Bobby McGee” during the Pearl sessions in 1970, in the weeks before October 4, when she was found dead in a Hollywood hotel room at 27. Kris Kristofferson, who wrote the song with Fred Foster, was off in Peru working on a film. Bob Neuwirth had taught it to her. Kristofferson didn’t know the recording existed. The day after she died, her producer Paul Rothchild asked him to come to the office and listen. He said he walked all over Los Angeles afterward, in tears. In March 1971 the record reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, one of the first posthumous chart-toppers in the history of that chart, and the song that made his name as a writer. Then came the part nobody prepares for. Every audience wanted to hear it, and he couldn’t get through it. So he sat down with his friend Donnie Fritts and they played Joplin’s version over and over, until he could listen to it without coming apart. He sang it for the rest of his career. He said he thought of her every single time.

Uncategorized

CHET ATKINS WAS THE GUITARIST NASHVILLE TRIED TO COPY. THEN JERRY REED CAME ALONG, AND EVEN “MR. GUITAR” BEGAN LEARNING FROM HIM. When Jerry Reed arrived at RCA in the mid-1960s, Chet Atkins was already one of the most respected men in country music. He was a legendary guitarist, a successful producer and the man who had helped shape the Nashville Sound. But Chet heard something different in Jerry’s playing. Jerry did not pick the guitar like anyone else. His fingers attacked the strings with unusual rhythms, sudden pauses and complicated patterns that seemed almost impossible to repeat. Instead of asking Jerry to become more conventional, Chet encouraged him to sound like himself. Then something remarkable happened. The established master began incorporating some of Jerry’s musical ideas into his own playing. Chet recorded Jerry’s songs, shared the studio with him and treated the younger guitarist not as a student, but as an equal. In 1971, their album “Me and Jerry” won a Grammy for Best Country Instrumental Performance. Jerry had entered Nashville hoping to earn the respect of one of his heroes. He left behind something even greater. He had given “Mr. Guitar” a few new things to learn.