It was just a constant battle. We’d fight on the phone; we’d fight on and off the road. All of my ex-wives hated what I did. They were so jealous of the music. It was like another woman. They kept hoping I would give it up for them. And they were right to be concerned; I wasn’t about to stop playing guitar to keep my home life together. I remember Duane Eddy talking to Lynne, telling her she would have to grow with me in order for it to ever work. She had flat out told him she did not want me to be a star. Lynne, or Maxine, and now Barbara, knew that music, the real Other Woman, was taking me away. It had to hurt.
I don’t blame them. I guess I left all my ex-wives, when you come down to it. They didn’t leave me. What I’d say to the lawyer is “give it all to ’em”; I’ll make it somewhere else. I just wanted out. I don’t know why I just didn’t find some good-looking woman, buy her a new house and a new car, and shack up for a little while and then go about my business.
Barbara is still a dear friend, along with her mom and brothers, and is still beautiful to this day. Even after we split up, she’d come to my apartment to sleep over. I’d wake up in the morning and she’d be in bed with me, snuggling up. But she might’ve died living with me. At the least, she would’ve killed a lot more guitars.
Sometimes, especially in a relationship with someone you love, you bring out different qualities. I brought out a meanness in Barbara that I couldn’t believe. After a time, I knew that it was never going to work anymore, and I’d never be back. I took her home, for the last time.
Then I went wild.
* * *
I was everywhere, all in a day that became night that became day again. I would never just go into a room. I went all over it.
Curtis Buck was a crazy sonofabitch, and he ran around with me. While I was singing, he’d go find the girls, and if we needed drugs, he’d find the dope.
I had two secretaries that didn’t know how to secretary. One—I called her Squirrely—was my driver. She couldn’t see as far as the hood. She’d be up in the front seat with Curtis, wearing the cutest little chauffeur’s cap, and I’d be laying out in the back seat with the other. Suddenly there’d be this bloodcurdling scream. “Look out!” Curtis would be hollering and waving his arms. We’d be going around a truck on a curve with another truck aiming right at us! I thought, There ain’t much I can do here. I’d just lay right back down, close my eyes, and pray for the best.
We’d pull up at a show. They’d get out of the car, all low-cut blouses, plenty of boobs, up-to-the-point miniskirts and black hose, and the hillbillies would come running for miles around to get a glimpse of these girls. I’d tumble out of the back seat, and they’d escort me to the stage. I had given up hope of ever being able to keep a marriage together.
If you saw the movie Payday, you’ll know where they got the idea. Me, the limousine, and the women, driving up and down the road, shooting at signs with a .22 Magnum buntline. That’s what I do for a living.
One night I even outdid myself, talking this guy out of his wife in Cincinnati, Ohio. We were on a bill with Wynn Stewart and Buck Owens. Wynn came running backstage saying “Goddammit, you’re not going to believe this girl about three rows back.”
Sure enough, I got out there and spotted her immediately. She was blonde-headed and beautiful and stuck out like an angel. All the time I’m up there, she’s just going nuts when I’m singing, looking at me, giving me the eye. Sitting beside her is some old boy who doesn’t understand what’s going on, or maybe he does.
After the show I went up to the promoter. “If you want me for nothing tonight,” I said, “you get that girl in here. It won’t cost you a dime.” Sure enough, two minutes later she comes around the corner, with that guy right behind.
“I want to talk to you,” she says, all smiles, “but he won’t leave me alone.”
The guy she’s with is fit to be tied. “I know what she wants to do,” he hollers. “She don’t want to talk to you. She wants to fuck you.”
I’m thinking ninety miles an hour. I said to him, “Why, what makes you think that?”
“We’re separated. We’re getting a divorce. I know that the only reason she came with me tonight was to see you and get to meet you.”
I said, “Wait a minute, son. Girl, you go over there and wait.” I pulled him aside, put my arm around his shoulder. “Let me tell you something. You got your blonde, and I have my blonde. I was fixing to get a divorce from my wife. She did me the same way.” I made up a story about how she was always running off and everything. “And then, one day, I took her back home to her momma and it all changed.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. He was dumber than a rock.
“She calls me begging to come back every day, and do you know why? Because one time I dropped her off and said that’s it. You better let her do the walking when you leave. A woman can’t stand it when a man makes the first move.”
He considered that for a moment. You could almost see steam rising from his ears he was thinking so hard. Finally, he said, “What do you think I ought to do?”
I closed the trap. I said, “Well, tell her to go to hell.”
“But we’re eighty miles from home.”
“That’s even better. Root hog or die, she’ll never forget it. She’ll be pounding your door down. She’ll have to hitch home or find her own way. If I was you, I’d tell her to get fucked and walk out of here.”
The Jennings Clan, pre-me. That’s Grandpa Gus on the far right.
The Shipleys at the turn of the 1940s. I’m standing hand on head,
posing on the left in the second row.
Mom, Dad, Tommy, and I in McAllen, Texas.
First grade.
Daddy and his boys. By now James D. is the littlest
(Bo was still a couple of years away), and I’ve learned how to roll up my jeans.
July 1958
My first signature model guitar.
