Country Music

Country Music Hits

Uncategorized

THE OLD MAN IN THE HIGHWAYMEN’S SADDEST HIT WAS A REAL PERSON, AND HIS NAME WAS JACK PRIGG. He was a West Texas wildcatter who boarded at Rossie Clark’s thirteen-room hotel in Monahans. Her grandson Guy was a boy then, his father overseas with the army, and Prigg became the man around the house. After Prigg died, Clark wrote him a song. He called it a eulogy, and in 1996 he said, “That one’s as true as I can make it.” In 1984, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson recorded it in Nashville for their first album as the Highwaymen. Columbia released it as a single that September and it reached fifteen on the country chart. All four were in their late forties and early fifties, younger than the old man in the lyric, and they passed the verses around between them. Cash sang the line calling him a hero of this country. Jennings died in 2002. Cash in 2003. Kristofferson in 2024. Willie Nelson turned ninety-three this spring and is booked to headline Farm Aid in September. Of the four voices on that record, one is still singing.

The Real Man Behind The Highwaymen’s Saddest Hit

Some songs feel so complete that listeners forget they came from a real place. “Highwayman,” the song recorded by Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson, is one of those rare cases. Its unforgettable last verse about an aging man on a highway was not just a poetic invention. It grew out of a person Kris Kristofferson knew: Jack Prigg, a West Texas wildcatter who stayed at Rossie Clark’s thirteen-room hotel in Monahans.

In the story that inspired the song, Jack Prigg was more than a guest. Rossie Clark’s grandson, Guy, was a boy then, and his father was overseas with the army. Prigg stepped into the daily life of the house and became the steady presence around the family. He was the kind of man who leaves a quiet mark, the kind people remember long after the noise of the world has moved on.

When Jack Prigg died, Rossie Clark wrote him a song. Kris Kristofferson later described it as a eulogy, and in 1996 he said, “That one’s as true as I can make it.” Those words matter because they place the song somewhere between memory and art. The lyric is not a documentary, but it is rooted in affection, loss, and the plain dignity of someone who was loved.

A Song Shared by Four Voices

In 1984, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson recorded “Highwayman” in Nashville for their first album together as the Highwaymen. Columbia released it as a single that September, and it rose to number fifteen on the country chart. All four singers were in their late forties and early fifties, still young enough to sound tough and old enough to understand the weight of the lyric.

The performance itself helped make the song memorable. They passed the verses around between them, each voice carrying a different life and a different kind of authority. Johnny Cash sang the line calling the old man a hero of this country, and the words landed with a kind of blunt tenderness that only Cash could deliver.

What Makes It Last

Part of the reason “Highwayman” still lingers is that it speaks to endurance. The song moves through different lives and different forms, but the final image stays with listeners: a man who keeps returning, keeps crossing, keeps becoming part of the country’s long story. That feeling is stronger now because time has changed the singers themselves.

Waylon Jennings died in 2002. Johnny Cash died in 2003. Kris Kristofferson died in 2024. Willie Nelson turned ninety-three this spring and is still booked to headline Farm Aid in September. Of the four voices that made the record famous, one is still singing.

That fact gives the song a new kind of weight. “Highwayman” was always about survival, change, and the strange dignity of lasting longer than expected. Jack Prigg was a real man. Rossie Clark turned grief into a song. And four legendary singers turned that song into a classic that still sounds like history being spoken aloud.

 

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.