One of my first “Big Time” appearances, with Ray Corbin, George Atwood,
and Kilmer Key. (courtesy Corbin family/KLLL collection)
Disc jockeys at K-Triple-L radio: Hi-Pockets, Don Bowman, and
Sky and Ray Corbin. (courtesy Corbin family/KLLL collection)
Got a light? A photo booth at Grand Central Station in January 1959.
Three-part harmony: myself, Buddy, Tommy Allsup. (courtesy William F. Griggs)
How the audience saw my first taste of the rock and roll road.
Buddy Holly onstage at the Teen Hop in the Laramar Ballroom,
Fort Dodge, Indiana; January 30, 10:31 P.M.(courtesy Don Larson)
I believe they call this a grin …
Back on the radio in Coolidge, Arizona.
A formal portrait from the height of our J.D.’s rise to fame.
The original Waylors: Jerry Gropp, Richie Albright, and Paul Foster. Dig those matching guitar straps.
Herb Alpert gave me my first major label break, then let me leave when RCA and Chet Atkins beckoned. I’ve been grateful to him ever since.
In the RCA studios with Chet, 1966.
Some people call me a Nashville Rebel.
That’s why I’m a country singer: I’ve always loved the sound of a twelve-string guitar.
Showin’ out with my brother Tommy on bass.
Afterhours in the late 1960s.
Backstage with Dottie West at Beloit High School, Wisconsin. Which shines more, her hair or my suit?
The look of love.
An early snapshot of Jessi, Jennifer, and myself. (Courtesy Martha Garrisam)
You sure look sharp wearin’ sunglasses after dark. (courtesy The Courier-Journal
My girls: Momma and Jessi.
He stormed back to where the girl was standing, gave her the finger and a piece of his mind, and strode out of the room. As soon as he turned that corner, I said, “Girl, let’s get out of here,” and we took off.
The music, the pills, and the women—that was our life on the road. Sometimes I’d screw two or three a ni
ght. Richie remembers me reserving extra rooms in hotels, running up and down the emergency staircase to get from one to the other. Once, in Louisville, I had girls stashed on three floors. I had been awake for a few days and was determined to visit them all. “Waylon,” he said to me, “you’re going to kill yourself.” I never knew when enough was enough. Too much was never enough.
I took pills by the fistful. I’d start with a Desoxyn or two, and some little White Crosses, and wash the whole mess down with an Alka-Seltzer to kick it in the ass. It would come on like gang-busters. Then I’d drink coffee, and every once in a while I’d pop another to keep going. A doctor once told me that if I took one Desoxyn every day for a month, I’d be a dead man. I had to laugh. I knew they would kill some people, but they didn’t kill me.
I thought I was invincible. Twenty amphetamines a day was normal, and thirty wasn’t unusual. I’d hit the ground running; I never had a hangover because I never gave myself a chance. If I would manage to go to sleep at night, I’d put a glass of water by the bed and about three pills right by the phone. When that wake-up call came, I’d take the pills, lay back down until they kicked in, and then get up and go. Got to go.
My dad came to the premiere of Nashville Rebel in February of 1967. He was real shy, though you could tell he was proud as all get out of me. His neck was so thick, he found it uncomfortable to wear a tie, but he put one on because it was such an important occasion.
After the movie was over, they had a reception out in the lobby. I caught him as he was trying to slip out the back door of the theater. He wasn’t used to such crowds in Littlefield. We were stand there talking, and the first person that looked over and saw him was Tex Ritter. Tex went right up to him. He said, “You’re Waylon’s dad,” and stayed chatting with him all night. Everybody came over and introduced themselves to him. He was just in glory. I was glad he got to experience that.
Every time I saw Tex do “Hillybilly Heaven” in the movie, I thought of Daddy. When he’s reading from “the big tally book,” as Will Rogers called it, he moves from greats that have passed on to those whose roll call is yet to come. I couldn’t help but think my daddy’s name was inscribed in there.
On June 3, 1968, he slipped away, dead of a heart condition. If it was today, there are operations that could’ve given him another quarter century of being with his family; he was only fifty-three when he passed on. He hadn’t even been sick.
Tommy called me from Nashville. I was in Toronto. “Big brother,” he said. “I got some bad news.”
I knew what it was going to be before he told me. “It’s Daddy, ain’t it?”
I refused to go down to the funeral home and see him. I wanted to remember him as he was. I kind of passed out at the funeral, and I got a taste of something I’d never seen before, which was people standing around watching other folks’ misery. At the gravesite, strangers were coming up and wanting autographs. I didn’t know or care who they were.
It took a long time for Daddy’s death to sink in. I thought he’d always be there. When he was alive, I knew I was secure, that he was the one person who would care for and about me, no questions asked, no matter what. I thought there wasn’t any trouble he couldn’t help me out of, and after he died, I’ve never felt safe since. It was like he passed over the reins of the family to me, and I had to take over. “You’re the man of the house now,” I could hear him saying, as if he was going away for a couple of days leaving me in charge. I kept remembering that day he took on Strawberry Stewart. Even though he had a hoe in his hand, he dropped it on the ground when he started after him. He only needed himself to be strong.
I’ve never stopped missing him, in all these years, and I like to think I’ve taken his best qualities and passed them along in my music and life.
Lucky Moeller stepped right in as a surrogate dad for me. He’d had a lot to do with me moving to Nashville in the first place, even traveling to Phoenix to tell me he could keep me working. He settled me. I’d spend a couple, three nights swarming all over town, and then I’d pull up at his office. I’d park the Cadillac about four times and almost put it through the front door. He’d turn off the phone, close the office, and talk to me, about when he used to drive an asphalt truck and when I pulled cotton.
He had come a long way, from being vice president of a bank in Oklahoma to the head of Moeller Talent, Inc., which he ran with his son, Larry. Lucky had come to town in the mid-fifties as a personal manager, and with Jim Denny, who ran Cedarwood Publishing, developed the bulk of offices along Sixteenth Avenue called Music Row. His first love was booking, and with some thirty artists on his roster, he slotted over thirty-five hundred shows a year.
He booked north and he booked south, west over east, usually in the same week. Moeller Talent had a circuit, locked down and tight, and once you started, you kept going. They had their White Horses, the top-line acts like Webb Pierce or Kitty Wells (who once did an incredible 265 one-nighters in 1963); and they might get up to twenty-five hundred dollars a night. But you had to take all these other people as part of the bargain. If you didn’t pay the big white horse, Lucky still might not cut you out of the picture.
They would book me into this place, and the owner would stiff me. I wouldn’t get the money, but they could call up Lucky and get another horse from the stable. Saddle ’em up. You needed to work. Some nights I would only get four hundred dollars. John Cash took me with him on a couple of tours, but most of it was really rough.
You could only go so far and that was all. The farther I traveled, the farther in the hole I went. I was having to get advances from RCA to get me transportation. I needed to have something to drive to the shows. I was wearing out cars on a monthly basis.
It was a form of control, to keep us in debt and in their debt. Most of the time we didn’t mind. We were all excited, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed to be going everywhere, though if we stopped to notice, it was always the same places, the same people, for the same money. To the Cow Town in San Francisco, down Route 5 through Fresno and Bakersfield to the Palomino Club in L.A. out in the Valley, then across to Phoenix and J.D.’s, where I was still the biggest thing to hit that town. Around the horn of Texas where it seemed like I played San Antonio twice a month: the Stallion Club … the Mustang Club … something like that. They had those big Bob Wills dance floors. That’s what “Bob Wills Is Still the King” is about. I’d get up on the long bandstand, built for a twelve-piece cowboy orchestra, and I’d be telling my four guys to start spreading out. We’re playing calypso beats, straight eights, double-timing, and the audience would start looking at me weird. They liked the songs, but they couldn’t dance to them.
Up to Canada, through the upper Midwest, along the south Atlantic coast, the Virginias and the Carolinas. Every winter we played a cowboy bar in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It was twenty-seven below. Then it would be the Gulf Coast in the summer. Or you’d drive from Minneapolis to Atlanta overnight. I always accused the booking agents of having a dart board with a map on it.
The band traveled in an old Dodge motorhome. It wasn’t a bus; it had belonged to Red Sovine and had been sitting in his backyard. Every hose and tire was ready to give up the ghost. One time, going across the Rockies up in Canada, Calgary to Vancouver, the brakes went out. And I’ll never forget that night in Red Deer, sleet and ice and snow and us under that damn motorhome, trying to unfuse the push-button transmission, get it in drive so we could keep going forward. But we were still in show business.
They’d load me in the back and I’d sleep all the way to wherever we went. Usually I’d been up for days, taking over-and-unders, and when I’d crash, there wasn’t anything that could wake me up. Richie would come in the back periodically and listen for my heart to see if I was still alive. I wouldn’t move, all the way from Nashville to Syracuse.
We had a horse trailer cut down to carry all our equipment in, and when it hit a bump everything in it bounced nine feet in the air. I could never figure out why my amplifier sounded different
every night. Usually I’d look in the back and the speaker was hanging on by one screw.
The sound in the clubs was terrible, because there were no p.a. systems. You never even thought about a monitor. The difference between having a good sound and a bad sound was whether you could hear anything coming off the back wall. Like a beer bottle.
The honky-tonk circuit. It was inbred and in bed. Some of the business people in town were partners with guys out there buying the acts. This one over here was poker buddies with that guy who runs the record company. Another books the record company’s acts and together they own a building. A music publisher controls a radio station; the disc jockey writes songs and wants a record deal. Nobody was in competition with anybody; everybody stayed out of everybody’s way.
It was a family thing, which would have been nice if they didn’t try to keep it all in the family. It was like the Grand Ole Opry, bless its heart.
I’d played at the original Ryman Auditorium with Bare the first time. I sang harmony with Bobby on “Come on Home” and “Sing the Blues to Daddy.” It’s a moment every singer dreams of, and I wasn’t any different. That was one of the few things that ever scared me. I didn’t get nervous till I got out there, and then I looked down and I knew that Hank Williams, Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, and all those immortals had just stood there in that one place, and I wondered what the hell I was doing there.
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